After Hours, Not Off-the-Clock
MM Contemporary Romance
by Chase Power
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Workplace Romance, Forbidden Romance, Slow Burn, Bi Awakening, Secret Relationship, Touch Starved, Only Soft For You, Forced Proximity, Hurt/Comfort, Control/Surrender
Two exhausted men. One rule: only after hours. The hospital never prepared them for this.
Dr. Ash Rivera is the steadiest man in the ER — calm under pressure, unshakeable in a crisis, and completely incapable of letting anyone see what it costs him. Three years after a divorce that proved he was easier to love from a distance, he’s built a life of controlled isolation. He doesn’t need anyone. He’s fine.
Kai Tanaka is the nurse who notices everything — every trembling hand, every held breath, every crack in the armor that nobody else can see. He’s warm, competent, and hiding his own damage behind bad jokes and relentless compassion. He’s also never been attracted to a man before. Until Ash.
It starts with a supply closet and a sentence: Thirty seconds or do you need a full minute? It builds through late-night diners, parking garage confessions, and the slow, devastating discovery that the person who makes you feel safest is the one you work with every day. They set one rule: after hours only. Professional on the floor. Real behind closed doors.
But the after-hours are leaking into the daylight. The secret is cracking. And when the hospital forces their hand, they’ll have to decide: stay hidden in the margins, or step into the light and claim each other for real.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Doctor/nurse workplace romance with real stakes
✅ Slow burn that IGNITES (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, emotional)
✅ Bi-awakening “first man” storyline
✅ “Only soft for you” meets “say it when it costs you something”
✅ Touch-starved caretakers who finally get cared for
✅ Found family hospital crew (Jesse will steal your heart)
✅ 98,000 words of pining, steam, and a love declaration on a hospital floor in jeans
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes), strong language, medical emergencies involving children, depictions of burnout, grief, and emotional vulnerability. Bi-awakening storyline. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One
The full moon brought out the worst in people. Every ER nurse, doctor, and paramedic in the country knew it, and every study that said it was bullshit could go ahead and spend a Friday night in the pit at Mercy General before forming an opinion.
Ash Rivera stripped off a pair of bloody gloves, tossed them in the biohazard bin, and checked the clock. Nine fourteen. He’d been on since seven. Thirteen hours to go.
“Rivera, Bay Four just lit up — chest pain, sixty-two-year-old male, history of MI, diaphoretic on arrival,” the charge nurse called from the station without looking up from her screen.
“On it.” He was already moving.
That was the thing about the emergency department on a night like this. There was no pause button. No breath between one crisis and the next. You triaged, you stabilized, you moved. The moment you stopped moving, the current pulled you under.
Bay Four’s patient was pale and sweating through his hospital gown, his wife clutching his hand hard enough to whiten her own knuckles. Ash introduced himself — calm, steady, the voice he’d spent a decade perfecting. The one that said I’ve got this even when the monitors were screaming.
“Mr. Garza, I’m Dr. Rivera. We’re going to take very good care of you tonight. Can you describe the pain for me?”
He listened. He assessed. He ordered labs, an EKG, started the protocol. His hands didn’t shake. They never did.
He’s going to be a problem, Ash thought.
Not the kind of problem you could triage. Not the kind you could stabilize, transfer, and forget. The kind that settled into your blind spots and waited, patient and quiet, until you turned around and found it had been there the whole time.
Ash went back to work.
I notice everything about you.
Ash looked at his screen. The cursor blinked on the death summary. He became aware, suddenly, that he was holding his breath.
He exhaled. And for the first time in a long time, the controlled, quiet room inside his head didn’t feel like discipline.
It felt like a cage.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
On Call — The Anniversary — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
One year later. A hotel room. A rainfall shower. A belt. Ash walks in fully clothed. Kai takes everything off him. The walls are thick, the bed is king-sized, and for the first time in their lives, nobody needs to be quiet.
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