Chapter 9: Morning Reckoning
The first sensation was the slow, warm drag of his tongue. Vanja surfaced from a deep, dreamless sleep into a thick haze of pleasure. Dawn’s pale light filtered through the blinds, striping the dark wood of his bedroom floor. She was on her stomach, the linen sheet pooled around her waist, and he was between her legs from behind.
His hands were spreading her open, his stubble rasping against the soft inner skin of her thighs. His mouth was on her, his tongue lapping at her with a lazy, dedicated rhythm that spoke of someone who had been awake and watching her sleep for a while. He wasn’t demanding. He was savoring. A long, flat lick from her opening to her clit made her hips jerk, a low moan muffled by the pillow.
“You’re awake,” he murmured against her, his breath hot. He didn’t stop. He circled her clit slowly, then dipped down, spearing inside her with a firm, penetrating thrust of his tongue.
She gasped, pushing back against his face, her fingers clutching the sheets. The sensitivity from the night before was still there, a tender ache, but he was coaxing it back to life, transforming it into a throbbing need. He licked and sucked, his movements becoming more urgent, one hand moving to slide a finger inside her alongside his tongue.
“Dejan…” His name was a plea, ragged and half-suffocated.
He added a second finger, curling them, finding a spot that made her back arch. His mouth closed over her clit, sucking hard, and the combination was devastating. The orgasm built not as a surprise, but as an inevitable wave, rising from her toes, gathering heat in her belly, before crashing through her with silent, breath-stealing force. Her thighs trembled around his head, her entire body rigid as the spasms ripped through her. He rode it out with her, his tongue gentling to soft, fluttering caresses until she collapsed, boneless, into the mattress.
He crawled up her body, his weight settling over her, his cock, already hard and pressing against the cleft of her ass. He kissed the nape of her neck, his lips moving to her ear. “Good morning,” he said, his voice rough with sleep and desire.
She could only manage a hum, turning her head to the side. He shifted, turning her onto her back. He looked down at her, his face serious in the grey light. He looked younger like this, the defensive armor of arrogance absent. He traced her cheekbone with his thumb.
“Come back,” he said.
The words landed softly, but their weight was immense. She blinked, the post-coital haze dissolving. “What?”
“To England. When your leave is over. Come back. Live with me.”
She let out a shaky laugh, a deflection. “Dejan, I have a job. A PhD to finish.”
“You don’t have to work for the club. Not right now. Do your post-doc. Be with me. Wake up in my bed in Liverpool.” He paused, his eyes searching hers, and the next words dropped into the quiet room like stones into still water. “Marry me.”
The air left her lungs. She stared at him. The man who had fucked her against a mountain railing, whose history was a minefield she’d been taught to navigate with caution, was looking at her with a terrifying, naked sincerity. “You are insane,” she whispered, her voice barely there.
He didn’t flinch. “Please,” he said, the word foreign on his tongue, a word of surrender. “Consider it.”
“Consider marriage? We’ve known each other a few months. We’ve spent one night together without… without trying to tear each other apart.”
“Last night wasn’t trying to tear each other apart,” he said, his hand sliding down to rest possessively on her hip. “That was something else.”
“It was sex.”
“It was a fucking revelation,” he shot back, his intensity flaring. “And you know it. I see it in your eyes right now. You’re scared.”
“I’m not scared. I’m realistic.” She pushed at his chest, but he didn’t budge. “Your fans, the media, my family, your family… Dejan, my last name is Petrović. In certain circles, that’s a declaration of war. You think your uncle at Vukovar would toast our wedding?”
A shadow passed over his face, quick and dark. “This is about us. Not them.”
“It’s always about them! It’s in the water we drank as kids. It’s in the fucking folk songs.” She turned her head away, looking at the stripe of dawn on the floor. “You can’t separate it.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then he moved, not away from her, but shifting his weight. He hooked an arm under her knee, pushing it up and out, opening her to the cool morning air. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her wetness. She was still sensitive, swollen from his mouth, and the pressure was a bright, almost painful delight.
“I can separate this,” he said, his voice low and strained. He pushed forward, an inch, a slow, inexorable invasion. She bit her lip, a sharp intake of breath his only reward. “This feeling. This right here. That’s mine. It’s ours. It has nothing to do with anyone else.”
He sank deeper, filling her with a relentless, perfect stretch. Her body arched, accepting him, betraying her words. He leaned down, his mouth hovering over hers. “Tell me this isn’t the most real thing you’ve ever felt.”
She couldn’t. As he began to move, a slow, deep grind, all arguments crumbled into sensation. This was a different kind of possession. Not the frenzied claiming of the night before, but a deliberate, profound joining. He watched her face as he moved, his hips rolling in a cadence that was almost mournful. Each withdrawal was a question, each stroke home an answer.
She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, her nails scoring his back. The tension built not in a frantic race, but in a slow, rising tide. He braced himself on his forearms, cradling her face. “Come back with me,” he whispered against her lips, his thrusts deepening, speeding up. “Be my wife. Fuck the rest.”
The obscenity, wrapped in a proposal, unleashed something in her. A reckless, defiant hope. She came suddenly, a silent, wrenching climax that clenched around him, her eyes squeezing shut. Her cry was swallowed by his mouth as he followed her, his own release a hot, pulsing flood, his body shuddering as he buried his face in the curve of her neck.
They lay tangled, sweat-damp and breathing hard, the reality of the room seeping back in. The faded flag on the wall. The city sounds beginning below. The impossible question hanging in the air.
He rolled onto his side, pulling her with him, her back to his chest. His arm was a heavy band across her ribs. “Just think about it,” he said into her hair, his voice thick with sleep and spent passion. “That’s all I’m asking.”
She stared at the wall, at the proud red-and-white checkerboard of Croatia. She thought of her father’s Thompson records, of her aunt’s stories, of the quiet, disappointed look that would be in her mother’s eyes. She thought of his bed in Liverpool, of waking up not to this temporary truce in a Zagreb loft, but to the daily scrutiny of a world that loved to dissect his life.
And she thought of the way he’d said ‘wife’. Not like a transaction. Not like a trophy. Like a sanctuary.
He fell asleep behind her, his breath evening out. She didn’t. She watched the light strengthen, carving the room into shapes of light and shadow. When she finally slipped out from under his arm, he murmured but didn’t wake. She padded naked to the massive window, looking out over the Danube, the water a slate grey mirror of the morning sky.
The reflection staring back at her was a stranger—a woman with kiss-bruised lips, her hair wild, marked by the hands and mouth of a man who was, by any sane measure, her opposite. A man who was asking for everything.
She heard the rustle of sheets behind her. Felt his presence before his hands settled on her bare hips, his chin resting on her shoulder. He didn’t speak. He just held her, looking out with her at the waking city, at the river that flowed through both their histories, indifferent to the lines men drew on maps.
“I have to fly back to munich tonight,” she said quietly.
His hands tightened slightly. “I know.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. The promise felt like stepping off a cliff.
He turned her to face him. He didn’t smile. He just nodded, once, and kissed her forehead with a gravity that felt more binding than any ring.
He held her there, against the cold glass, for a long time. The city’s heartbeat, the distant trams and murmuring river, seeped into the quiet. His silence was a plea more potent than his words. She finally turned, her skin pebbling in the morning chill. “I need coffee,” she said, the statement mundane, a lifeline back to normality.
He let her go. She found her torn dress from the night before in a heap by the door, slipping it on like a shameful secret. In his austere kitchen, she focused on the ritual: grinding his expensive beans, the gurgle of the Moka pot. He leaned against the counter, watching her, shirtless and in his boxers. The tattoos on his chest and arms were a storybook of saints and slogans she couldn’t read.
“You make coffee like a Serb,” he said, a ghost of his old smirk playing on his lips.
“It’s the only thing my father taught me correctly,” she replied without looking up. The familiar bitterness of the dark brew filled the space between them. She poured two small cups, handing him one. Their fingers brushed. A current, low and dangerous, hummed beneath the surface.
“So,” he said, blowing on the steam. “That’s your answer? Coffee?”
“It’s an answer. For now.” She took a sip, letting the scalding liquid anchor her. “You ask for a life. I’m offering you a Tuesday morning.”
He set his cup down with a sharp click. In two strides he was before her, caging her against the counter. His hands gripped the marble on either side of her hips. “I don’t want a fucking Tuesday. I want every day. I want the fights and the making up. I want you cursing at me in that hybrid accent when I leave my boots in the hall.”
His proximity was a weapon. She could smell herself on his skin, a musky, intimate scent that weakened her knees. “You’re romanticizing a potential disaster.”
“I’m choosing a potential everything.” He dipped his head, his lips a breath from hers. “Tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me last night on that mountain was just a fuck, and I’ll walk away right now.”
She couldn’t. The denial lodged in her throat, treasonous. His mouth crashed down on hers instead, a claiming devoid of gentleness. The coffee cup was wrenched from her hand, shattering on the floor. He didn’t notice. His hands were on her ass, lifting her onto the cold marble countertop. The torn dress provided no barrier as he ripped the fragile seam wider, his fingers finding her cunt, already slick for him.
“This feels like more,” he growled against her mouth, pushing two fingers deep inside her. She cried out, her head thudding back against the cabinet. “Doesn’t it?”
She answered by fumbling with the fly of his boxers, freeing his cock. It was thick and heavy in her hand, the vein pulsing. She guided him to her, notching the broad head at her entrance. “Prove it,” she challenged, her voice raw.
He slammed into her in one brutal stroke, filling her completely. The impact drove the air from her lungs. She hooked her legs around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back. There was no finesse, no tender rhythm. This was a collision, a furious, physical argument.
He fucked her on the counter with a punishing pace, his hips pistoning, the kitchen filled with the wet, slapping sounds of their joining. “You think anyone else will ever fit you like this?” he gritted out, his hands rough on her thighs. “You think you’ll find another cock that stretches you so perfectly you see stars?”
“Fuck you,” she gasped, but her body arched, meeting him thrust for thrust. Each one jolted through her, a lightning bolt of pure sensation.
“That’s the idea,” he snarled. He bent her backwards, one arm supporting her spine, changing the angle. The new position drove him impossibly deeper, rubbing directly against a spot that made her vision splinter. “Come on my cock, Vanja. Come for me. Let me feel you.”
His command, filthy and direct, shattered her last restraint. Her orgasm ripped through her with violent, silent intensity, her cunt clamping around him in rhythmic, milking spasms. She scratched down his arms, her mouth open in a soundless scream.
Feeling her convulse, he lost his own control. With a guttural groan that was part triumph, part agony, he buried himself to the hilt and came. She felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release inside her, a searing, intimate claim. He slumped over her, his forehead damp against her shoulder, his breath ragged in her ear.
They stayed like that, glued together by sweat and come, the smell of sex and spilled coffee thick in the air. The reality of what they’d just done—the raw, wordless act following his marriage proposal—settled over them like ash.
He softened inside her, slipping out. A trickle of his cum followed, warm on her thigh. The vulgar reality of it made her flinch. He stepped back, his eyes dark, reading the shame on her face.
“Don’t,” he said softly, pulling his boxers up. He found a dish towel, running it under warm water. Gently, he cleaned her thigh, then between her legs. The tenderness of the act, after the brutality, was worse. It felt like a promise he intended to keep.
She slid off the counter, her legs shaky, holding the torn dress together. “I need to go pack.”
“Stay.”
“I can’t.” She walked towards the guest room, where her small suitcase lay.
He followed, leaning in the doorway. “What are you so afraid of?”
She turned on him, the emotion finally breaking through. “Of it not being enough! Of this…” she gestured between them, “…this fire turning to embers in some rainy Liverpool suburb, and all we’ll have left is the silence and what our families whisper about us. I watched my parents drown in that silence.”
“We are not our parents.”
“We’re their children!” She zipped her bag with too much force. “You carry Vukovar on your skin. I carry it in my name. We don’t get to just erase that.”
He moved into the room, taking the bag from her hands. “So we carry it together. It’ll be lighter.”
The simple poetry of it almost broke her. She looked at his hands, the defender’s hands, now holding her luggage with a curious delicacy. She thought of his lips on her forehead, his cock inside her, his impossible, beautiful dream. She thought of the mountain air and the feeling of flying.
She reached out and took the bag back from him. “I have a plane to catch.”
He didn’t try to stop her. He just watched as she straightened her clothes, as she ran a hand through her tangled hair. She walked past him, through the sunlit loft, to the front door. He followed, a silent shadow.
At the threshold, she paused. She didn’t look back. She could feel him there, a solid, wounded presence behind her. She could smell the sex on her skin, a parting gift.
“Think about it,” he said again, his voice hollow.
She opened the door. The hallway air was cool, impersonal. She stepped over the threshold.
SHE LEAVES.
The door clicked shut behind her, a soft, final sound. She stood alone in the sterile corridor, the weight of his world still clinging to her. She walked toward the elevator, each step echoing, carrying her away from the smell of coffee and cologne and cum, from the gravity of his touch, from the terrifying, dazzling possibility of an everything she didn’t know how to hold.
The elevator doors slid shut, sealing her in a sterile silence that rang louder than his absence. Her reflection in the brushed metal was a ghost of the woman from the mountain—hair a mess, lips swollen, eyes holding a wild, trapped light. The scent of him, of them, clung to her skin. She breathed it in, a final, punishing draft, as the car descended.
Munich was a study in order. Her small student apartment near the university was all clean lines and quiet, a world away from the raw passion of his Zagreb loft. She unpacked her bag, shaking out the dress she’d worn that first night. A faint, earthy smell of pine and cold stone still lingered in the fabric. She folded it away, a secret pressed between sweaters. Days bled into a week. She attended seminars, met with her dissertation advisor, drank coffee alone in crowded cafés. The work, once her refuge, felt thin and distant.
Her phone stayed stubbornly silent. No calls. No texts. His absence was a physical ache, a hollow space her mind kept tripping into. She would catch herself staring at nothing, her body remembering the exact pressure of his hands, the rough cadence of his voice in her ear. At night, tangled in her own sheets, she’d feel a phantom weight, the ghost of his arm across her ribs. She’d wake aching, wet, furious at her own need.
The knock, when it came, was a shock. A solid, insistent pounding that shattered the quiet of a rainy Tuesday evening. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She padded to the door, peering through the peephole. Her breath caught.
Dejan stood in her dim hallway, soaked. Rain dripped from the dark strands of his hair, beaded on his leather jacket. He looked like he’d driven straight through, his face drawn, shadows under his eyes. He held no flowers. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. He looked less like a romantic suitor and more like a man coming to claim something he’d lost.
She unlocked the door, opened it a crack. The hallway air was cold. “What are you doing here?”
“You left,” he said, his voice gravel. “You didn’t call.”
“You didn’t either.”
“I was giving you space to think.” He stepped forward, forcing the door wider. He was in her space now, dripping on her mat, bringing the storm in with him. “I’ve thought. It’s fucking miserable.”
He pushed past her into the apartment. He took it in with a single glance—the neat shelves, the academic journals, the absence of any real life. He shrugged out of his wet jacket, letting it fall to the floor. Beneath it, he wore a simple black t-shirt that clung to the defined planes of his chest and arms. The tattoos snaked down his forearms, a vivid history against his skin.
“You can’t just show up,” she said, closing the door, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
“Watch me.” He turned to face her. The distance of the week collapsed in an instant. The hunger in his eyes was raw, unchecked. “You’ve been in my head every second. I can’t train. I can’t sleep. I can taste you.”
“Dejan—”
He crossed the room in two strides. His hands came up to frame her face, his thumbs brushing her cheekbones. They were cold from the rain. “Tell me to leave. Tell me it was just sex on the mountain, just a fuck on the counter, and I will walk out that door and you will never see me again.”
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out. The denial wouldn’t form. All that emerged was a shaky breath.
That was all the answer he needed. His mouth captured hers in a kiss that was pure possession. It wasn’t gentle. It was a reclamation. His tongue plunged deep, tasting her, claiming the space as his own. She kissed him back with equal fervor, her hands fisting in his wet t-shirt, pulling him closer. The week of silence, of doubt, exploded into this.
He walked her backwards until her knees hit the edge of her narrow bed. They tumbled onto it, a tangle of limbs and frantic hands. He ripped her thin sweater over her head. The sound of tearing fabric was obscene in the quiet room. His mouth was on her neck, her collarbone, his teeth scraping her skin. He unclasped her bra with a deft flick, his large hands covering her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples until they were hard, aching peaks.
“I missed these,” he growled against her sternum, before taking one deep into his mouth. He suckled hard, his tongue flicking, and the pull went straight to her core. She arched, a cry tearing from her throat.
His hand slid down her stomach, over the waistband of her leggings, cupping her through the fabric. She was already soaked. “Fuck, you’re wet,” he muttered, biting her earlobe. “Are you wet for me? Even after a week?”
“Yes,” she hissed, bucking against his hand.
He hooked his fingers in her leggings and underwear, dragging them down her legs in one rough movement. The cold air hit her bare skin, followed instantly by the heat of his palm searing her mound. He pressed the heel of his hand against her clit, rubbing in a slow, torturous circle. “Say it.”
She gasped, her hips chasing the pressure. “Yes, for you.”
He let out a low, satisfied sound. He shifted, kneeling between her legs, pushing them apart. He looked down at her, at her bare, open body on her academic bed, and his expression was one of pure, carnal victory. He made quick work of his own clothes, his cock springing free, thick and already leaking. He gripped himself, stroking once, twice, his eyes locked on hers.
“I’m not leaving without you,” he stated, as if commenting on the weather.
He didn’t enter her slowly. He notched the head at her entrance and drove home in one brutal, devastating thrust. The stretch was exquisite, a burning fullness that made her see white behind her eyelids. She cried out, her nails digging into his biceps.
“Mine,” he grunted, beginning to move. His pace was relentless, a hard, deep piston that hit a spot inside her that seemed wired directly to her brain. Each slam of his hips jolted the bed frame against the wall. The sound of their bodies meeting, wet and slick, filled the small room. “This cunt is mine, Vanja. You can run to fucking Munich, but you belong on my cock.”
The filth from his mouth, the raw physicality of it, undid her. It stripped away every pretense, every intellectual defense. She was just an animal, responding to her mate. She wrapped her legs high around his waist, taking him deeper, meeting his thrusts with abandon. “Harder,” she panted. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”
He snarled, adjusting his angle, pounding into her with a force that felt like it might break the bed, break her. She could feel the coil in her belly tightening, a searing knot of pleasure. “Come,” he commanded, his breath hot and ragged in her ear. “Come all over my dick. Let me feel you squeeze me.”
His words were the trigger. Her orgasm erupted, a violent, convulsing wave that tore through her. She screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound, as her walls clenched around him in rhythmic, gripping spasms. The intensity forced tears from the corners of her eyes.
Feeling her tighten around him, his control shattered. With a guttural roar that was part her name, part prayer, he buried himself to the hilt. His release flooded her, hot and copious, jetting deep inside her with each pulsing throb of his cock. He collapsed on top of her, his full weight pinning her to the mattress, both of them slick with sweat and trembling.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the rain against the window. He softened inside her but didn’t pull out. He nuzzled her neck, his lips soft against her damp skin. The tenderness, after the ferocity, made her throat tighten.
Slowly, he rolled off her, pulling her with him so she lay sprawled across his chest. His heart hammered under her ear. He traced idle patterns on her bare back.
“I brought you something,” he said, his voice a rumble in his chest.
“I felt it,” she mumbled, a weak attempt at a joke.
He didn’t smile. He shifted, reaching for his discarded jeans on the floor. He fished in a pocket and pulled out a small, black velvet box. He held it up between them, his other arm still anchoring her to him.
Vanja went very still.
He opened the box. Nestled inside was a ring. It wasn’t a giant, gaudy diamond. It was a simple, flawless emerald-cut stone set in a band of sleek, dark platinum. It was severe. It was beautiful. It looked like something that belonged on her hand.
Her vision blurred. She blinked rapidly.
“Look at me,” he said softly. She dragged her eyes from the ring to his face. His expression was utterly stripped bare. All the arrogance, the defensiveness, was gone. What remained was a terrifying vulnerability. “I love you.”
The words hung in the air, simple and devastating. A tear escaped, tracing a hot path down her temple into her hairline.
“Fuck,” he whispered, his own eyes glistening. “Please say something. Don’t cry.”
But she was crying, silently, the tears coming faster. It was a flood of everything—the fear, the history, the impossible want, the feeling of his heart thudding beneath her palm. He wiped a thumb across her cheek, his touch infinitely gentle.
He leaned in and kissed her. It was nothing like their previous kisses. It was soft, a bare brushing of lips, a sealing of a promise. He pulled back just enough to speak, his forehead resting against hers. “Vanja…”
She looked from his eyes, dark with emotion, to the ring, a cold, perfect promise in the dim light. She thought of silence in suburbia. She thought of his hand in hers on a rainy English street. She thought of the mountain air and the feeling of flying.
She took a shuddering breath.
“Okay,” she whispered, the word barely audible. “I will.”
She felt the tension leave his body in a great, releasing wave. He closed his eyes for a second, a look of profound relief passing over his features.
“I’ll marry you,” she said, stronger now, finding her voice in the decision. She reached out, touching the cool platinum of the band. “But no fucking Thompson at the wedding.”
A choked laugh burst from him, part sob, part joy. He slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly. He brought her hand to his mouth, kissing her knuckles, his lips lingering over the stone.
“No Thompson,” he agreed, his voice thick. “I promise.” He pulled her into him, holding her so tightly she could feel every beat of his heart echoing her own, a frantic, syncopated rhythm slowly settling into one.