Page 960 of One More Kiss

Wet & Wicked

Celia Kyle

Chapter1

Reis struggledto cling to the last vestiges of sleep. He’d been having a particularly nice dream about swinging from tree to tree through a dense, verdant jungle.

Normally, he dreamt about upsetting the doctor in charge of his residency or not diagnosing a patient correctly. Sometimes, he even dreamed of accidentally shifting into his silverback gorilla form in the middle of a high-pressure triage.

Okay, maybe those were more like nightmares…

Reis wanted to return to the jungle dream, though. In the jungle dream, he smelled something wonderful. Like the most delicious aroma he had ever known. Not like anything in particular yet it scented like everything he loved at once.

Except, despite his best efforts, a klaxon ring continued to pierce the veil of sleep. Eventually, he groaned and allowed his mind to be lured from the depths of deep slumber into the waking world.

“What the fuck?” He rolled over and grabbed his phone off the nightstand, the device vibrating and beeping in his decidedly human hand. Sadly. He ached to be in gorilla form in that jungle for a few more minutes…

The buzzing streetlight outside his window told him it was nighttime. Why in the hell did he have an alarm set for nighttime? His residency shift was mids, afternoons to evenings…

Reis shut off the alarm and then noticed he had twelve unread text messages. He scrolled through a few spam offers for loans and credit cards and then found the next six were from his friend and gorilla troopmate, Hudson, screenname: Bigorilladaddy69.

Reis’s eyes widened as he tapped on the first message, received around five thirty in the afternoon shortly after he’d lain down because it was one of his rare days free.

Bigorilladaddy69: Hey, fuckface, don’t forget you’re working as a standby physician at the WDC tonight. We both need the money and the logged hours.

“Shit.” Reis tossed off the blanket and leaped to his feet, still reading the messages as he rushed to the bathroom. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Bigorilladaddy69: Yo, Reis. You’d better be awake and sober and getting ready. Don’t forget your lanyard or they won’t let you in the door.

“Shit, shit, fuck me sideways, shit.” Reis brushed his teeth and ran a comb through his hair. Fortunately, he’d taken a shower before his nap. The only explanation for his late wake up was that he’d hit snooze in his sleep. A lot, apparently.

He threw on the tight khaki pants and matching red polo shirt the event organizers insisted the medical team wear. Reis thought he looked perfectly stupid. What kind of doctor wore khakis?

During his residency, the doctor he reported to insisted on a strict dress code. He wore a shirt, a tie, good shoes, and a white lab coat. If Reis got any of that wrong, he would find himself doing extra shifts.

But this wasn’t for his residency. It was for the World Diving Championships, and they thought a red shirt and khaki pants was a great idea. Reis thought he looked like the employee of one of those giant brick-and-mortar electronics stores. He certainly didn’t look like a doctor, even one in residency.

Still shaking his head about his clothing, he dashed down the stairs to the street. His silverback wanted out and to take a shortcut to swing through the trees of nearby Central Park. That would require stripping down, though, and since the world at large didn’t know about shifters, it wasn’t an option anyway.

Instead, Reis caught the boring, stinky subway. What the smells did to a shifter nose should be a crime. Plus, the tube was packed for a Thursday night. He had nowhere to sit and had to stand holding on to the metal bar. He caught a cute little twenty-something woman checking him out, but Reis barely cared. He’d sown his wild gorilla-flavored oats already. Now he was looking for the one—his mate.

One rule applied when you found your mate. Your first clue was always a scent—one you had never known before, yet felt intensely familiar to your inner animal. It would be the scent of your mate, the one person you were fated to be with in all the world. Forever and always.

He knew that the woman, however attractive, wasn’t his mate. She smelled like Irish Spring and Prell. Reis checked the upcoming station and prepared to get off the train.

As soon as the doors slid open, he leapt for the platform and jogged toward the concrete steps leading up to street level, using his bulk to nudge slower pedestrians aside. He rushed by a bank’s lighted advertisement, catching sight of the time displayed, and cringed. He was at least a half hour late for his shift.

“I sure hope Hudson is covering for me,” he muttered. They’d grown up in the same troop, and Reis felt he could rely on Hudson, so much so that he’d made his fellow doctor and gorilla shifter the beta in the troop.

Reis rushed up the steps and came out into the crisp, slightly less-noxious, night air. He ran across the street right as the crosswalk signal flashed red. Even though he was only in the street for a split second after the light turned green for traffic, someone still honked their car horn.

“Oh, come on.” He turned around and flipped traffic the bird. “You were hardly inconvenienced.”

The idiot in the car flipped him off in return. Reis rolled his eyes and turned to go, having no more time to spend on the man.

He ran up to the Powell Convention Hall, snugly nestled up to the Powell Hotel. Reis had heard the rooms in the hotel section were kind of small since they’d originally been college dorm rooms.

The convention hall, on the other hand, featured a full-size basketball court and a full-size Olympic class diving pool, both carryovers from when Powell had been a university. The pool was a major stop on the WDC tour, which meant it had a fair amount of seasonal business.

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