Mick wore khaki pants and a forest green golf shirt that contained his pecs and biceps only under protest. Green and blue socks under brown dress shoes that matched his belt finished him off.

He was standing outside when Ayla’s town car pulled up.

Ayla emerged in a red sundress with a yellow floral pattern. It hugged her curves before billowing out just above her knees. Strappy sandals completed her ensemble. Her makeup was light and her shimmering blonde hair swung in a simple ponytail.

Mick couldn’t contain a grin as Ayla approached, and his easy smile melted her nerves away.

“Wow,” he exclaimed. “You’re… just… wow.”

Ayla blushed. “You’re ‘wow’ yourself. Mick Merryweather.”

They shared a quick kiss and walked inside. While waiting for a table, Ayla noticed the scar on Mick’s left bicep. She traced it with her fingertip. “Is there a story?”

“Not one I care to tell over dinner,” Mick replied. “It’s one of many. Picked it up in Laos.”

“Is it one of those ‘you should see the other guy’ things?” Ayla asked.

“Oh, you wouldn’t want to see him.,” Mick countered. “But you won’t have to. He was a very bad man. I was the last person he’ll ever hurt.”

Ayla was wide-eyed. She knew Mick had a military background, but he was insinuating that he’d killed the man who gave him the scar. Mick looked dangerous. He was dangerous.

Ayla couldn’t help it— she was wet.

The menu was overwhelming, so Mick helped with some of Ayla’s choices. She loved the things Mick ordered, as he predicted. The chicken larb and choi soy were more “native” to Southeast Asia than the stuffed chicken wing appetizer they shared and the garlic prawns to which Ayla became immediately, hopelessly addicted to.

The meal was delicious, the wine refreshing, and despite Ayla’s reservations about the distinctly “non-American” dessert of sticky rice with mango, it was likewise mouth-watering, and Ayla ate more of it than she’d intended to. Along with everything else that showed up on her plate. Her plan to eat lightly in front of Mick went out the window when she tasted the food. Besides, she knew she needed to eat enough to build up her strength for the nightcap she was hoping for.

The conversation flowed easily, bouncing between Ayla’s jobs, Mick’s various careers, his brother, Ayla’s sister and brother, and Mick’s announcement that his mother would be arriving in two days’ time.

Mick was especially excited to learn that Ayla had a brother in the military. He felt that they’d have quite a bit in common.

The began the meal across from each other, but as dishes arrived, Mick moved over and sat in the booth next to Ayla. Their arms and hands brushed more and more often, and Ayla found her body responding to his proximity in naughty ways. She squirmed under the intensity of his gaze after they finished a particularly memorable kiss while waiting for dessert to arrive.

She needed him badly.

They left the restaurant holding hands, emerging into a world cooler and darker than the on they’d left. Ayla didn’t technically have any sick days left for the year at NPE, but she was hopeful that Randy could cover for her. Jeff would probably be happy she wasn’t there, anyway, although as her co-worker J.R. had said countless times, “If Jeff doesn’t like you, you must be doing something right.”

Ayla sent Lupe a text asking if she could stay with Preston until she’d pick him up and drop him on her way to her second job, and Lupe agreed.

Mick drove Ayla back to his condo, valet parked his Navigator, and the two of them strolled inside. On the elevator up to his floor, they could barely contain themselves, kissing, groping and clawing at each other until they reached Mick’s floor and his elderly, snooty neighbor caught them making out like teenagers when the door opened. She gave them a disapproving glare as they eased past her and into the hallway.

“Have a pleasant evening, Mrs. Roban,” Mick said with a bow and flourish. Her eyes widened and she made a “Hrmph!” sound.

“Roban?” Ayla asked. “Like the jewelry store Roban family?”

“Exactly the ones,” Mick replied. “She lives here. I’ve never seen him. I think he has a place on a golf course somewhere. And a girlfriend your age.”

“That’s kind of gross. He’s got to be, what, almost eighty?”

“If you’ve waited until now to tell me you don’t fancy older men, I’m going to be terribly disappointed,” Mick joked.

“Every girl likes older men,” Ayla replied. “But there’s a difference between a silver fox and a… well, whatever somebody old enough to be your great-grandfather is.”

“I’m a silver fox, then?” Mick asked, opening the door, letting Ayla in, then locking it behind him. Before she could answer, he had her hands above her head, back to the door, kissing her voraciously.

Between kissing Ayla’s neck and mouth, Mick spoke directly into her ear. “I’ve thought about you… ever since… you’re a work of art… I’ve been obsessed with you… and I never even knew your name.”

Ayla writhed and whimpered under his assault, the spaghetti straps of her sundress sliding down her shoulders and down her body, leaving her clad in only her sandals and panties.

Mick kissed her bare shoulders and her collarbone. Ayla gasped when he kissed her hard on the mouth and pressed his hips forward, his erection separated from where she so desperately needed it by only her sodden panties and his tented pants and boxers. She felt it pulse angrily as he kissed her.

Ayla reached for Mick’s shirt, trying to pull it off, but instead he bent down and placed an arm behind her knees, lifting her effortlessly into the air and carrying her through his condo toward the bedroom.

Focused entirely on Mick, throwing her arms behind his head and kissing him as he walked, Ayla was only vaguely aware of the floor to ceiling windows with the spectacular Strip view and the elegantly appointed post-modern furnishings in Mick’s home. She knew Arroyo Place’s reputation for housing the rich and beautiful of Las Vegas, alongside the movers and shakers in the gaming industry. When she learned that Mick lived there, she was impressed, but taken aback.

She knew full well that Arroyo Place residents didn’t mix with National Parcel Express hourly employees like herself.

But this was Mick. Her Mick. And he was demonstrating now how little any difference in wage or station in life meant to him, at least when it came to her.

Mick set Ayla down gently on his bed, and he slithered down her body, slipping her underwear down and off in one smooth motion.

Ayla lay naked before a fully clothed Mick, but for her sandals. The room was lit only by the neon glow of the Strip pouring in through the window, which she noticed for the first time.

Mick knelt at the foot of the bed and gently removed Ayla’s footwear, cradling her feet and kissing them softly.

Her body was on fire, and she couldn’t keep still. Her hips undulated on the bed, and her hands touched her stomach and slid down her pelvic lines toward the source of her need.

Mick noticed and cautioned her. “Don’t touch yourself, Ayla. Your body is all for me. Let me do everything. Be a good girl and give yourself fully to me.”

Good girl.

Fuck.

Ayla’s core temperature went from one thousand degrees right past a million. Her sex felt like it was boiling.

Satisfied that his mewing, whimpering prey would comply, Mick resumed kissing Ayla’s feet. He moved slowly up to her ankles, then her calves, touching her body with only his lips.

He rose up between her legs to a kneeling position and reached back over his shoulder to pull his shirt off and toss it aside.

One look at Mick’s shoulders was almost enough to send Ayla tumbling over the edge.

He bent back down, kissing Ayla’s knees, his hands beginning to roam, fingertips on her sides, making her squirm even harder.

She could feel by the way he was moving that he must be removing his pants, and she lifted her head from the sheets in an effort to see the weapon he’d so expertly wielded when they’d first met.

All she saw, however, was his dark eyes, meeting hers as his face dipped down between her legs.

He kissed all around her opening, deliberately avoiding her clit.

“Please,” Ayla hoarsely begged. “Kiss me there. Please.”

“Where, Ayla?” Mick asked, feigning innocent ignorance of her desire. “Just tell me and I’ll kiss you anywhere you want.”

“My pussy. My clit please make me come. I’ll do anything to come. Let me come for you, Mick. It’s all I’ve been thinking about for six years.”

Mick’s hands found the backs of Ayla’s thighs and lifted them up and apart, lewdly exposing everything.

He stared in reverential awe at the source of Ayla’s femininity, the altar of her womanhood.

He kissed around and around, moving lower, his lips brushing against that almost painfully-sensitive spot between her sex and her… Ayla clutched at the sheets, balling them in her fists.

Mick had never been harder.

The scent of Ayla’s arousal was overpowering. It went straight to his manhood, making it swell and throb each time he inhaled.

She was babbling, moaning, her mind melting as her temperature continued to climb. Surely, she’d burst into flames soon.

Mick intended to go down on Ayla, to worship her pussy with his mouth, for as long as she could stand it. But his cock seized control of his body, and before he realized what was happening, he had mounted Ayla.

The head of his cock split her open, leading the assault on her born-again virginity.

She’d been with no men since Mick, and part of her feared how she’d accommodate him.

As wet as she was, Mick expected to enter her easily, but he encountered resistance despite the lubrication.

He withdrew and went again, probing, searching for entrance.

Ayla pulled at his shoulders and her feet wrapped around his thighs, trying to help him reach her center.

“Let me in, Ayla,” Mick hissed as he renewed his efforts.

The command opened psychological floodgates, letting her pelvic muscles relax, and all at once Mick was finally buried inside Ayla once again.

Ayla clung to him, urging him to fuck her deeper and harder, to reach the secret places deep inside that only he had ever touched.

He kissed her mouth, joining them fully as his hips continued to piston and drive his cock into her.

“I’ve been thinking about this too,” he growled. “Ever since I first had you. The best and only pussy I ever want again.”

Ayla came furiously.

The ecstasy was jarring; Ayla had grown accustomed to quenching her desires solo, but this was akin to the difference between ordinarily eating a Hershey’s Kiss to get your chocolate fix and then being given a slab of hot fudge cake.

She thrashed and clung to Mick’s sculpted torso, biting his shoulder to anchor herself to him even more deeply.

Mick could feel her insides clenching, clinging to him, urging him along. Deeper. Harder. More.

He obliged as best he was able, shifting from a supine position to kneeling between Ayla’s splayed legs, folding them up against her chest as he varied the angle of his attack.

Ayla bit her lip as he drove into her, ponytail long gone, blonde hair splashed all over the pillows where she thrashed her head from side to side.

Her second climax caught them both off-guard, rolling in powerfully after the first. She hissed through gritted teeth, “Yes! Fuck!”

This time, Ayla’s spasms almost worked to force Mick to finish, before he was ready. He withdrew just in time, with a loud gasp.

Before Ayla could voice her concerns that something was wrong, Mick allayed her fears. “You feel so good, love. Almost too good. I want to make this last.”

Ayla nodded and watched, through glazed eyes, as Mick lowered himself, his handsome face an eyelash from her wet, quivering sex.

He mercifully resumed kissing all around Ayla’s opening, her inner thighs, above, and below. The aftershocks had her too sensitive for direct contact, which he seemed to understand.

Her fingertips explored her torso, grazing her nipples. When she was ready to continue, she whispered, “More. Please, more.”

Mick engulfed her opening with his mouth, his tongue extending to fill her where his cock had just been.

Ayla melted into the bed, her bones turning liquid and allowing for no movement.

Mick swirled and probed, French kissing Ayla passionately between her legs. His arms wrapped around her thighs and held her hips in place, and he was quickly rewarded with a fresh flow of the sweet honey he’d longed for since that evening atop the garage.

He kissed the backs and insides of her thighs as she recovered, and although she longed for his cock, he was not yet finished with devouring her.

When she was ready, he gave her a long, slow licking, backing away when she began to tremble.

The torment was exquisite, and her hands were in his hair while she whimpered and called out his name when he finally granted her release.

She tasted herself on his kiss when he penetrated her again, a deep dicking that she knew she’d feel for days afterward.

Their lips stayed in contact throughout the grueling fuck, and when it reached its crescendo she locked her ankles behind him. She’d never needed anything as badly as she needed Mick Merryweather to fill her again, to empty himself inside her.

Mick had no intention of pulling out; Ayla felt too fucking good. In and out he thrust, his pace quickening. She noted a flash of confusion on his face, a moment of vulnerability, and he exploded.

The jets of Mick’s release splashing inside her triggered Ayla’s most massive orgasm yet, and she saw stars as she shook in what she feared resembled a seizure. But she had no control of it, feeling ice cold and volcanic hot all at once, lightning bolts crashing up and down her spine.

Mick reluctantly rolled over onto his back, his fingers intertwined with Ayla’s. They stared at the ceiling as their breathing slowed, and when they both turned simultaneously to look at each other, neither could stifle a giggle.

After a time, Mick leaned over Ayla, up on his elbow, and he began to kiss her again. Her forehead, the tip of her nose, her cheeks, her chin. Down along the side of her neck and to her flushed chest.

When he captured her right nipple between his lips, Ayla moaned and warned him that he’d be in trouble if he didn’t stop.

“Promise?” Mick asked, leaning across Ayla’s body to give her stiff left nipple a kiss.

Ayla reached down and for the first time took hold of Mick Merryweather’s cock. Thick and heavy, she squeezed and pulled on it as it swelled back to life.

She wrapped both hands around it, marveling at how soft the skin felt, yet how rock solidly hard it was. It had power. Heft.

Ayla craved it back inside her, but more than that, her heart sought the same satisfaction. She had to know.

“Can we… do you think you’d want to be in Preston’s life?” Ayla asked between kisses. She knew this was an awkward moment to mention it.

“I’d be honored to,” he replied. “I was Royal Air Force, Ayla. My life became dedicated to a code of loyalty and duty. It’s my duty to be Preston’s father. To help raise him to be the best man he can be. But more than that, more than just my duty, the flood of emotion that filled my soul when you told me about him… I can’t wait to hear him call me Dad. To honor my own father by trying, almost certainly failing, but trying like hell to be half the man he was.”

Ayla rolled over on top of Mick and guided his cock back inside her. She rode it slowly, making love to him deep into the night.

It was only minutes before she was to arrive at work that she realized she hadn’t yet called in sick.

She told Randy she’d had car trouble driving back from California, and that she didn’t get home until late. He granted her the day off, and she spent the extra time tangled up in bed naked with Mick, a happy smile spread across her very satisfied face.