Chapter 3: Morning After
Vanja woke to an empty space. The warmth was still there, imprinted on the sheets beside her, but the body was gone. The suite was silent, bathed in the deep indigo of pre-dawn. For a disorienting moment, she thought she’d dreamed it—the shattered mirror, the SUV, the desperate, clawing things they’d done to each other on this vast bed.
Then she heard it. The steady, rhythmic hiss of a shower from behind a frosted glass door at the far end of the suite.
She pushed back the heavy duvet. The cool air raised goosebumps on her naked skin. The city’s lights had dimmed; a pale, milky glow was beginning to outline the distant spires. She padded across the cool hardwood floor, past the grand piano that seemed to watch her with silent disapproval.
The bathroom door was ajar. Steam, fragrant with Amanda’s expensive, citrus-and-sandalwood soap, curled into the bedroom. Vanja pushed the door open.
The bathroom was a cavern of marble and slate. The shower was a walk-in rainforest, glass-walled, with multiple heads pointing from the ceiling and walls. Amanda stood under the central cascade, her back to Vanja. The water sluiced over the taut muscles of her shoulders, the defined curve of her spine, the strong, perfect globes of her ass. Her head was tipped back, blonde hair darkened to honey, plastered to her skull. She was a statue coming to life under the downpour.
Vanja leaned against the doorframe, watching. The steam coated her skin. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Amanda didn’t turn. “I don’t sleep much.” Her voice was flat, carried by the echo of the water on stone.
“Regrets?”
This time, Amanda half-turned, a profile of sharp cheekbone and straight nose. Water streamed over her lips. “Do you?”
Vanja didn’t answer. She walked forward, the heated tile warm under her feet. She didn’t hesitate at the shower entrance. She slid the glass door open and stepped into the torrent.
The water was scalding, a near-painful contrast to the room’s chill. It pounded her shoulders, her breasts, washing away the dried sweat and the scent of sex. Amanda watched her, her blue eyes unreadable through the veil of water.
Vanja moved into her space. Their bodies, slick and hot, pressed together from chest to thigh. Amanda’s skin was like heated silk over steel. Vanja’s hands slid up her sides, feeling the jump of muscle, the ripple of ribs.
“I asked you a question,” Amanda said, but her voice lacked its usual ice. It was raw, scraped bare by the steam.
Vanja answered by kissing her. It was different from the biting clashes of the night before. This was slower, a deep, searching melding of mouths under the burning rain. Amanda’s hands came up to cradle Vanja’s face, her thumbs stroking the high bones of her cheeks. The tenderness was a shock, a fissure in the glacier.
It didn’t last.
Amanda’s kiss turned hungry, consuming. She spun Vanja, pressing her back against the cold, wet tiles. The shock of temperature made Vanja gasp into her mouth. Amanda pinned her there, one hand flat beside Vanja’s head, the other sliding down her stomach, through the slick thatch of curls.
“Still sore?” Amanda murmured, her lips against Vanja’s ear.
“A little.”
“Good.” Amanda’s fingers dipped lower, parting her folds. Vanja was swollen, sensitive, but the touch, rough and knowing, instantly sparked a fresh, aching need. She moaned, her head falling back against the tile.
Amanda watched her face, her eyes studying every flicker of pleasure and pain. Her fingers worked with a ruthless precision, circling her clit, then pushing deep inside with two fingers. Vanja’s hips arched off the wall, seeking more of the punishing pressure.
“Fuck,” Vanja breathed, her nails digging into Amanda’s biceps.
Amanda leaned in, biting Vanja’s lower lip. “You like it when it hurts a little, don’t you? When you can feel me for hours after.”
Vanja could only nod, her words stolen by a particularly vicious curl of Amanda’s fingers.
Then Amanda pulled her hand away. Vanja made a sound of pure frustration. But Amanda was reaching for a niche in the shower wall. She pulled out a sleek, black silicone object—a vibrator, waterproof and substantial. She thumbed it on. A low, threatening hum joined the roar of the water.
Vanja’s eyes widened. “Where did you—?”
“Don’t ask.” Amanda’s smile was a predator’s. She pressed the humming head against Vanja’s inner thigh, letting the vibration travel through her sensitive skin. “You came twice last night on my hand. Let’s see what you do with this.”
She didn’t tease. She guided the vibrator to Vanja’s entrance and pushed it inside in one slow, inexorable motion. The stretch was intense, the silicone cold compared to Amanda’s heat. The vibration became internal, a deep, resonant thrum that seemed to shake Vanja’s very bones.
“Oh, God,” Vanja choked out, her knees buckling. Amanda held her up, her body a barricade keeping Vanja pinned to the wall.
Amanda fucked her with it, slow and deep, the artificial ridges of the toy dragging against Vanja’s inner walls. The vibration setting was high, unrelenting. It wasn’t like a human touch; it was a mechanical invasion, relentless and perfect. Vanja’s climax began building almost immediately, a coil of white-hot pressure in her core that tightened with every thrust.
“Look at you,” Amanda rasped, her free hand gripping Vanja’s hip hard enough to bruise. “Taking it like a champ. My good little handball slut.”
The obscenity, combined with the brutal, efficient fucking, undid her. Vanja’s orgasm ripped through her with a force that stole her breath. She screamed, a raw, ragged sound that echoed off the marble and was swallowed by the shower’s steam. Her body convulsed, clamping down on the intruding toy as wave after wave of pleasure-pain crashed through her. She saw stars, her vision tunneling.
Amanda held her through it, pressing the vibrator deep, milking every last shudder. Only when Vanja went completely limp, sagging against the tiles, did she slowly withdraw it and switch it off.
The sudden silence was deafening, filled only with the pounding water and Vanja’s ragged gasps. Amanda tossed the toy onto a bench and gathered Vanja against her. She was trembling too, Vanja realized. The ice queen was shaking.
They stood like that for a long minute, the hot water sluicing over them, washing away the evidence. Vanja buried her face in the curve of Amanda’s neck, breathing in the clean, soapy scent.
Finally, Amanda reached over and turned the shower off. The cessation of noise was abrupt. Drips echoed in the sudden quiet.
Amanda stepped out, grabbing a large, plush towel. She wrapped it around Vanja, rubbing her dry with a brisk, almost clinical efficiency. Then she toweled herself off. The vulnerability of the night was gone, sealed behind a fresh layer of frost.
“You should go,” Amanda said, not looking at her. She walked back into the bedroom, pulling on simple black underwear and a cashmere sweatshirt.
Vanja followed, the towel clutched around her. “Why?”
“Because.” Amanda’s voice was tight. She picked up Vanja’s torn dress from the floor, holding it out. It looked like a sad, silken rag. “This is a mess. You have training. So do I.”
“It’s five in the morning.”
“Exactly.” Amanda finally met her eyes. The blue was glacial again, a fortified wall. “Last night was… a mistake. A fucking hot one, but a mistake.”
Vanja felt the words like a physical blow. She let the towel drop, standing naked in the middle of the luxurious room. “You don’t get to say that. Not after what you just did.”
“I get to say whatever I want.” Amanda threw the dress onto the bed. “This isn’t a fairy tale, Vanja. You’re eighteen. I’m twenty-seven. You’re a handball phenom. I’m a footballer with a reputation to protect. This…” She gestured between them. “This is a tabloid disaster waiting to happen. It’s career suicide.”
“So we keep it quiet.” Vanja heard the plea in her own voice and hated it.
Amanda laughed, a short, sharp, mirthless sound. “Quiet? With your face? With your social media following? You attract cameras like flies to honey.” She walked to the window, staring out at the awakening city. “I saw the way that hockey player looked at you. I see the way everyone looks at you. I’m not signing up to be a chapter in your little story.”
The cruelty was back, sharper than before. It was designed to wound, to push her away. Vanja’s philosophy-brain, always analyzing, saw it for what it was: a defense mechanism. But her heart, the raw, newly-exposed thing Amanda had carved open, just ached.
She didn’t argue. She dressed silently in the ruined gown, feeling the cool silk cling to her damp skin. She found her purse. The walk of shame was imminent, but she’d be damned if she’d let her shoulders slump.
Amanda didn’t offer to call her a car. She just stood by the window, a silhouette against the pale blue dawn.
At the suite door, Vanja paused, her hand on the cool metal handle. She looked back. “You’re a coward.”
Amanda didn’t turn. “I’m a realist.”
“No. You’re scared. You’re scared because for one second, you weren’t in control. You showed me something real, and now you’re trying to brick it back up.” Vanja’s voice was steady, clear. “It’s too late. I’ve seen it.”
She opened the door and stepped into the hallway.
The elevator ride down was long and silent. The lobby was empty except for a bored night porter. Vanja walked out into the crisp morning air, the torn dress flapping around her ankles. The city was waking up. Delivery trucks rumbled, early runners padded past.
She hailed a taxi. As it pulled away from the curb, she looked up at the sleek façade of Amanda’s building. Her eyes found the floor, the window.
There, in the glass, a faint shadow. A figure watching her go.
Vanja leaned back in the seat, a slow smile touching her lips despite the hollow ache in her chest. She’d seen it. The crack in the ice. The proof.
The game wasn’t over. It had just changed courts.
The flight back to Dortmund was a blur of recycled air and distant thunderheads. Vanja stared out the window, her knuckles white on the armrest. Amanda’s final words looped in her head, mixing with the memory of her own naked defiance in that marble bathroom. Coward. Realist. The tight ache between her legs felt like a brand, a physical reminder that the ice queen had thawed, however briefly.
Three days later, the memory still simmered under her skin, a restless heat that her morning sprint through the Stadtgarten couldn’t sweat out. She was stretching on a bench when a shadow fell across her.
“You look like you’re trying to murder the grass.” The voice was liquid, a smooth baritone with a French accent softening the German edges.
She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. He was lean, dressed in Bayern track gear, his smile a flash of perfect white against skin the color of rich amber. Michael Olise. She’d seen him on billboards, in sports headlines—Bayern’s dazzling new winger, half-French, half-Ivorian, all effortless grace.
“Maybe I am,” Vanja said, not returning the smile. Her Danish accent clipped the words.
He chuckled, sitting on the bench’s far end without invitation. His long legs stretched out. “I know that look. That’s a ‘fuck-the-world’ look. Usually have it after we lose to Mainz.”
“Or after you’ve been dismissed by a Norwegian footballer with a fear of feelings,” she said before she could stop herself. The raw admission hung in the morning air.
Michael’s eyebrows lifted. His eyes, a warm, deep brown, studied her with an athlete’s quick assessment. “Ah. The Scandinavian Awards. I saw the pictures. You and Amanda Nilsen looked… tense.”
Vanja snorted, looking away. “That’s one word for it.”
“I have others.” He leaned a bit closer. The scent of him, clean sweat and something minty, cut through the damp grass smell. “Most involve words like ‘waste’ and ‘shame’.”
“Is this your attempt at empathy?” she asked, finally turning her head to look at him fully. His gaze was direct, unapologetically appreciative, tracing the line of her neck to the swell of her breasts under her tight training top.
“No,” he said simply. “It’s my attempt at getting you to have a drink with me tonight. Empathy comes later, usually after the second cocktail.”
A laugh surprised her, bursting out sharp and genuine. It felt good. It felt like pushing back against the cold knot Amanda had left in her gut. “Just a drink?”
His smile turned wicked. “We’ll see where the evening goes, championne. I’m told I’m an excellent listener. And other things.”
Her hotel room, later, was nothing like Amanda’s minimalist fortress. It was standard upscale corporate—king bed, beige art, a view of the training complex. The bottle of Riesling on the desk was half-empty.
Vanja was against the window wall, her palms flat on the cool glass. Michael was behind her, his body a solid line of heat. His hands, those precise footballer’s hands, were under her sweater, cupping her breasts, his thumbs rubbing rough circles over her nipples through the lace of her bra.
“You are so unbelievably fucking gorgeous,” he murmured into her hair, his voice thick. One hand slid down her stomach, popping the button of her jeans.
She pushed her hips back, feeling the hard ridge of his erection against her ass. “Talk less.”
He laughed, a low, dirty sound. He yanked her jeans and underwear down to her thighs in one swift move. The cool air kissed her skin. His fingers didn’t explore; they claimed. He found her wet, swollen—still sensitive from Amanda’s ruthless attention days before. He plunged two fingers inside without ceremony.
Vanja gasped, her forehead thudding against the window. “Oh, fuck.”
“You’re already so ready,” he groaned, his fingers curling, scissoring inside her. “So damn tight and slick. Were you thinking about this? Thinking about me fucking you when you were out running?”
“Yes,” she lied, because in that moment, she was. All she could think about was the blunt pressure of his fingers, the way they stretched her, the rough pad of his thumb finding her clit. It was different from Amanda’s controlled cruelty. This was hungry, eager.
He pulled his fingers out, spinning her around. He kissed her, deep and wet, letting her taste herself on his tongue. Then he sunk to his knees.
His mouth was on her before she could process it, his tongue licking a broad, flat stripe through her folds before zeroing in on her clit. He sucked it into his mouth, relentless, his hands gripping her bare ass to hold her still. It was obscene, expert, and completely overwhelming.
“Michael, oh God, right there,” she babbled, her fingers tangling in his dark curls. He growled against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. He fucked her with his tongue, then slid two fingers back inside, crooking them just so.
The orgasm ripped through her fast and brutal, a detonation that made her knees buckle. He held her up, drinking her in until she shuddered and pushed his head away, oversensitive.
He stood up, his own pants already open. His cock sprung free, thick and heavy, the head dark and slick. He didn’t ask. He lifted her, her back against the window, her legs wrapping around his waist. He guided himself to her entrance and pushed in.
The stretch was immense, breathtaking. She cried out, a sharp, broken sound. He filled her completely, a burning, solid invasion. He paused, his forehead against hers, both of them panting.
“Okay?” he breathed.
“Don’t stop,” she demanded, digging her heels into his back.
He obeyed. He fucked her hard against the glass, each thrust jolting her body. The city lights blurred outside. He was powerful, every muscle coiling and releasing with piston-like force. He hit a spot deep inside that made her vision spark.
“You take it so good,” he grunted, his pace turning punishing. “This perfect fucking cunt, oh shit…”
She matched him, thrust for thrust, chasing the fresh coil of heat he was stoking. The crude words, the sheer physicality of it, shattered the last of Amanda’s ghost. This was present. This was raw need.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his rhythm faltering.
“Inside me,” she commanded, her voice guttural. “Do it. Fill me up.”
With a choked shout, he drove deep and shuddered, his release pulsing hot inside her. The sensation tipped her over a second time, a shorter, sharper climax that clenched around him, milking him dry.
He slumped against her, both of them slick with sweat. After a moment, he carefully lowered her until her feet touched the floor. Her legs were jelly.
He grinned, wiping his mouth. “So. The empathy part. You want to talk about that footballer now?”
Vanja, still trying to catch her breath, shook her head. She felt raw, used, and gloriously empty. “No.”
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She ignored it. It buzzed again, insistently. And again.
Michael nodded toward it. “Persistent.”
With a sigh, Vanja walked over, her muscles pleasantly aching. The screen showed a number with a Norwegian country code. No name saved. Her heart gave a hard, single thud.
She answered. “What?”
Amanda’s voice was like static down the line, cold and sharp. “Was it a mistake?”
Vanja looked at Michael, who was pulling on his pants, watching her with curious eyes. She felt his come starting to trickle down her inner thigh.
“Yes,” Vanja said into the phone, her eyes locked on Michael’s.
A long silence. Then the line went dead.
Vanja dropped the phone. She walked back to Michael, took his hand, and placed it between her legs, where she was still wet, still open. “Again,” she said.
Michael watched her. He saw the defiant set of her jaw, the too-bright focus in her golden-green eyes that didn’t quite match the hungry way she guided his hand. He saw the tremor in her fingers, the almost imperceptible shake she was trying to drown in sensation. He was a spectator to her internal war, and the view was intoxicating.
“Again,” she’d said, her voice husky but edged with something brittle. It wasn’t an invitation; it was a command, a demolition order for her own lingering thoughts.
His fingers, still slick with her and himself, pressed against her swollen flesh. She was so thoroughly fucked open, hot and slick, but the tension in her body was a live wire. He obeyed, slipping two fingers back inside her with a wet, effortless glide. She gasped, her head falling back, but her eyes stayed open, fixed on the ceiling.
“Look at me,” he murmured, his other hand tilting her chin down. He needed her here, in this room, with him. Not wherever that phone call had sent her.
Her gaze refocused on his face. He worked his fingers deeper, curling them, searching for the spot that would erase everything else. “You’re chasing something you can’t catch,” he said, his voice low. His thumb strummed her clit, a relentless, practiced rhythm. “Let it go. Just feel this.”
A shudder wracked her frame. “Fuck you,” she breathed, but her hips began to move, meeting his thrusts. The conflict was visible in every line of her—the arch of her back was both surrender and battle.
Michael watched the moment she finally shattered. Her eyes lost their fierce focus, glossing over with pure, unthinking sensation. A low moan tore from her throat, building into a raw, ragged cry as her cunt clenched rhythmically around his fingers. He didn’t stop, drawing out every pulse until she went limp, sagging against the desk.
He pulled his fingers free, glistening. Bringing them to his mouth, he sucked them clean, his eyes never leaving hers. The taste was complex—her, him, the lingering salt of her sweat, and something else, something sharp like adrenaline or regret.
“Better?” he asked, the word simple.
Vanja didn’t answer. She pushed off the desk, her movements fluid again, the athlete reasserting control. She walked naked to the minibar, pulled out a miniature bottle of vodka, and twisted it open. She drank it in one swallow, her throat working. The afternoon light cut across her body, highlighting the faint bruises Amanda’s mouth had left days before on her neck, now fading to yellow.
Michael watched her trace the edge of a bruise with her thumbnail, her expression unreadable. He zipped his pants, the domestic click of the fastener loud in the quiet room.
“She’s in your head,” he stated, not asking. He leaned against the window frame, crossing his arms. “The footballer. The one who makes you feel like you need to get fucked through a wall to forget her.”
Vanja spun, the empty bottle clattering in the sink. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know the look,” he shrugged, a casual, infuriating grace in the movement. “I’ve had it. I’ve caused it. It’s expensive.”
She let out a short, harsh laugh. “What’s your diagnosis, doctor?”
“That you like the pain.” He pushed off the wall and closed the distance between them. He didn’t touch her. He just stood close, his heat a new challenge. “Not just the physical kind. The emotional torsion. The hot-and-cold. It makes you feel…alive. Probably the same thing that makes you throw your body in front of a seven-meter shot.”
His words landed with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. She wanted to deny it, to claw the knowing smirk off his face. Instead, she felt a perverse thrill of being seen. He was wrong, and he was right, and the confusion was infuriating.
“You’re an asshole,” she whispered.
“And you’re using me to wipe her off your skin.” He finally touched her then, a single fingertip drawing a line from her sternum down to her navel. “I don’t mind. But you should at least know you’re doing it.”
Her phone buzzed again, vibrating against the laminate of the desk. They both looked at it. The screen lit up, again with the Norwegian code. No message, just the silent, persistent call.
Michael watched her face. He saw the flinch, quickly masked. He saw the way her breath hitched, just for a second. He saw the war—the desire to snatch it up and scream, warring with the desire to prove him wrong, to prove she was untouched.
He made the decision for her. In one swift motion, he picked up the phone, hit the silent button, and dropped it into the half-empty ice bucket by the minibar. The muffled buzz was swallowed by the clatter of cubes.
“There,” he said. “Now, come here.”
This time, his kiss wasn’t just hunger. It was a claiming. He walked her backward until her knees hit the bed and she fell onto it. He followed her down, kneeling between her spread legs. He didn’t enter her immediately. He just looked, his dark eyes taking in every detail—the mess he’d made of her, the defiant glare she was trying to maintain.
“You want to forget?” he asked, his voice a rough whisper. He positioned the head of his cock at her entrance, which yielded easily, still stretched and wet from before. “Then forget.”
He pushed in, a slow, devastating fill that stole the air from her lungs. It was deeper this time, achingly intimate in its slowness. He braced his hands on either side of her head, caging her in.
“Who am I?” he demanded, pulling out almost all the way before driving back in.
She bit her lip, refusing to answer.
He did it again, a hard, precise stroke that jolted a gasp from her. “Say my name.”
“Michael,” she finally hissed, her nails digging into his forearms.
“Again.”
“Michael!” she cried out as he set a brutal, grinding pace. The bedframe thudded against the wall in a steady, protesting rhythm.
“Good.” He fucked her with a focused intensity, each thrust a deliberate attempt to rewrite her nerve endings. “Only my name. Only this room. Only my cock in this perfect, greedy cunt.”
He was rewriting the memory in her flesh, overlaying Amanda’s cold cruelty with his own brand of hot, mindful possession. Vanja’s mind fractured. Pleasure, sharp and bright, built its own scaffolding inside her, blocking out everything else. The only sounds were skin slapping against skin, their mingled grunts, and the creak of the bed.
“You’re going to come for me,” he growled, his pace becoming erratic, deeper, harder. “And you’re going to scream it so loud you won’t hear that phone if it rings for a week.”
The promise, the command, the sheer physical overload broke her. Her climax detonated, a silent scream ripping through her first before sound followed, a raw, unchecked howl that felt ripped from her spine. He followed a second later, slamming home one final time as he groaned, his own release pumping into her.
He collapsed beside her, both of them slick and spent. The only noise was their ragged breathing. The ice bucket was silent.
After a long while, Vanja sat up. The room smelled of sex and sweat and vodka. She walked to the ice bucket, fished out her phone, and without looking at it, placed it on the desk.
Michael watched her from the bed, propped on one elbow. He saw the new stillness in her shoulders, the resolve that had replaced the shattered look.
She dressed in silence, pulling on her training gear from the morning. She walked to the door, her bag slung over her shoulder. She paused, her hand on the handle.
“Thank you,” she said, without turning around. The words were not soft. They were an acknowledgment, a settlement.
Then she was gone.
Michael listened to the door click shut. He lay back on the ruined sheets, staring at the ceiling. A slow smile spread across his face. He hadn’t fixed her. He hadn’t saved her. But he’d given her a weapon, a temporary tattoo to cover the bruise of another woman’s hold.
The room felt empty, the adrenaline fading. He reached for his own phone. He had a match tomorrow. He needed to sleep. But first, he opened his contacts, scrolled past teammates and agents, and found a number he hadn’t dialed in over a year. A number with a Norwegian country code.
He typed a quick message. She’s tougher than you think. And currently, she’s mine.
He sent it, then deleted the thread. He wasn’t part of their story. He was a flare in the night, already burning out. But he’d watched. And he’d seen enough to know the game was far from over.