“Oh,” I squeaked. “Oh. Sure. M’kay. Yeah.”
So on board for that plan.
I raced up the stairs to my apartment, shucking my clothes as quickly as I could. By the time I dove onto the bed, I was buck naked and stroking myself.
Champ took his sweet time, but when he arrived, there was a noticeable bulge in the front of his trousers. Just seeing him like that got me hotter. “C’mere,” I said.
He shook his head and crossed his arms before leaning idly against the doorjamb. “Want to watch you for a minute.”
His eyes were dark and piercing. He had a way of looking at me that made my stomach clench and my heart rate spike.
I spread my legs open and moved my stroking hand down to cup my balls while I used my other hand to stroke across my chest. “Maybe I’ll pleasure myself if you’re going to stay all the way over there,” I teased.
His eyes darkened. “I’d like to see that.”
We both knew I was full of shit. I’d waited all day to get his bare cock back inside me. Just the thought of it had made me hard on and off for hours. But I wasn’t going to make it easy for him, so I called his bluff by reaching over to the bedside table, fishing out a bottle of lube, and fingering myself in front of him.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw his chest rise and fall more rapidly as he watched me. “Fuck,” he rumbled. “Get yourself ready for me.”
“I’m getting myself ready for something,” I said in a croaky voice. “Gonna have to get out the dildo in a minute if you don’t get over here.”
He didn’t move from the doorway. “I’d like to see that.”
We’d done it before. One night after Champ had been out of town for a three-day work trip, he’d shown up desperate and hungry. He’d found the toy sitting on my bedside table, where I’d left it on a towel to dry after washing it the night before. “Been missing my cock?” he’d asked before spending the next two hours edging me with everything but his cock.
Tonight I didn’t want a toy. I wanted him. And only him.
“Champ,” I breathed, hoping it would be enough for him to understand my need. If I started truly begging, it would get ugly.
“Do you have any idea how sexy you are?” he said, unfolding his arms and stepping into the room. His eyes stayed on mine. “How much you turn me on? I can’t even fucking think straight anymore with you in my head, but I’m through trying to fight it.”
My heart tripped over itself, but I didn’t dare speak. I moved my slick fingers up to stroke my shaft again.
“Earlier today, in that closet, when you said you hadn’t been with anyone else since me…” His voice sounded husky and raw. “I wanted to pound my fucking chest. Don’t get with anyone else, Quinn. Do you hear me? No one else.”
Air sawed in and out of my lungs as I tried not to pass out. Was he saying he wanted this to be a thing? An official, exclusive… thing? The R-word needled at the back of my brain, but I didn’t want to speak it.
“Champ,” I said again. My voice sounded needy and wrong. Thin and scared. What if this was just something he was saying in the heat of the moment?
His hands fisted to his sides. “You don’t get with anyone else,” he repeated. “Because you’re mine.”
I stared at him, frozen. “Yours to… to protect?”
“To protect. To take care of. To tease. To worship. Tell me you’re mine, Quinn. Say the words to me.”
My head spun, and my vision sparked. “Champ.” Was that the only word I was capable of speaking anymore? And if so, was it any surprise? He filled my entire world, and I was overwhelmed by it.
He finally got to the bed and leaned over me with one hand on either side of my head. His nose brushed mine, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Say it.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and felt a hot tear slide down my temple. It was followed by the warm press of his tongue tracing the same route.
“Champ,” I whimpered. “Yours. Yes. Please.”
“No one else,” he said, almost to himself. “Just us.”
I nodded, feeling the familiar warmth of his breath and inhaling the familiar scent of his cologne. “Yes,” I said again. “Need you. Want you. Want this. Us.”
It was the most vulnerable I’d made myself with him since meeting him several months before, but in spite of everything we’d been through—or maybe because of it—I trusted him. The man was so aggressively anti-relationship that if he was saying these words to me, he had to have thought about them ahead of time. If anything, I knew he believed what he was saying. That he was ready to try.