Page 26 of Faron
“Meanest doctor in LA.”
Then he kissed me — slow, reverent, devastating — like he didn’t care that the world was falling apart outside my walls. Like he was here to ruin me one last time… or maybe save me for good.
I lost my shirt first — not torn, not rushed. Just slipped off and forgotten. His hands were careful but firm, his mouth tracing the path down my neck like he was rediscovering a homeland he never stopped dreaming about.
When the backs of my knees hit the bed, I caught his face in my hands.
“Don’t be gentle if you don’t want to,” I rasped.
His grin in the dark was pure sin. “Blue, I haven’t been gentle with you a day in my life.”
He pushed me down — mouth, breath, hands. He undid me like I was his favorite prayer and he’d been starved for worship.
He tasted like sweat and steel and the kind of forgiveness I didn’t know how to earn.
And when he finally sank into me — slow, deep, true — I arched under him and gasped his name like a confession I’d waited too long to say.
“I know,” he whispered into my throat. “I know, baby. I know.”
He moved like we were on borrowed time — relentless, tender, furious.
I broke first. Fell with a ragged cry and a laugh that shook loose years of shame and armor.
He followed with a groan against my neck and a vow scratched into my skin.
“Mine. Still mine.”
When it was over, he didn’t roll away.
He stayed. Held me. Kissed my hair.
I fell asleep to the sound of his heart under my hand — steady, fierce, impossibly alive.
27
Faron
The sun clawed its way up the cracked blinds, catching in the strands of her wild hair splayed across my chest.
I was still here.
Still in her bed.
Still breathing.
And Blue… God, she was curled against me like she finally believed I wasn’t going anywhere. One leg tangled over mine. Her fingers tucked just under the hem of my shirt like she didn’t know how to let go.
Bear was at our feet, snoring like a freight train. His tail flicked with every slow exhale — as if he, too, could dream easy for once.
I let myself pretend.
Pretend we were just two broken people trying to learn softness again.
Pretend her clinic was safe. That no one wanted her dead. That I could keep her forever.
She stirred, murmured against my skin, “Hey, Cherokee.”
I smiled into her hair. “Hey, Doc.”
