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“You mean due to you falling asleep sitting up.”
“No! Jesus.” He hesitated. “Yeah, okay. Fuck. Fine. I maybe nodded off. But I felt bad about that too, as I told you.” He turned the brightness of his lopsided grin from stun to kill and dropped his voice to a low purr. “And if you need me to remind you about the other things I told you yesterday afternoon… or the things I did yesterday afternoon… you just let me know. It’s been a while since I gave road head, but I think we could reenact—”
“Stop right there.” I smacked his hand as he reached for me. “There will be no smexy times in this vehicle, Champion. Her name is Rebecca, and she’s pure and innocent.”
Champ paused with his hand in the air. “You… named your car.”
“Obviously.” I sniffed. “And I will not let you sweet-talk and sex-addle me like you did yesterday afternoon… and last night… and also early this morning.”
I felt my face go hot at the memory.
Memories. Plural.
“This time, I want an actual answer. And do not,” I hurried to add when he immediately opened his mouth to speak, “try to convince me that this is to make up for leaving suddenly or abandoning Hercules, because that’s kind of your MO.” I raised an eyebrow, daring him to argue that. “So this time, try telling the truth. Begin with the part where you walked in on Trey and me and started beating your chest, and go from there.”
Champ shifted uncomfortably. “I wasn’t chest-beating. I was sticking up for you the same way I’d do for anyone in that situation. And that’s why I stayed for the meeting too. Protecting people is my job.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. I can protect myself from Trey Dunwoody. I didn’t need you to—”
“But you weren’t,” he interrupted. “Protecting yourself, I mean. Because you can’t punch him without losing him as a client. Whereas me playing your protective fiancé gives me a certain latitude. That’s all it was about. And then I stayed, to… you know. To… drive the message home. To let him know that I’d be watching him,” Champ said firmly.
“And then you left because you were bored.”
Champ winced. “Look, you started talking about vermillion for the bridesmaids, and I thought it was a disease, not a color, okay? I was out of my depth.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Uh-huh. So then… what changed later on?”
“Changed?” Champ repeated.
I leaned against the door so I could face him more fully. “You fled my showroom in a vermillion fog—leaving your dog behind yet again—and I told you to get lost. So what made you rush back with a bag of fresh commitment pastries a few hours later and beg me to let you in?”
“Those donuts weren’t a commitment-anything. They were a peace offering.” He spread his hands innocently. “That’s all.”
I snorted. Those donuts had set a new bar for peace offerings… and I was never going to eat one again without getting instantly hard.
When I was truly angry—which didn’t happen often—I was pretty much immune to sweet talk. It took a lot more than a charming grin and a half-assed apology to talk me down. And it was safe to say that after Champ had invaded my meeting, lied to my client, and run out, leaving his dog with me for the second time that day, I had been well and truly angry.
But then he’d apologized.
I’d had reason to know how talented Percy Champion was with his tongue, but when he’d stood in my back room yesterday afternoon and said, “I’m genuinely sorry, Quinn. I didn’t mean to fuck up your meeting. Let me make it up to you,” then offered me the bag of sugary treats with a sheepish “I asked Annie to make these up for you, nice and fresh,” I realized just how magical that mouth could be.
I’d melted.
Then he’d broken off a piece of donut, held it to my lips, and watched me chew it—was donut-foreplay a category on Pornhub? Asking for a friend—before pushing me against the very same bookcase where Trey had tried to corner me earlier and sliding his way down my body.
I’d been hard enough to rip a hole in my pants by the time he got to his knees, and the sight of his big body in front of me—that cocky smile and the starched button-down—had pinged every single Quinn Taffet fantasy.
The whole rest of the evening had been a blur.
Which was why it hadn’t occurred to me until we’d gotten in the car that morning—until Champ had jammed himself into the passenger’s seat of my tiny car, with only a token protest at not being the one to drive—that I’d broken through my sex haze to question why the hell he’d come back in the first place, when he’d vowed he wasn’t going to apologize… and why he suddenly wanted to spend his daylight hours with me, when ordinarily that was Not a Thing We Did.
