Chapter 8: Possession
The door to his apartment clicked shut, a sound of profound finality. The world of stone and cold wind was locked out. Here, in his space, the air was still and warm, carrying the faint, clean scent of lemon wood polish and the distant memory of his cologne.
He didn’t put her down. He carried her through the open-plan living area, a landscape of sleek grays and concrete illuminated by the city’s neon glow bleeding through the massive windows. Her head rested against his shoulder, her breathing still ragged, her body humming with the aftershocks of what they’d done. The torn dress gaped open, cool air whispering over her exposed skin.
He shouldered his way into the bedroom, a darker, more textured space of dark wood and deep navy. A faded Croatian flag was pinned artfully to one brick wall. He didn’t lay her on the bed. He pressed her back against the closed door, his body caging hers.
His mouth found hers again, but the fury had transmuted. It was no longer just about defiance. It was hunger, pure and simple, a deep, gnawing need to consume the taste of her, to erase the sting of Thompson’s silence and her uncle’s watchful eyes with the salt of her skin. He kissed her until she was breathless, until her hands came up to clutch at his shoulders, not to push away, but to anchor herself.
He broke the kiss, his own breathing harsh. His eyes, dark and unreadable in the low light, scanned her face. “That dress,” he said, his voice a rough scrape. “It’s done.”
His hands, those footballer’s hands with their scars and strength, found the remaining strap on her shoulder. He didn’t slide it off. He wrapped his fingers in the delicate fabric and pulled. It gave way with a soft, definitive rip. The dress, already ruined, fell away from her body completely, pooling at her feet like a shadow. She stood before him in only her ruined lace bra, the cups torn and hanging loose, and the shredded remnants of her underwear.
He looked his fill. His gaze was not gentle. It was a physical inventory—the red mark on her cheek from the stone, the faint beginnings of bruises on her hips where his fingers had been, the sheen of sweat and him still glistening between her thighs.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word full of awe and a kind of angry possession.
He reached behind her, unhooked the bra, and let it fall. Then he went to his knees.
The sight of him there, this titan of Croatian football on his knees before her, sent a jolt through her system more electric than anything that had come before. He didn’t look up at her. His focus was entirely on the junction of her thighs. He hooked his hands under her knees, lifting them, spreading her open before his face.
The air was cool on her most intimate flesh. She was exposed, utterly vulnerable, still swollen and sensitive from his taking on the mountain. He leaned in, and she felt the warm, damp gust of his breath first.
Then his tongue.
It was a flat, deliberate lick from her opening all the way up to her clit. A low, guttural moan tore from her throat. Her head thudded back against the door. He did it again, slower this time, savoring the taste of their combined sweat and sex. He was cleaning her, claiming her in a way that felt more obscenely intimate than the fuck against the railing.
“You taste like me,” he muttered against her flesh, his voice vibrating through her. “All over you.”
He buried his face in her then, his tongue spearing inside her, fucking her with it. The sensation was overwhelming—the rasp of his stubble on her tender inner thighs, the hot, wet suction of his mouth, the relentless probe of his tongue. He found her clit and circled it, not with gentleness, but with a focused, rhythmic pressure that had her hips jerking against his mouth.
“Dejan… please…” It was a whimper, a surrender.
He pulled back, his chin slick. “Please what?” He nipped at her inner thigh, a sharp, possessive bite. “You want my mouth or my cock? Choose.”
“I can’t,” she gasped. “I need…”
“You need to come again.” It wasn’t a question. He stood up in one fluid motion, his own need blatant, straining against his trousers. He pushed them down just enough to free himself. He was already hard again, thick and flushed. He didn’t bother with another condom. He just guided himself to her entrance, the head nudging through her slickness, and looked into her eyes. “Tell me.”
She met his gaze, her own blurred with desperate need. “I need you to fuck me until I forget my own name.”
A savage, approving grin touched his lips. He drove into her in one deep, filling stroke. She was so wet, so open from his mouth and their previous joining, that he slid home with a wet, seamless glide. They both cried out, a shared, raw sound of relief.
He fucked her against the door, the rhythm deep and piston-like, each thrust knocking a soft thump from the solid wood. This wasn’t the angry, performative pace of the mountain. This was something darker, more private, a desperate seeking of connection in the only way they currently allowed themselves. His hands gripped her ass, lifting her, angling her to take him even deeper. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back.
“Whose?” he grunted, his forehead pressed to hers, their breath mingling.
“Yours,” she gasped, the word punched out of her with each drive of his hips.
“Say it.”
“Yours. Fuck, Dejan, I’m yours.”
He captured her mouth, swallowing her cries as the coil inside her wound impossibly tight. The pleasure was a crescendo, built from the ache of her muscles, the fullness of him, the crude, perfect poetry of his body moving in hers. She came with a shattered cry against his lips, her inner walls clamping down on him in rhythmic, milking spasms that seemed to pull his own release from him.
He followed her over, his thrusts becoming erratic, his own groan a deep, broken thing muffled in the curve of her neck. He spilled inside her, hot and deep, his body shuddering as he held himself buried to the hilt.
For a long time, they stayed like that, slumped against the door, still joined, breathing in ragged unison. The sweat cooled on their skin. The city’s light painted slow-moving rectangles across the floor.
Slowly, carefully, he withdrew. He lifted her—her body now boneless and spent—and carried her the few steps to the bed, laying her down on the dark linen. He disappeared into the ensuite bathroom. She heard water run. He returned with a warm, damp cloth.
He didn’t speak. He gently cleaned her, wiping away the evidence of their frenzy from her thighs, her stomach. The tenderness of the act, after the violence of their coupling, was almost more than she could bear. She felt a sudden, shocking prick of tears behind her eyes and turned her head into the pillow.
He finished, tossed the cloth aside, and slid into bed beside her. He didn’t try to hold her. They lay on their backs, side by side, staring at the ceiling, the silence stretching between them, vast and complicated.
“My father,” Vanja said suddenly, her voice small in the dark. “He loved Thompson’s early stuff. The folk songs. Before it all became… that.”
Dejan was silent for a moment. “My uncle,” he said finally, “was at Vukovar.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. The name of the city hung in the air between them, a word of shattered stone and memory. Vanja felt the weight of it crush the afterglow. She turned onto her side, facing him, the linen cool against her bare skin. His profile was a sharp cut against the pillow, staring rigidly upward.
“After Dražen died,” Vanja said, her voice cleaving the silence, “my other uncle and my aunt came to Germany.” She watched the muscle in his jaw clench. “My aunt dated Marko Perković before she left. She married a Serbian man after that.”
He nodded once, a slow, heavy dip of his chin. The information landed, a piece of a puzzle that didn’t fit any clean picture. It was just a fact, messy and human, existing in the space of their ruined countries.
“Promise me something,” she whispered into the dark.
“Anything,” he said, the word immediate, a vow.
“That you won’t write shitty love songs if we ever break up.”
A low, rough sound escaped him, not quite a laugh. He turned his head to look at her. The defensive arrogance was gone from his face. In the dim light, he just looked tired, and young, and carved from the same stubborn stone as her. “That’s not going to happen,” he said, his voice firm. “Now come. Let’s sleep.”
He didn’t pull her into an embrace. Instead, he shifted onto his side, mirroring her, and slid an arm beneath her neck. His other hand found her hip, his palm warm and broad against her skin, pulling her closer until their foreheads touched. Their knees slotted together. It was an arrangement of fatigue and truce, a white flag woven from limbs and breath.
She expected the heat between them to rekindle, for his hand to roam, for the night to descend back into that raw, physical language. It didn’t. His breathing evened out, deepening. The hand on her hip relaxed, heavy and still. The only movement was the slow rise and fall of his chest against hers.
Sleep, however, refused her. Her mind whirred, replaying the night—the cold mountain air, the brutal press of the railing into her thighs, the blinding tear of pleasure, the casual violence in Simunic’s eyes, the profound tenderness of the cloth on her skin. And now, this. Lying in the dark with a man whose history was written in the blood her own family had spilled.
She was drifting in a grey space when his voice rumbled, sleep-thickened, against her forehead.
“You said ‘yours’.”
She didn’t open her eyes. “I did.”
“Did you mean it?”
This time, she was the one who pulled back just enough to see his face. His eyes were open, watchful in the shadows. “Tonight,” she said carefully, “I meant it. My body was yours. That part was real.”
He absorbed that, his gaze searching hers. “And the rest?”
“The rest is a fucking minefield, Dejan. You know it is.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then his hand, which had been resting on her hip, slid around to the small of her back. His fingers traced idle, absent patterns on her skin. “This is real, too,” he said, his touch a soft counterpoint to his words.
Before she could answer, his mouth was on hers again. This kiss was different. It was slow, exploring, devoid of the earlier fury. It was a question. His tongue gently sought entrance, and she gave it, a soft sigh escaping her as she met his languid rhythm. The embers, banked but not dead, flared.
He rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. She straddled his waist, feeling him stir, already hardening again beneath her. The city light from the window illuminated the planes of his chest, the dark script of his tattoos. She leaned down, kissing the complex woven lines over his heart, then lower, tracing the ridges of his abdomen with her tongue.
He let out a choked groan, his hands coming up to thread through her hair. She continued her path downward, past his navel, through the coarse trail of hair. She took him in her hand, feeling him jump at her touch. He was fully erect now, thick and heavy, the skin silken and hot.
“Vanja,” he warned, but it was a plea.
She didn’t hesitate. She bent her head and took him into her mouth, swallowing him deep. The taste of him, salt and skin and sex, was intensely familiar now. She worked him with a firm, knowing rhythm, her tongue circling the sensitive head before plunging down again, her fingers cupping and rolling his balls.
“Fuck… yes… just like that,” he hissed, his hips lifting off the bed involuntarily.
She loved this power, the control of his pleasure in her mouth. She sucked harder, her cheeks hollowing, using her hand to stroke what she couldn’t take. His curses were a beautiful, filthy prayer above her. But he didn’t let her finish. After a few minutes, his hands tightened in her hair, not pulling, but guiding her back up his body.
“I want to be inside you,” he rasped against her mouth. “I need to feel you come around me again.”
He guided her hips, positioning her over him. She lowered herself slowly, taking him in an inch at a time, her body stretching to accommodate him, so full it was almost too much. When he was fully sheathed, she paused, letting them both feel the exquisite, complete connection.
Then she began to move. She set a slow, grinding pace, riding him with deep, circular rotations of her hips. Her hands braced on his chest, her head thrown back, her hair a dark cascade down her back. He watched her, his eyes burning, his hands gripping her thighs.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She opened her eyes, meeting his gaze. The intimacy of it was more penetrating than any physical act.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said, the words raw and unbidden. “I hate how much I want this.”
His admission unlocked something in her. Her movements became more urgent, less controlled. She rode him faster, slamming down onto him, the sound of skin on skin filling the room. He thrust up to meet her, each impact jarring a cry from her throat.
“Come for me,” he grunted, his fingers digging into her flesh. “Come all over my cock.”
It was the crude demand that shattered her. The coil snapped, pleasure detonating through her in white-hot waves. She clenched around him, milking him, her cries loud and unrestrained. Her climax triggered his. With a roar, he bucked beneath her, his release pumping into her in hot, pulsing jets, his own body shuddering with the force of it.
She collapsed forward onto his chest, spent, their sweat-slick skin bonding them together. His arms came around her, holding her tight as their heartbeats hammered a frantic, slowing rhythm against each other.
He didn’t speak. He just held her, one hand moving slowly up and down the damp skin of her back. The silence now was different. It wasn’t empty. It was packed with everything they’d done and said, and everything they hadn’t. The first grey light of dawn began to outline the window.
In that quiet, exhaustion finally won. Her limbs grew leaden, her thoughts blurred at the edges. The last thing she felt, as sleep pulled her under, was the steady, strong beat of his heart against her ear, and the faint, protective tightening of his arms around her.