Embodiments of a system and method for distributed channel access for device-to-device (D2D) communication in a wireless network are generally described herein. User equipment (UE) may transmit a connection identifier (CID) code at a beginning of a contention window to request channel access for a D2D transmission to a receiving device. Links for D2D transmissions from a transmitting device to a receiving device are identified by a CID that is mapped to a CID code. The UE may receive a bandwidth grant from the receiving device during the contention window, along with bandwidth grants for other CIDs, in an order based on a priority level of the CID. The UE may transmit data after reception of the bandwidth grants in time-frequency resources indicated in an associated one of the bandwidth grants. In some embodiments, spatial-reuse and variable resource size allocation are supported.