by Tina Martin
The Way Champions Love
(The Champion Brothers)
Tina Martin
Copyright @ 2017 Tina Martin. All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition
THE WAY CHAMPIONS LOVE
This book may not be reproduced or distributed in any format including photography, recording information storage and retrieval systems without the prior written permission of the author. No part of this book may be uploaded without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people, names, places, things or events are a product of the author’s imagination and strictly coincidental and are used fictitiously.
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The Way Champions Love | Synopsis
After being married to Savannah for a year while living in different cities and different states, Harding Champion has had enough. He’s in love with a woman who, for one reason or another, refuses to put him first. He’s tired of living in limbo while she stalls for more time to tell her rich, snobbish parents about them. To be seen in public with him. To merge their lives.
He’s tired, and she’s afraid of disappointing her parents…
Savannah lives her life by her parent’s rules. They’ve chosen her path and even hand-picked the man they want her to marry. Newsflash – it’s not Harding Champion. It’s a man who comes from money. Who has power and influence. But that’s not the life Savannah wants. She wants Harding and she knows she has to act fast because the risk she’s taking with his heart may prove to be the end of their marriage.
_________
New to The Champion Brothers Series? See the books listed in order below:
(All books are standalone and can be read in any order)
Book 1: His Paradise Wife – Dante & Emily’s Story
Book 2: When A Champion Loves You – Dimitrius and Melanie’s Story
Book 3: The Best Thing He Never Knew He Needed – Desmond and Sherita’s Story
Book 4: Wives And Champions – A Family Novel that includes everyone and introduces the half siblings
Book 5: The Way Champions Love – Harding and Savannah’s Story
DEDICATION
To the readers who fell in love with THE CHAMPION BROTHERS since Dante’s story (His Paradise Wife) thank you for your endless support and wonderful reviews. You make writing these stories worthwhile.
THE WAY CHAMPIONS LOVE
(The Champion Brothers, Book 5)
Chapter 1
“Harding, you don’t know how much I’ve missed you,” Savannah said, walking over to him – her irresistibly sexy husband – Harding Champion. With bare feet and French-pedicured toenails, she traversed the sandy brown carpet until she was standing a breath away from him. Her arms struggled to encircle the width of his thick, muscular torso but that didn’t stop her from trying to fully embrace the man she loved. She really did miss him. She’d last seen him three weeks ago, too long as far as she was concerned. And now, like always, they’d make up for lost time.
Squeezing him close to her, she asked, “Did you miss me, love?” Her question was muffled since her lips were pressed against his shirt. The warmness of her breath sent a tingle through the hard bud amidst an iron-like pectoral, making him close his eyes and fight to silence a groan. He wasn’t eager to return her hug, kiss her or do anything else related to a man missing his woman. In fact, while she’d been busy basking in his glorious, manly scent, his arms stayed down by his side. He made no effort to return her affection.
She frowned. Confused. Releasing him, she took a step back, feeling a chill rush through her veins. Something was wrong. She tilted her head upwards to connect their gazes. “Harding?”
Expressionless, Harding looked at her – his hot, brown-skinned, intelligent wife. In her dark chocolate eyes, he saw a little worry and a lot of fire. Typically, when they would meet like this, her clothes would be tossed all over the floor – his strewn over the furniture in the fancy hotel room.
But not this time.
This time was different.
This time, Harding was standoffish. He had it on his mind to leave her standing in the Hilton Head hotel room alone while he floored it back home to Wilmington.
“Okay, you’re scaring me,” Savannah said with her brown gaze producing more signs of worry than before. “Please talk to me, Harding. What’s wrong?”
What’s wrong? Harding looked at her, his eyes darkening by the second. She asked the question so casually and innocently like she had no idea. What’s wrong? Everything was wrong! Was she kidding? He glared at her. His deep voice cut into the sound of the ocean waves hissing tranquility through the opened balcony door when he finally replied, “You know what’s wrong, Savannah, and quite frankly, I’m tired of it.”
Savannah sighed heavily and took a few steps back from him before walking away altogether, staring out the partially opened glass door to the balcony. So much for an evening of love and romance. They were on the verge of the same argument they’d had time and time again over the last few months: they’d been married for a year, but living in different cities. Different states. She lived in Charleston, South Carolina where she practiced family law and civil litigation. Her parents – Alistair and Dorthea Ellsworth – lived there, too, in the ritzy, Daniel Island Park Neighborhood and were well-known, prominent lawyers in the area though her mother was retired. They groomed Savannah, their only daughter, to follow in their footsteps, and like the obedient child she was, she always did what they wanted, even if it wasn’t what she wanted. But her overbearing parents took it a step further. They’d mapped out her whole life, including the man she was to marry – Dudley Carrington – an attorney practicing corporate law in Charleston and had risen to fame in recent years with his handling of some high-profile clients. Before she met Harding two years ago, she’d went out with Dudley. Once. He wasn’t her type. The man’s ego was as big as his ten-million-dollar home, but her parents didn’t seem to mind it. She, however, was searching for a deeper connection – one that she found in Harding.
With her bare arms crossed, she turned away from the view to look at him, standing six-foot-four with hypnotizing hazel eyes that were enticing enough to seduce her to do just about anything. His caramel skin was as smooth as butter. Hair, black and cut low. Lips like traps once they latched on. The impressive jawline edging his face was hard and strong. Everything about him was strong.
They’d married a year ago after secretly dating for one full year, and she’d convinced him to keep their union hush-hush until she could have a talk with her unreasonable parents. And she tried it – every time she attempted to bring up the subject of marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Ellsworth would toss out Dudley’s name, telling her how he was the one who would help take her career to the next level. Said they’d be a Charleston power couple – whatever that meant – and that the merger of the Ellsworth and Carrington families would bring both families a host of prestige and notoriety. Both families were already wealthy. How much more wealth and notoriety did they need?
Another reason Savannah choked when she attempted to discuss Harding with her parents was she knew she would gain her parent’s favor if they continued to think a marriage to Dudley was a real possibility. They were not concerned about the rumors following him – that he had baby mamas all over South Carolina. Some in North Carolina. A few sprinkled in Florida. He was the Dudley Carrington and was a single, wealthy and powerful attorney. Appearances were everything to her parents who undoubtedly wouldn’t be impressed by their only daughter getting hitched to a computer savvy technician who made less than eighty grand a year and was raised by a single mother. But that’s not how Savannah saw
Harding. She loved him deeply. She just didn’t know how to go about telling her parents about them.
She came out of her reverie and walked back towards him. Harding was standing at the door ready to make his exit she assumed. She was intent on not letting that happen. She steadied her breath as she took the final two steps, stopping in front of him and resting her hands on his firm, solid pectorals. “Harding...”
He carefully gripped her dainty wrists, removing her hands away from his body.
“Harding don’t do this. You know how much I love you.”
His eyes remained heavy with sadness and disappointment as he looked at her. “No, I don’t. I know how much you say you love me.”
“I do love you.”
His eyebrows snapped together. “You do?” he asked, his question suggesting he thought otherwise.
“Yes. I do,” she answered quickly, beholding the pain in his eyes.
“Then why don’t your parents know about me? About us?”
“I told you—”
“Why do you only wear your wedding ring when we’re together?” he interrupted to ask. “Any other time it’s off.”
“I told you—it’s complicated, Harding.”
“Well, I don’t like complicated. I’m tired of complicated, Savannah! Marriage is not supposed to be like this.” He looked at her for what he considered the final time, at least in this setting, but seeing sadness creep into her eyes made him rethink his impending exit. He frowned, angry at himself for letting his heart interfere with his mind. Every single time he tried to leave, tried to convey his side of the matter, tried to make her see that her overbearing parents didn’t control her life, she’d make some promises to break free from their control and influence over her life. She never followed through, only used those promises to pacify him along. And she was doing the same thing all over again…
“I’m out,” Harding said, turning and heading for the door.
“Please don’t go, Harding,” she begged, hugging him from behind with a death grip while resting her head against his back. “Please. Please.”
He closed his eyes, silently cursing his heart for succumbing to her advances. “I can’t keep doing this. Savannah.”
“I’ll make it right. I promise I will. Just don’t go.”
With his right hand on the doorknob, he felt her soft hands maneuver underneath his shirt and flutter across his hard abs.
“Please,” she begged, raising his shirt high enough to press her lips on different places all over his back, using the softest movements of her mouth and her teeth to nip at his shoulder blades.
Harding closed his eyes, frustrated with himself for needing her so much, for not turning the doorknob and taking a stand by making his exit. But her lips felt too good on his back and it had been too long since they’d last made love.
Savannah tugged his shirt upwards. When he helped her take it off, she knew he wouldn’t be leaving. She’d managed to buy herself more time.
Harding turned around to face her after he dropped his shirt to the floor prompting her to leave kisses all over his thick, chiseled chest feeling her stomach pull with anticipation. After feasting on his chest, she looked up at his lips before her eyes met his mesmerizing gaze. Harding could hardly think for wanting her so badly – to the point that even his blood seemed to harden inside of his thick veins. He stared down at her, looking at delectable lips he hadn’t kissed in nearly a month – far too long to be without the taste of the woman he loved more than he loved himself. The woman he vowed to love forever. He stared into the depths of her eyes, felt himself descending there until he lowered his mouth to hers and took a mouthful.
Literally. A mouth full, lips and all.
Soft hums came floating intermittently from her mouth as he, with his hands resting on her delicate face, kissed her with a ravenous hunger – a deprivation he needed to fill. Losing control, his tongue tangled with hers – touching, tasting and lapping every nook of her mouth. He always wanted her. That wasn’t, nor had it ever been, a question. He wasn’t the one caught up in a dilemma. She was, and every time they made love he tried a little harder to make his love more real and convincing to her. Maybe if he kissed her longer, connected their bodies deeper and loved her breathless, she wouldn’t care what her snooty parents thought of them being together. And yet again he found himself doing the exact same thing – giving in to her and embedding his body so deep inside of her, he lost himself. He stared into her eyes, seeing pure bliss in them while hearing soft moans sing from her mouth. He dipped his head and continued to kiss her deeply and passionately.
Groans rumbled from this throat as he tightened their connection surging back and forth, testing limits and holding her vision as he did so. She nibbled on the bridge of his shoulder and held on for dear life, wrapping her legs around his sinewy thighs, locking her feet at the ankles.
“Ha-Harding,” she mumbled.
He captured her lips once more, still surging and taking until the whimpers from her mouth became progressively louder.
“Harding!”
Her body jerked and tightened around his as she continued to writhe beneath him. Her pleasure hurled him into oblivion as he grabbed a fist full of her hair, closed his eyes tight like he was straining and released love, frustration and desire all in a long, earth-shattering, unrestrained body spasm. It was the longest he’d ever experienced, probably due to the state of their marriage and all the emotions filtering through his drumming, conflicted heart.
The sound of his heartbeat pounded in his ears as he lowered his body, letting all his weight restrict her. In her ear, he whispered, “I love you, Savannah.”
“I love you, too, Harding,” she said, her heart still beating rapidly as they held on to each other.
After a few minutes when the spasms let up, he eased off of her. He’d usually pull her into his arms, but this time, with a light mist of sweat covering his face, he stared up at the ceiling, because when it was all said and done, nothing had changed between them, and she’d offered no viable solution to the problem plaguing him. Was she even bothered by the distance separating them? That they lived in different states? That they had yet to live like a normal married couple?
Fulfilled and spent barely able to move, Savannah managed to slide her body closer to his and rested her head on his chest. She’d usually be asleep by now, but she wouldn’t allow herself to be relaxed into a slumber, especially since she knew Harding wasn’t himself. He’d presented a problem to her, and she wanted to give him the opportunity to talk about it. While using her index finger to draw invisible circles around his left nipple, she said, “I know our situation has been hard on you.”
“You don’t know the half, Savannah.” His eyes remained locked on the ceiling. He was in a zone he’d never found himself in before – sexually satisfied but extremely unfulfilled.
“I do—”
“You don’t,” he said adamantly, certain she didn’t understand the scope of how this issue beleaguered him. “You don’t know how I go to work every day to come home to an empty house. It’s not a mansion but you’ll fit in perfectly with my life in Wilmington.”
“Don’t make those kind of absurd comments to me, Harding,” she said, propping up on her elbow to look at him. “You don’t have to live in a mansion. I love you, regardless.”
“Then why don’t your parents know that?”
“They will.”
“When? You’ve been telling me the same story for over a year.” Harding twisted his body so they were face-to-face. He wanted a good view of her face while talking to her. “My mother adores you—loves you like a daughter and yet I haven’t officially been introduced to your parents. When is that going to happen?”
“When I tell them about us.”
A frown settled on his forehead. “And when might that be, Savannah? You’ve been saying that forever it seems.”
A sigh escaped her lips. “You have to understand that with them it’s all about pr
estige and image.”
After a splenetic, out-of-place grin, he said, “And there’s nothing prestigious about being married to a computer technician who lives in a middle-class neighborhood, huh?”
“Harding…”
“You know what the messed up part is?” he asked as he sat up. “I don’t know if it’s them or you. You’re a grown woman. This ain’t high school. Shoot, this ain’t even college. This is the real world. Real life. You’re thirty-two-years-old. There’s nothing you can say to persuade me you care that much about what your parents think of you and your life choices.”
The problem was, she did care. Little Miss Perfect had always done whatever mommy and daddy wanted and now it was catching up to her. “I’m trying to come up with a compromise, Harding.”
“That’s not good enough. It’s all words. No actions.”
She sat up. “So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying—and let me be very clear—this is the last time I’m meeting my wife at a hotel.”
“You’re putting me in an awkward position.”
“No, you’re putting yourself in an awkward position. I’ve been patient for a year. I can’t do it anymore, Savannah.”
“Don’t you think you’re being unreasonable?”
Irritated, he snapped, “Coming home to an empty house when I’m married is unreasonable.”
Savannah’s stomach grew so tight, she had to hold herself in an attempt to massage away the tension. “I need more time.”
“No.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”
