Chapter 3: Claimed at Dawn
The first thing Vanja became aware of was the heat. A solid, living line of warmth pressed along her back, from shoulders to knees. The second was the weight of an arm draped heavily over her waist, pinning her in place. The third was the insistent, hard pressure nudging against the cleft of her buttocks.
Morning light, pale and merciless, seeped around the edges of her blackout curtains. It painted the room in shades of grey and dust, illuminating the stray clothes on the floor—his black hoodie, her torn panties, a stark monument to the night. The scent of sex and sweat and him still hung in the air, cloying and intimate.
Her body ached in a constellation of specific pains: a tenderness between her legs, a slight burn on the inside of her thigh, a soreness in her shoulders from being pressed into the wall. Each one a vivid receipt.
Kylian stirred behind her, his breath warm against the back of her neck. The arm around her waist tightened, his hand splaying possessively across her stomach. He ground his hips forward, his morning erection—thick and unyielding—sliding along the seam of her body.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his voice gravelly with sleep. “You’re still here.”
As if she could have moved. As if she had anywhere to go.
Before she could form a thought, a protest, his hand moved. It slid down from her stomach, over the curve of her hip, fingers digging into the flesh of her thigh. He hooked her leg, hitching it up and open. The movement was effortless, practiced. He shifted, his body covering hers, pressing her deeper into the mattress.
“Kylian, wait—” The words were muffled by the pillow.
He didn’t wait. His other hand fisted in her hair, not painfully, but with absolute control, turning her face to the side. His mouth found the junction of her neck and shoulder, biting down just hard enough to make her gasp. His fingers, blunt and demanding, traced down her spine, over the swell of her ass, then dipped between her cheeks.
She was still slick from him, from last night. He grunted, a sound of dark satisfaction. “Still wet for me. Good.”
He spread her cheeks apart. The cool air of the room kissed her exposed flesh, a shocking contrast to the heat of his body. Then she felt it—the flat, wet stroke of his tongue, lapping from her clit up through her soaked folds. She jolted, a bolt of electric sensation shooting through her exhausted nerves. He did it again, slower, more deliberately, tasting her, tasting himself on her. The obscene intimacy of it made her face burn.
“You taste like us,” he growled against her skin, his breath hot. “Perfect.”
His tongue pushed inside her, fucking her with it, shallow and relentless. Her hips jerked involuntarily, a weak betrayal. A low moan escaped her, drawn out by a combination of shame and unavoidable pleasure. Her body, starved for this specific, ruinous attention for so long, was responding against her will, coiling tight once more.
He rose above her, positioning himself. The broad, slick head of his cock nudged against her entrance, still stretched and sensitive. He didn’t ask. He just pushed.
He entered her in one slow, inexorable invasion, filling the aching, hollow space he’d carved out hours before. A choked sound left her lips. He bottomed out, his hips flush against her ass, and held there, letting her feel every millimeter.
“You think one fuck was enough?” he snarled into her ear, his grip in her hair tightening. “You think after that little display last night, I’d just let you wake up and go about your day? Think about your date?”
He withdrew almost completely, then slammed back in. The force drove the air from her lungs. “No. You don’t get to just reset.”
He set a punishing rhythm, each thrust a jolting impact that shook the bedframe. It was different from the frantic energy of the night before. This was deliberate, measured, a brutal reinforcement. His grip on her hip was iron, holding her open for him, his other hand still tangled in her hair, controlling the angle of her head.
“This is what you need,” he panted, driving into her over and over. “Not his polite conversation. Not his fucking philosophical debates about pressing triggers. This. My cock buried in your cunt. Reminding you who you belong to.”
Each word was punctuated by a deep, grinding stroke. She was stuffed full of him, the stretch a bright, almost painful pleasure. The friction was relentless, building a fire in her core that threatened to consume her reasoned objections. She could hear the wet, rhythmic slap of skin, the creak of the bed, his ragged breaths.
“Say it,” he demanded, his pace becoming erratic, harder. “Whose are you?”
Her mind fractured. The part that was appalled, that saw the manipulation, the toxic reclamation, was drowned out by the primal part being hammered into submission, being reminded of a ownership that predated doctorates and independence. Pleasure, sharp and coarse, ripped through her.
“Yours!” she cried out, the admission torn from her. “God, Kylian, I’m yours!”
It was the key. His control shattered. With a final, guttural roar, he plunged deep and held, his body convulsing as he emptied into her. The hot rush triggered her own climax, a second, devastating wave that pulsed around him, wringing another groan from his chest.
He collapsed on top of her, his weight crushing, his sweat-slick skin sticking to hers. They lay there, a tangled, spent heap, for a long time. The only sound was their synced, labored breathing.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out of her. He rolled off, lying on his back beside her. She didn’t move. She felt liquid, shattered, claimed inside and out.
The silence stretched. Sunlight now painted a bright blade across the floor.
“You should cancel it,” he said, his voice calm, casual, as if discussing the weather. He reached for his phone on the nightstand, handed it to her. “Do it now.”
She looked at the device in her hand. It felt like a lead weight. Her own phone was across the room, in the pocket of her discarded robe. This was his. He was watching her, his dark eyes lazy but intent.
She unlocked it—no password, he never had one—and opened her messages. She typed her own number in. Her thumbs hovered over the digital keyboard.
The text to Michael was still there, in her mind. I’ll wear black. Tell me where. An invitation to a different kind of night, one with possibilities that didn’t feel like a pre-dug grave.
She typed. It’s Vanja. I’m so sorry. Something has come up. I can’t do Thursday.
She showed the screen to Kylian. He read it, a faint, satisfied smile touching his lips. He nodded. “Send it.”
She hit send. The message whooshed away, a tiny, digital surrender.
“Good,” he said. He sat up, swung his legs out of bed. His body was a masterpiece of lean muscle, marked here and there with old scars and fresh scratches—hers. He stood, stretched, utterly at home in her space. “I’m hungry. What do you have?”
He walked naked out of her bedroom, heading for the kitchen.
Vanja lay still. The space he left behind felt cold. She heard him opening cabinets, the fridge door. The mundane sounds of a domestic morning after a war.
Her eyes drifted to the floor, to the framed photograph lying face-down by the bookshelf. He’d noticed it last night. He’d used it as a pretext, a symbol of her rejection. Slowly, stiffly, she got out of bed. Every muscle protested. She picked up the frame, her fingers trembling.
She didn’t turn it over. She carried it to the closet, opened the door, and placed it on a high shelf, behind a stack of sweaters. Out of sight. Not a rejection, but a burial.
From the kitchen, he called, “You don’t have any real food. Just plants.”
“I’m vegetarian,” she said, her voice hoarse from screaming.
“I know,” he called back, not missing a beat. “It’s annoying. I’m ordering a proper breakfast.”
She listened to him on the phone, ordering eggs, steak, croissants, in fluent, casual German. He was settling in. This wasn’t a flight. This was an occupation.
Her gaze fell on his phone, still in her hand. The sent message to herself glowed on the screen. A thought, cold and clear as the morning light, cut through the fog of spent passion and resignation.
He said to cancel it. He didn’t say for how long.
With a calm that felt alien, she navigated to her own contact in his phone. She edited it. She changed the name.
She saved it. Dr. Vranjac.
A small, meaningless rebellion. A reassertion of a single, fractured piece of her identity. He might own the night, the body, the history. But he didn’t own the title she’d earned alone.
She placed his phone back on the nightstand. Then she walked to the shower, needing to wash the smell of him, of them, from her skin, knowing already it was a futile exercise. The watermark was on the inside.
The shower water was scalding. Vanja stood under the jet, letting it pummel her shoulders, but the heat couldn’t penetrate the cold knot of understanding in her stomach. She scrubbed at her skin with a rough loofa until it bloomed pink, trying to erase the feeling of his hands, his mouth, his possession. It was useless. The phantom ache between her legs was a persistent echo.
She toweled off slowly, the steam fogging the mirror. When she wiped it clear, her reflection looked back at her—eyes a bit hollow, a faint bruise forming on her neck. She dressed in simple jeans and a thick sweater, armor against the Munich chill and the man in her kitchen.
The smell of seared meat and coffee hit her first. Kylian was at her small table, shirtless, scrolling through his phone with one hand while forking steak into his mouth with the other. Two empty espresso cups sat nearby. He’d made himself completely at home, his presence displacing the air in the room.
“You want an egg?” he asked without looking up. “I left the yolks runny, like you used to steal from my plate.”
“I’m vegetarian,” she said flatly, leaning against the doorframe.
“I know.” He finally glanced up, his eyes sweeping over her covered form. “Habits from childhood are hard to break. Just like other things.”
She didn’t take the bait. She watched him eat, the casual power in his movements. This was the unnerving duality: the global superstar who could command a stadium, now chewing quietly in her kitchen, a trail of crumbs on her table. The normalcy was more threatening than the violence of the night.
“You need to leave soon,” she said, her voice carefully neutral. “You have training. Preseason.”
“I’ve handled it.” He took a long drink of orange juice directly from the carton, another familiar, infuriating trespass. “I told them I had a personal matter. They assume it’s a transfer negotiation. Let them.”
“This isn’t a personal matter, Kylian. This is… what is this? You fly here in the night, you… and then you just… stay?”
He put the fork down. It clinked against the plate. He leaned back in the chair, studying her. The morning light cut across his torso, highlighting the defined ridges of his abdomen. “Why do you think I came?”
She shook her head, a short, frustrated motion. “To mark your territory. To screw up my head. To prove a point. Take your pick.”
“That’s part of it.” He stood, the motion fluid. He walked toward her, stopping just inside her personal space. She didn’t retreat. “But that’s not all of it.” He reached out, tracing the neckline of her sweater where it covered the bruise. “Ask me why.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. The air thickened. This was the precipice. All the history, the complicated friendship, the secret trysts, the years of unsaid words, led to this exact point in her sunlit kitchen.
“Why?” The word was a whisper, torn from her.
He cupped her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. His gaze was terrifyingly earnest, stripped of all arrogance, raw in a way she’d only seen a handful of times in their lives. “Because I love you,” he said, the words simple, direct, and devastating. “And I want us to be together. I was a fool for not saying it sooner. A coward.”
Vanja’s breath caught. The world tilted. She had imagined this, dreamed it, cursed it, a thousand times in a thousand ways. Hearing it now, in the brutal, clear light of morning after everything they’d just done, felt like having the ground liquify beneath her feet.
“Michael is a good guy,” Kylian continued, his voice low and intense. “We are on the national team together. But he’s not good for you. He’s a distraction. A nice, simple, clean distraction. You don’t need a distraction, Vanja. You need a fucking foundation. You need someone who knows every cracked piece of you and doesn’t give a shit. You’re mine. And I am yours. It’s always been that way.”
The confession was also a manifesto. It contained the love and the possession inextricably linked, one fueling the other. It was not a tender proposal. It was a brutal, final analysis, and it rang with a truth that vibrated in her bones.
She stared up at him, at the fierce certainty in his eyes, at the mouth that had just spoken a sentence she’d waited a decade to hear. All her analysis, her sociological frameworks, her carefully maintained emotional distance, crumbled to dust.
She kissed him.
It was not a soft kiss. It was a concession, a surrender, and a claiming of her own. It was salty from their tears—she didn’t know when she’d started crying—and hungry with a decade of suppressed want. Her hands fisted in the waistband of his jeans, pulling him flush against her.
He groaned into her mouth, the sound one of pure victory and relief. His arms locked around her, lifting her off the floor. He carried her the few steps back to the table, sweeping the plates and cutlery to the floor with a crashing, ceramic clamor.
He set her on the edge of the table, the wood cold through her jeans. His hands were already under her sweater, pushing it up, his palms rough on her ribs. He broke the kiss to yank the garment over her head, tossing it aside. Her bra followed, a simple clip undone with a swift, practiced twist of his fingers.
“I need to feel you,” he growled, his mouth descending to her breast. He sucked a nipple deep, his tongue circling the taut peak while his hands worked at the button of her jeans. “All of you. Now.”
She helped him, shoving the denim down over her hips, kicking them off. He unfastened his own jeans, freeing his erection, which was already fully hard, jutting and flushed. He positioned himself between her spread thighs, the head of his cock nudging against her entrance. She was slick, ready, her body betraying her mind’s turmoil yet again.
He didn’t enter her. He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table behind her, his face inches from hers. “Tell me you believe me.”
She looked into his eyes, seeing the boy from the Parc des Princes and the man who had just shattered her. “I believe you.”
With a thrust of his hips, he buried himself inside her to the hilt. The filling was intense, a sharp, stretching fullness that made her cry out. He set a deep, rolling rhythm, each stroke slower than the frantic pace of the night but somehow more profound, more claiming.
“This is it,” he panted, his forehead against hers, their breath mingling. “No more running. No more fucking doctors of philosophy for you to hide behind. Just this. You. Me. My cock in your perfect cunt where it belongs.”
The crude words, paired with the devastatingly intimate eye contact, undid her. Her climax built not from frenzy but from a terrifying, deep certainty. It rolled through her, a warm, uncoiling wave that made her sob his name, her inner muscles clutching him rhythmically.
Feeling her come triggered his own release. He drove deep and held, a long, guttural groan escaping him as he pulsed inside her. He shuddered, his whole body tensing against hers before collapsing forward, catching his weight on his arms.
They stayed like that for a long moment, joined, breathing raggedly in the quiet kitchen. The smell of sex and coffee and spilled food hung in the air.
Slowly, he pulled out. He righted himself, tucking himself away with a wince. He found a dish towel, ran it under the tap, and carefully cleaned between her legs with a tenderness that contradicted everything that had just happened. He helped her down from the table.
She stood on shaky legs, looking at the wreckage of her kitchen, of her life. Plates were shattered on the floor. The table was a mess. And she was naked, marked, and irrevocably bound to the man wiping her thighs clean.
He tossed the towel in the sink. “So,” he said, as if they’d just concluded a business meeting. “Pack a bag. Enough for a week.”
She blinked. “What?”
“We’re going to Paris. My place. We have a lot of time to make up for.” He said it as if it were the most logical next step. The declaration of love, the raw sex, the shattered china—it was all preamble to this decree.
The momentum of his will was a tidal force. She was standing in the aftermath, but he was already charting the next destination. The watermark was on the inside, and now he was determining the course of the current. She looked at the broken plates, then back at him.
She didn’t say yes.
She didn’t say no.
She simply turned and walked toward her bedroom to pack.
She simply turned and walked toward her bedroom to pack.
The act felt surreal, like observing a character in a film. She pulled a small suitcase from her closet, the scrape of wheels on hardwood abnormally loud. Her hands selected items without conscious thought: underwear, socks, a pair of tailored trousers. Her fingers lingered on a cashmere sweater, then bypassed it for a simpler cotton one. Everything felt like a costume for a role she hadn’t yet read the script for.
From her desk, she took her laptop, her charger, a leather-bound notebook. The anthropologist preparing for fieldwork. The subject: her own dismantled life.
Kylian moved through the apartment like a quiet storm, gathering his few things. She heard the sink run, the clink of him placing the shattered plates in the trash. He was cleaning his mess. The domesticity of it was more unsettling than the violence.
“You won’t need that,” he said from the doorway, nodding at the heavy wool coat she’d just folded. “Paris is warmer. I’ll buy you whatever you forget.”
She looked at him, his form filling the frame. “This isn’t a holiday, Kylian.”
“I know exactly what it is,” he said, his voice low. “It’s a beginning.”
He took the suitcase from her, his hand brushing hers. A simple static charge. He wheeled it to the foyer. Her gaze swept the room—the bed still tangled, the indented pillow where his head had been. It already looked like a crime scene waiting to be processed.
The car waiting downstairs was anonymous, black, with windows tinted to opaque. The driver nodded silently, storing the bag. Kylian guided her into the back seat with a hand on the small of her back. The touch was proprietary, casual. The door thunked shut, sealing them in a plush, silent cocoon.
Munich slid by outside, a blur of grey stone and green park. She watched it recede, her city, her independence, compressed into a postcard viewed through dark glass. He held her hand, his thumb stroking her knuckles. He didn’t speak.
At the private terminal, everything was smooth, expedited. A man in a crisp uniform greeted Kylian by name, his eyes flickering over Vanja without comment. They were ushered directly onto the tarmac. The jet was small, sleek, a predatory bird of polished silver.
Inside, cream leather seats, dark wood, the faint smell of lemony cleaner. Kylian tossed his bag into a cubby and sank into a seat, stretching his long legs. “Two hours,” he said, as she hesitated near the doorway. “Sit.”
She took the seat opposite him, not next to him. A tiny defiance. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. The engines whined to life, a deep vibration humming through the cabin. As they taxied, he pulled out his phone, his face illuminated by the glow. He typed swiftly, a faint smile on his lips.
“Who are you texting?” The question left her before she could stop it.
“My mother,” he said, not looking up. “Telling her I’m bringing you for dinner tomorrow. She’s making gigot d’agneau. I told her you don’t eat lamb. She’s switching to ratatouille.” He finally glanced at her. “She’s happy. She always asked why we were being so stupid.”
The plane accelerated, pressing Vanja back into the leather. The wheels left the ground with a final, definitive bump. Munich fell away beneath them. There was no going back now. He had mobilized an entire world—private jets, mothers, switched menus—to encircle her.
Once they leveled off, he unbuckled and stood. He moved to the small galley, opened a refrigerator. “Water? Wine?”
“Water.”
He brought her a bottle, cold and beaded with condensation. His fingers brushed hers as he handed it over. He remained standing, looking down at her. The confined space magnified his presence, the memory of his body on hers.
“You’re quiet,” he observed.
“What would you like me to say?”
He shrugged. “You could say you’re happy.”
She took a slow drink of water. The cool liquid did nothing to douse the heat inside her. “I feel like I’ve been annexed.”
He laughed, a short, genuine sound. “You have.” He knelt suddenly before her, his hands on the arms of her seat, caging her in. His face was level with hers. “But so have I. You annexed me when I was sixteen and you explained the offside rule to me like I was a idiot, your hair falling over my playbook. This is just me finally raising my flag.”
His kiss was softer this time, persuasive. He tasted of mint and the promise of Paris. Her body responded instantly, a traitorous surge of want. Her hand came up, clutching his shoulder. The notebook for her fieldwork slid from her lap to the floor with a soft thud.
A chime sounded from the cockpit. The pilot’s voice, polite and disconnected, announced they were beginning their descent into Paris earlier than scheduled. Kylian broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers. “Two hours was too long anyway,” he murmured.
He didn’t return to his seat. He stayed on his knees, his hands sliding up her thighs, pushing her dress up around her hips. The air conditioning kissed her bare skin.
“Kylian, not here,” she whispered, but her thighs fell open a fraction.
“Yes here,” he said, his voice a low vibration. He hooked his fingers in the lace of her underwear. “I want you messy for the drive into the city. I want you to feel me between your legs when we sit down with my mother.”
He peeled the fabric down, easing it over her knees and dropping it on the pile with her notebook. He spread her open with his thumbs, looking at her with a focused, carnal appreciation. “So pretty. All swollen from me. From this morning.”
He leaned forward and licked her, a long, flat stroke that made her back arch off the seat. He ate her with a lazy, devoted hunger, his tongue spearing inside her before circling her clit with blunt, precise pressure. She gasped, her fingers tangling in his hair, the airplane seat leather creaking under her. The plane hit a pocket of turbulence, jostling them, and he groaned against her, the vibration arcing through her like lightning.
She came quickly, violently, her hips pumping against his face as he drank her down. He didn’t stop until her spasms subsided into tremors. Then he unfastened his jeans, freeing his cock. He was brutally hard, the tip wet. He didn’t ask. He guided himself to her sopping entrance and pushed in, a smooth, deep invasion that stole her breath anew.
He fucked her slowly, deeply, each measured stroke a deliberate possession. The plane shuddered around them. He watched her face, his own a mask of intense concentration. “This cunt is mine,” he stated, his voice rough. “Say it.”
“It’s yours,” she panted, the words a broken chant. “Yours, yours, yours.”
He gripped her hips, his fingers digging in, and picked up the pace. The sound of skin slapping skin mixed with the drone of the engines. His thrusts became harder, more frantic, chasing his own peak. “Gonna fill you up,” he grunted. “Mark you inside. So you don’t forget for a second who you came home with.”
His orgasm ripped through him, his body slamming into hers, a guttural cry torn from his throat as he pumped his release deep into her womb. He collapsed forward, his head on her chest, both of them slick with sweat, breathing in ragged unison as the plane began its final descent.
They landed in Paris sticky and disheveled, the smell of sex clinging to them. Another car, another silent driver. Vanja gazed out at the familiar streets, the grey rooftops, the fluttering plane trees. It felt like a dream she’d had a thousand times, but now the textures were wrong, the colors off.
His apartment was in the 16th, predictably elegant, immaculately minimalist and impersonal. Floor-to-ceiling windows showcased a breathtaking view of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. It was a catalog image, not a home. He dropped their bags inside the door.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, heading straight for a hallway. “I have a training session I can’t miss. I’ll be back by seven. Don’t overthink. There’s food. Rest.”
And just like that, he was gone, the door closing with a soft click. The silence in the vast, cool space was absolute and deafening. She was alone in his beautiful cage.
She wandered to the windows, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. The City of Light twinkled below, indifferent. Her phone, dormant since Munich, buzzed in her purse.
It was a news alert. She absently opened it.
TRANSFER TALK: BAYERN'S ANDY HEN LINKED WITH SHOCK MOVE TO REAL MADRID. Sources close to the player suggest…
She blinked, the words not quite registering. Andy. Going to Madrid. The Bundesliga landscape shifting without her there to witness it. She felt untethered, floating above the life she’d known.
Another buzz. A text, this time. From Aleksandar Pavlović.
Hey. Heard you’re in Paris. With HIM. Called your apartment, the neighbor said they saw you leave. You okay?
She leaned against the glass, exhaustion seeping into her bones. How to answer that? She typed, deleted, typed again.
I’m… here. It’s complicated.
His reply was immediate. Always is with you two. Listen, I ran into Michael Olise at the national team camp. He asked about you. Nicely. I told him.
Vanja’s breath hitched. She waited.
Aleksandar’s text bubble pulsed. I told him you and Kylian have a history. A long one. He just nodded. Said, ‘I knew it.’
He said, Alek continued, ‘Kylian never had a girlfriend. He just kept talking about his best friend from Paris. The brilliant one who hated football but knew more about it than anyone.’
Vanja’s vision blurred. She could see Michael’s intelligent, kind face, the understanding dawning, the polite withdrawal.
Another bubble. I told Sasha (you know he can’t keep a secret). He laughed. Said, ‘Yeah. They’ve been in love with each other for over a decade.’
The words hung on her screen, a public verdict on their private war. It wasn’t a secret anymore. It was folklore. A decade-long love story everyone had apparently seen except them. The acknowledgement, coming from the outside, didn’t feel liberating. It felt like a sentence.
She slid down the window until she was sitting on the floor, the glittering city sprawled below her. She pressed her phone to her chest. The silence of Kylian’s pristine apartment pressed in, heavy and expectant. She was here. He had won. And the cost, only just beginning to reveal itself, stretched out before her like the endless, luminous grids of Paris.