His name was Mick Merryweather, and at the same time Ayla was packing her lunch and trying to convince Preston that daycare couldn’t possibly be as bad as he made it out to be, Mick was waking up in his condo at Arroyo Place with yet another migraine.

He rolled out of bed, the silk sheets sliding off his muscular frame as he strolled, naked, from his bed to the bathroom. He paused at the floor-to-ceiling window, leaning on the glass with his hands over his head. The glass was still cool from the evening and felt good on his face. As high up as he was, nobody noticed him, not that anybody would complain if they could see him. His physique was exquisite, sculpted by a lifetime playing rugby, then service in the British Royal Air Force, and finally a stint with MI6. His chest was dusted with dark hair, a few just beginning to turn gray as he approached forty. With his arms above his head, his arms looked magnificent, bulging and rippling, the structure of his back likewise enhanced by his pose.

If only anyone was there to see it.

Mick’s career choices precluded traditional relationships and made starting a family nearly impossible. MI6 sent him all around the world bringing bad men to justice, and he bore the scars, physical and emotional. The headaches were a recent development, but the ache in his right shoulder had been with him since a particularly vicious tackle playing in a rugby match at seventeen. The scar on his right thigh was left by a bullet, but it had healed nicely and fortune had smiled upon him when it missed his femoral artery. He’d been deep in the bush in Liberia when it happened, miles and worlds away from any proper medical care.

He expected to retire from the British spy agency, but after being shot and losing his brother and father in short order, he decided he needed a change of scenery and career.

He moved to the United States, bouncing from place to place, trying to, as the Yanks call it “find himself.” He’d gotten rid of his accent in his previous career, often posing as a Canadian to throw off suspicion. Nobody anywhere had a problem with Canadians.

He didn’t intentionally leave it behind when he started life anew in the States, but unless he was back home in Sheffield, or talking to someone from the U.K., it just slipped out on certain words.

After a spell in New York City and some time in Miami, Mick wound up in Las Vegas, working first in corporate security and then as a personal bodyguard to William Watterson, the hotel and casino mogul. When William went into semi-retirement and turned the day-to-day operations over to his only son, Winston, Mick switched over to guarding the new face of Watterson Gaming.

He was grateful that Winston had taken his new responsibilities seriously and left his hard-partying days behind him. Mick hated the club scene, and he’d lost count of the times he’d had to endure a night in some dark, jarringly-loud nightclub assessing risk and coming up with scenarios to keep young Winston safe for when he inevitably decided to spend a night out with his entourage of gold-diggers.

Just the thought of it made his migraine throb. But the thought of one particular scouting mission made something else throb.

He recalled that night at…what was it called? Scant? Scald? That was it, Scald. Typical in so many ways; music so loud it made his teeth rattle, douchebags wearing way too much Axe body spray making it hard to breathe, and darkness that triggered claustrophobia left over from his time in confined in what amounted to a coffin outside Lahore, Pakistan, while a warlord decided his fate.

The planned execution took place, but instead of Mick being beheaded, he’d overpowered his captors and turned their swords and guns on them before making his escape. The body count on that mission definitely contributed to his migraines.

Mick thought about that night at Scald, and how many times he returned there after that night, looking for the girl. He knew it was fruitless, nobody dancing in a Las Vegas nightclub lives in Las Vegas, and she’d undoubtedly returned home to Dallas or Minneapolis, or wherever she called home.

But that one night… fuck.

He reached down to the impressive slab of man muscle swinging between his legs, and he gave it a slow tug. Then another. Before long, he’d reached full, majestic attention, standing there in the window. Morning traffic filled the Las Vegas Strip thirty stories below.

He braced himself with one hand against the glass, setting up a steady rhythm, ignoring the dull pain in his shoulder.

He’d been sitting at the bar when he first spotted her, all blonde hair, blue eyes, and the most refreshing, easy smile he’d seen on all six continents he’d visited.

The way her hips swayed inside her painted-on blue dress when she walked past him was captivating, and when the shiny sheen of sweat appeared on her brow as she danced, he imagined how she might flush when she…

Mick grunted and increased the pace of hand on cock.

She danced so freely, laughing with her friends. There was nothing forced or sloppy about her, not like so many of the girls there that night, and every night at places like Scald. She wasn’t trying to be “cool” or “sexy,” she was just effortlessly mesmerizing. Mick nursed his import beer as he watched her, unable to take his eyes off her spinning, undulating form.

Her ass in that dress. Her legs. Hell, her everything.

He’d watched her leave the dance floor and approach the bar. Her friends split off, and she was alone. Mick had never been good at opening lines, but he figured if he sat down, offered to buy her a drink, and introduced himself, that might be enough to not get laughed at, or flat turned down, anyway.

Before he could act, however, the two Arab guys approached. Saudi? Qatari? If he could hear them speak, clearly, he could identify their dialect and probably tell them, with reasonable accuracy, where they’d grown up, within a few hundred kilometers.

Mick sat back to watch their flirtatious efforts unfold, but when he saw the man produce that capsule and slip it— so quickly even he almost missed it— into her drink, he knew he had to act.

He wasn’t in a Watterson Gaming property, so he knew to expect zero leniency from Scald security. He hoped to avoid confrontation altogether, but he doubted the cocky, gold-clad assholes would back down without a show of force. He intervened, and as expected, immediately came under attack. Messy, but definitely an attack.

Pounding them into the ground would have been fun, and probably therapeutic, but he needed things to end quickly and to melt away, maybe with the girl on his arm. No police, no questions from hotel security.

The first man, charging forward in a blind rage, went down easily. The second was larger and a bit more calculated in his approach. Mick fell for neither of his two feints, however, and when he got past the man’s flailing fists, he executed a textbook uchi mata, judo’s “throw of kings,” applying just enough extra mustard to the throw to make sure his opponent wouldn’t recover quickly.

Being a fugitive, even if only from nightclub security over a minor scuffle, gave Mick the familiar jolt of adrenaline, and he fell right back into old habits. He took the girl by the hand and slipped into the sea of bodies on the dance floor. When they got a safe distance away, he tried to calm her, although being so close to her, smelling the floral scent on her hair and losing himself in the depths of her ice-blue eyes, made rational thought difficult. When he noticed a yellow-shirted rent-a-cop getting too close, he made the decision to hide in plain sight. To plant a kiss on this girl he’d just met, this beautiful, fresh-faced angel, and hope that if she didn’t exactly respond, that she’d go with it long enough for the heat to blow over.

The “heat,” however, rather than blowing over, became a conflagration. An inferno.

The heat between Mick and Ayla, that is.

Mick expected the kiss to surprise her, and she did tense up for a moment, but she didn’t attempt to withdraw, and began to fervently return his passion. To all the world, they must have looked like long-term lovers, kissing and grinding and groping in the middle of the dance floor, when in reality they’d just met. Or not even officially met, actually.

The kiss lingered, with stops and starts, changing positions and angles as their bodies pressed close and Ayla could feel what seemed like an angry, throbbing beast in his pants, struggling to be set free.

When they finally, mutually came up for air, Ayla and Mick stared at each other in shared disbelief. He lifted the back of his hand to his bottom lip and wiped it, breaking into a smile. Ayla was dazed and breathless, but filled with a hunger like she’d never known.

* * *

Back in the window of his condo, Mick braced himself against the glass pulling furiously on his cock as he thought of the way she filled out that dress… how she tasted… how soft the back of her thigh felt when he reached down and cupped her ass, pulling her in tight. She yelped into his mouth when he took possession of her body like that, and she shuddered as she ground her hips against his thigh.

Fuck it. Mick thought of her climaxing, right there on the crowded dance floor, and he came. His cock pulsed as he gritted his teeth and emptied himself against the window.

As he finished, Mick stood up straight and stretched both arms over his head. He lived in a world filled with wealthy men, which meant beautiful women. But there was something about that girl from the club, all those years ago, that he always came back to. Her beauty, her… purity.

There was something fresh about her. She wasn’t at all need or desperate like so many of the women who filled the clubs he’d spent time in all over the world. She didn’t have an agenda or motive. She was an innocent as it got in his world.

Although as unknowing as she appeared, she turned out to be anything but.

Once they’d slipped out of the club and back out into the casino and found that quiet corner atop the parking garage, and they were as alone as they could be in the middle of one of the most action-packed miles of real estate on the planet, she demonstrated a fiery sexuality that almost overwhelmed him.

But if Mick spent too much time thinking about that garage roof, he’d never leave his condo and make it to his boss’s first appointment of the day, with the casino magnate who’d flown in from Macau to discuss a potential partnership with Watterson Gaming. Mick wasn’t needed on such occasions, per se, but Winston preferred to do business with his entire “team” nearby, legal advisors, financial people, and the muscle; Mick Merryweather.

After a shower and cleaning up the mess Ayla had inspired him to make, Mick donned his black suit and went to work.