Chapter 10: Airport Reclamation
The emerald on her finger caught the sterile airport lights, a green wink against the polished marble floor as she wheeled her suitcase towards the check-in desk. It felt heavier than its carats, a tangible anchor to the man walking beside her, his hand a possessive weight on the small of her back.
Munich Airport was a cathedral of transit, all echoing footsteps and murmured announcements. Dejan moved through it with the entitled grace of a man accustomed to bypassing lines. He wore dark jeans and a black cashmere sweater, a cap pulled low, but his height, his posture, the familiar tattoos peeking from his cuff marked him. A few heads turned, phones were subtly raised. He ignored them, his focus entirely on her.
“Nervous?” he asked, his voice low.
“About the flight? No.” She kept her eyes forward. “About everything waiting on the other side? Yes.”
He squeezed her hip. “They’ll love you.”
“They’ll dissect me,” she corrected quietly. “The croatian-serbian psychologist who snared the Croatian lion. It’s a tasty headline.”
“Let them talk.” His hand slid lower, a deliberate, intimate stroke. “They don’t know what I know.”
Her skin warmed under his touch, a betraying flush. The past 48 hours had been a fever dream of unpacking her life into boxes, of his relentless presence in her small apartment, of his body claiming hers in every room, as if marking the space for memory. The intensity was a riptide, pulling her under.
He checked them in, first-class tickets to Manchester procured with a dismissive wave of a black credit card. “We have time before boarding,” he said, guiding her away from the main concourse. “The lounge is this way.”
The Lufthansa First Class Lounge was an oasis of quiet leather and low lighting. He found a secluded corner suite, shielded by a frosted glass partition. He dropped his carry-on and turned to her. The civility of the place, the hushed tones of other travelers, felt like a thin film over the raw current between them.
“I can feel you thinking,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “You’re already back in your head.”
“My head is where I live,” she said, but she leaned into his touch.
“Not today.” His thumb brushed her lower lip. “Today, you’re with me.” He kissed her, a slow, deep conquest of her mouth that left her breathless. When he pulled back, his eyes were dark. “I need to use the bathroom. Come with me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command wrapped in velvet.
She followed him wordlessly to the suite’s private bathroom. It was spacious, clean, modern. A large mirror, a sink of white porcelain. He locked the door behind them. The click of the bolt was decisive.
Outside, the muffled echo of a boarding announcement filtered through the door. Inside, the air was still, charged.
He turned her to face the mirror. Standing behind her, he met her gaze in the glass. His hands came to her shoulders, then slid down her arms. “Look at you,” he murmured. “My fiancée.”
The word, spoken in that tone, sent a shiver through her. He pushed her hair aside, baring her neck, and pressed his lips just below her ear. His hands moved to the front of her simple silk blouse, deftly undoing the buttons one by one. The material fell open. He cupped her breasts through the lace of her bra, his thumbs circling her nipples until they tightened into hard peaks.
“Dejan,” she breathed, watching his large, tattooed hands on her pale skin in the mirror. “Someone could…”
“Let them hear,” he said against her skin, his voice a low growl. He unclasped her bra, letting it fall. Her breasts spilled free, and he covered them with his hands, squeezing, kneading. “Let the whole fucking airport hear.”
He spun her around, his mouth crashing down on hers, all pretense of gentleness gone. It was a kiss of possession, of branding. His tongue plunged deep, tasting her, claiming her. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his back. He walked her backwards until her shoulder blades hit the cool, frosted glass of the shower wall.
He broke the kiss, breathing heavily. “Take off your pants.”
Her fingers fumbled with the button of her trousers, pushed them and her underwear down her hips in one frantic motion. They pooled at her ankles. He did the same, shoving his jeans and boxer briefs down just enough to free his cock. It was already fully hard, thick and ruddy, curving up towards his stomach. A droplet of moisture beaded at the tip.
He turned her back around to face the glass, his body pressing flush against her from behind. The cold of the frosted pane seeped into her cheek. His heat surrounded her. He wrapped one arm around her waist, pulling her against him, while his other hand slid between her legs.
“So wet already,” he groaned, sliding two fingers through her slick folds. “Just from a kiss. Just from me telling you what you are.”
He pushed his fingers inside her, curling them, and she cried out, her forehead thumping against the glass. He worked her with his hand, his palm grinding against her clit, until her thighs were shaking and she was panting, pushing back against his hand.
“Please,” she whimpered.
“Please what?” His breath was hot in her ear.
“Fuck me.” The words were torn from her, crude and honest.
He removed his hand, used it to guide the thick head of his cock to her entrance. He nudged against her, teasing. “How?”
“Hard.”
He pushed in. Not slowly, but with one relentless, deep thrust that filled her completely, stretching her, claiming her. The sound that escaped her was a choked gasp of pure satisfaction. He stilled, buried to the hilt, letting her adjust to the overwhelming fullness.
Then he pulled back almost all the way and slammed home again.
The force of it drove her forward, her engagement ring scraping a faint line across the frosted glass. The sound was obscene, a high, sharp screech lost in the thud of flesh against flesh.
He set a brutal, punishing rhythm, fucking her into the glass with deep, powerful strokes. Each thrust jolted through her, a cocktail of pleasure and exquisite shock. The cold, unyielding surface against her front, the burning heat of him pounding into her from behind—it was a dichotomy that mirrored her entire situation.
“This is how you say goodbye to Munich, draga,” he growled, his fingers digging into the flesh of her hips, holding her in place for his assault. His pace was relentless, the wet, slapping sounds of their joining echoing off the tiled walls. “You leave my come dripping inside you. You carry me onto that plane.”
“Yes,” she gasped, the word fragmented by his thrusts. Her mind had gone blank, reduced to sensation. The friction of him moving inside her, the delicious pressure against a spot that sparked white behind her eyes, the scrape of her ring on the glass marking each push.
He reached around, his hand finding her clit, his fingers slick from her own wetness. He circled it in time with his thrusts, a relentless, coordinated torture. The coil in her belly tightened rapidly, dangerously.
“You feel that?” he grunted, his thrusts becoming harder, faster, driving her higher onto her toes with each impact. “That’s you forgetting every reason you had to say no. That’s you remembering why you said yes.”
His words, filthy and true, pushed her over the edge. Her orgasm slammed into her without warning, a violent, convulsive wave that ripped a raw scream from her throat. Her body clamped around his cock in fierce, rhythmic spasms, milking him, pulling him deeper.
The feel of her tightening around him shattered his control. With a guttural curse in Croatian, he buried himself to the root and held there, his body jerking as he emptied himself into her in hot, pulsing jets. His release seemed to go on forever, a flood of heat that mirrored the one spreading through her own veins. He slumped against her back, his forehead resting between her shoulder blades, his breath coming in ragged gusts against her damp skin.
For a moment, the only sounds were their breathing and the distant, distorted call of a final boarding announcement. The world outside the locked door continued, oblivious.
Slowly, carefully, he softened and slipped out of her. A trickle of his release followed, tracing a warm path down her inner thigh. The vulgar intimacy of it, here in this sterile space, made her shiver.
He turned her around gently. Her back was cold from the glass, her front warm and flushed. He looked wrecked—hair disheveled, eyes blazing with a satisfied, possessive fire. He cradled her face and kissed her, deep and slow, a stark contrast to the fury of minutes before.
He reached for a stack of thick paper towels, wet one with warm water from the sink. With a tenderness that made her throat tight, he cleaned between her legs, then her thigh. He did the same for himself before pulling his clothes back into place. He helped her step out of the trousers around her ankles, steadied her as she dressed. Her hands trembled as she re-buttoned her blouse. In the mirror, her reflection was foreign—lips swollen, cheeks flushed, eyes dazed. A woman well-fucked. A woman claimed.
He stood behind her again, his chin on her shoulder, watching her in the glass. He took her left hand, lifting it so the emerald caught the light. He kissed the ring, then the palm of her hand.
“Ready?” he asked, his voice rough.
She looked at their reflection—the towering, tattooed footballer and the disheveled academic with the new, heavy jewel on her hand. An impossible pair. A walking scandal. A living, breathing declaration of war against every quiet, sensible path her life was supposed to take.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. The scent of him, of sex, of clean airport soap filled her lungs.
“Yes,” she said, and this time, the word felt solid. “Let’s go home.”
The first-class cabin was a cocoon of muted gray leather and hushed engine drone. Vanja stared out the window as Munich fell away, a grid of lights shrinking into insignificance. Her body still throbbed from the bathroom, a vivid, lingering ache that anchored her in the surreal present.
Dejan’s hand rested on her thigh, a heavy, warm weight. “Sleep,” he murmured, his voice already thick with impending unconsciousness. “Long day tomorrow.”
She didn’t sleep. She watched the blackness, feeling the subtle, drying stickiness between her legs. His proposal in Zagreb, frantic and desperate, felt like a different lifetime. Now, the ring was a cold, hard fact. The plane climbed, and her stomach dipped with it.
They landed in a Manchester drizzle. A blacked-out Range Rover waited on the tarmac, a hulking shadow in the gray dawn. Dejan guided her into the back seat, his manner shifting into a composed, public version of himself. The driver nodded, a silent professional.
“My place in Hale,” Dejan said, buckling his seatbelt. “Press will be at the training ground. We’ll have today.”
“Just today?” Her voice sounded small.
“Tomorrow, the world.” He didn’t look at her, watching the rain streak the window. “We’ll handle it.”
His house was not a home; it was a fortress of glass and steel, minimalist and sterile. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked a manicured garden, beaded with rain. There were no personal touches, just expensive art and a vast, empty sofa. It felt like a showroom.
He dropped his bag by the door. The silence of the place was absolute, pressing in on them. The adrenaline of travel, of the airport, bled away, leaving a raw nerve.
“Welcome,” he said, a hollow echo in the spacious void.
Vanja walked to the window, her arms crossed. “It’s very… you.”
He came up behind her, not touching her, just sharing her view of the wet, green lawn. “It’s a place to sleep. It wasn’t meant for living in.”
She turned to face him. The fatigue and the residue of their earlier violence were still on him, in the shadowed hollows under his eyes. “And now?”
“Now it has you.” He closed the distance finally, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. “It has a purpose.”
His kiss was different. Slow. Exhausted. It tasted of stale coffee and the long night. She kissed him back with a soft hunger, her hands sliding under his sweater to feel the solid plane of his back, the familiar landscape of scars and ink.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers. “I need a shower. You smell like me. Come with me.”
This was not a command of lust, but of necessity. A ritual of reclamation. She followed him up a wide, cold staircase to a bathroom of white marble and chrome. Steam soon fogged the glass expanse of the shower.
He undressed her with a detached, methodical care, as if performing a sacrament. He did the same to himself. Under the hot, punishing spray, he washed her. His big, calloused hands moved over her skin with a shocking gentleness, lathering soap across her back, her stomach, between her legs. He rinsed her clean of the journey, of the airport, of himself.
Then he turned her, backing her against the cold marble wall. The water sluiced over them. He looked down at her body, water clinging to his dark lashes. “I can still see my handprints on your hips,” he said, his voice rough with the steam.
“Good.”
He kissed her, a deep, searching plunge of his tongue. His erection pressed against her belly, hard and insistent. He reached between them, his hand finding his cock, guiding it to her.
He entered her in one smooth, solid push, his eyes locked on hers. There was no frantic pace, just a deep, grinding possession. He moved inside her with a slow, relentless rhythm, each thrust a deliberate reclaiming of her body, her presence, her commitment.
“You’re mine,” he stated, the words a low rumble in his chest, almost lost in the spray. “In this house. In this country. In my bed. Mine.”
“Yours,” she gasped, her head falling back against the marble. The heat of the water, the heat of him filling her, the primal claim in his words coiled a sharp, urgent tension in her core.
He felt her tightening, his rhythm faltering for a beat. He fucked her harder, deeper, his grip on her ass tightening, pulling her onto him with each thrust. “Come for me, Vanja. Show me you feel it. Show me you’re here.”
His words, the sheer physical domination of his body, tore the orgasm from her. It wasn’t a sharp peak but a deep, rolling quake that made her knees buckle. She cried out, a sound swallowed by the shower’s roar, her body convulsing around his cock in wave after wave of blinding release.
He followed with a choked groan, his body slamming into her one final, shuddering time as he spent himself deep inside her. He held there, his weight pinning her to the wall, his breath hot on her neck as the water began to run cool.
Later, in the vast, cold bed, with the rain whispering against the window, he traced the line of her spine. The sheets were crisp, unfamiliar.
“We need to plan,” he said into the darkness.
“The wedding?” she mumbled, half-asleep.
“Everything.”
That summer, they married.
It was not a small affair. It was a spectacle held on the Dalmatian coast, a defiant celebration in the face of every muttered opinion and ugly headline. Vanja wore a simple, devastatingly cut silk dress, her hair a crown of braids. Dejan stood steadfast beside her in a tailored linen suit, his gaze never leaving her face.
Halid Bešlić sang at their wedding. His voice, a raw, beautiful instrument of sevdah, filled the stone courtyard overlooking the Adriatic, singing of love and longing and heartbreak that turns to joy. It was a pointed, profound choice—a Bosnian legend, a voice for all their fractured region, weaving something whole and beautiful over their heads.
Dejan had arranged it. A surprise. When the first notes of “Kad se poljubi…” floated out, Vanja, standing with him under a canopy of olive branches, felt her composure fracture. She looked at him, tears streaming down her face, and saw his own eyes were glistening. He squeezed her hand, his thumb stroking her wedding band.
It was huge. It was beautiful. It was, against all odds, deliriously happy.
The reception roared on into the warm night, a fusion of football royalty, academic colleagues bravely out of their depth, and a sprawling, loud, emotional contingent of family from both sides. Histories were not erased that night, but they were, for a few hours, drowned out by the stomp of kolo dances and the clinking of rakija glasses.
In the early hours, Dejan found her on a balcony, her feet bare, the emerald on her finger catching the moonlight beside her new, plain gold band. The sea whispered below.
“Tired, Mrs. Lovren?” he asked, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist.
She leaned back into him, into the solid, unshakeable reality of him. “Unthinkably happy,” she corrected, her voice quiet. “It frightens me.”
He nuzzled her neck. “Don’t be frightened.” He turned her to face him. “Be with me.”
Back in their suite, he laid her down on the bed strewn with petals. He made love to her with a solemn, breathtaking tenderness that felt entirely new. Afterwards, tangled in the sheets, he whispered the plans against her skin—a house with a garden, not a fortress. A place for her books. A life.
The future was a vast, unknown field. But as she drifted to sleep to the sound of his steady heartbeat, the last sound in her memory was Halid Bešlić’s voice, rising like a promise over the sea.
But as she drifted to sleep to the sound of his steady heartbeat, the last sound in her memory was Halid Bešlić’s voice, rising like a promise over the sea.
Their return to England was a flat, gray counterpoint to the wedding’s saturated glow. Jet lag carved hollows under Vanja’s eyes, and the relentless Manchester rain seemed to seep into the very bones of the new house. It wasn’t a fortress anymore. Boxes of her books lined the walls of what would be her study, their spines a promise of order. Dejan’s trainer had converted the garage into a gym, the rhythmic thump of weights a new heartbeat for the place.
The press found them within a week. A telephoto lens caught her through the kitchen window, blurry and mundane, filling a kettle. “LOVREN’S SECRET WIFE: THE BRAINS BEHIND THE BRAWN?” The headline was smug, reductive. She crumpled the tabloid page and shoved it deep into the recycling.
“Ignore them,” Dejan said, chopping vegetables with a surprising deftness. His knife made crisp, sure sounds on the board.
“They’re not entirely wrong,” she said, watching his hands. “I am the brains. You’re categorically the brawn.”
He looked up, a ghost of their old challenge in his eyes. “Prove it.”
He cornered her against the stainless steel refrigerator later, his hands slick from the olive oil he’d been drizzling on tomatoes. He kissed her with the focused intent of a man starting a drill, his tongue mapping her mouth. She could taste the sea salt and the faint, metallic hint of the knife he’d been holding.
“The table,” she managed, her breath already short.
He lifted her onto the cold, hard surface of the kitchen island. He pushed her silk robe open, his calloused palms rough against the soft skin of her inner thighs. “Here,” he said, his voice low. “Right here where you drink your morning coffee.”
He didn’t wait, didn’t tease. He freed himself from his sweats and pushed into her with a single, deep stroke. She gasped, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the smooth quartz. The angle was different, intense. Each thrust rocked her whole body, the small of her back pressing into the unforgiving edge.
“See?” he grunted, his pace brutal and efficient. “Brawn has its uses.”
Her retort dissolved into a moan. The clinical overhead lights were blinding. She could see every strained cord in his neck, every droplet of sweat tracing the ink on his temple. He hooked her legs over his arms, spreading her wider, diving deeper. The sounds were obscenely loud in the empty, echoey room—skin slapping, her stifled cries, his ragged breaths.
“Come on,” he urged, his gaze locked on where their bodies joined. “Let go. Show me those brilliant brains shutting down.”
He thumbed her clit, a rough, perfect circle, and the orgasm tore through her with shocking violence. She arched, a wordless cry ripped from her throat. He fucked her through it, his rhythm never faltering, and followed with a harsh, guttural groan, emptying himself inside her with a final, shuddering thrust.
He stayed there, buried in her, forehead resting against her collarbone. His sweat dripped onto her chest. “Still think you’re just the brains?” he whispered, his voice wrecked.
She could only laugh, a breathless, shaky sound. He helped her down, her legs nearly buckling. A familiar, subtle nausea, which she’d blamed on travel and stress, bloomed in her gut. It was sharper now, anchored by the faint, metallic scent of his release on her skin.
It persisted. Through the unpacking, through the polite but strained welcome at the club’s senior staff meeting, through Dejan’s first pre-season match away. The smell of his coffee, which she usually loved, made her stomach lurch one morning. She stood over the sink, dry-heaving, the memory of that night on the kitchen island rising unbidden.
A cold, clear certainty clicked into place. She counted back, her fingers pausing on the weeks. The airport bathroom. The shower. Their wedding night. Any of them. All of them.
She bought the test from a chemist two towns over, wearing large sunglasses and a hat pulled low. She did it in the guest bathroom, the one with the terrible peach tile, because it felt like a space that held no history. She set the stick on the edge of the bathtub and paced the hallway, her socked feet silent on the oak floor.
When she looked, two unequivocal blue lines stared back.
She didn’t move. The hum of the refrigerator downstairs was the only sound. She thought of her doctoral thesis, half-written on her laptop. She thought of the team’s skeptical eyes. She thought of his hands on her hips, his voice growling mine. She sat on the closed toilet lid, the plastic stick heavy in her hand, and waited for him to come home.
His key turned in the lock just after seven. She heard the thud of his gym bag, his footsteps heading towards the kitchen. “Vanja?”
“In here.”
He appeared in the doorway of the guest bathroom, still in his training gear, smelling of grass and fresh sweat. His smile faded when he saw her face. “What’s wrong?”
She held up the test without a word. His eyes flicked from her face to the stick, back to her face. Understanding dawned, slow and then all at once. His expression cycled through shock, a flash of something like fear, then settled into a bewildered, dawning awe.
“You’re…” he started, his voice failing.
“Pregnant,” she finished for him, the word final and huge in the small, ugly room.
He crossed the space in two strides, kneeling on the peach tile before her. He didn’t reach for the test. He placed his hands on her knees, his touch reverent. He looked up at her, his eyes searching hers. “Are you…?” He couldn’t complete the question.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. The fear was there, a cold stone in her chest. But beneath it, looking at the raw hope breaking over his face, was something else, something terrifying and warm.
“Fuck,” he breathed, a laugh escaping him. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against her stomach, his arms wrapping around her hips. He held her there, his shoulders shaking once, briefly. “Fuck.”
He looked up, his gaze fierce. “This is it. This is everything.”