Chapter 6: Chapter 6
The bass hit like a physical thing, a deep, relentless thump that vibrated through the soles of Joshua’s shoes and up into his bones. Obsidian was packed, a writhing mass of bodies under the flickering neon strobes that cut through the thick haze of sweat, expensive cologne, and spilled cocktails. Chrome surfaces reflected fractured light, black leather booths swallowed shadows. Joshua leaned against the bar, nursing a vodka tonic, the ice long melted. He wasn’t dancing. He was observing. Scanning. The disciplined focus honed on the pitch felt misplaced here, yet it was the same mechanism: assess, categorize, control.
Lina pressed against his side, her body moving subtly to the beat, her hand warm on his arm. She’d been watching him all evening. Since the stadium tunnel. Since his clipped answers, the distance he’d maintained even after Bayern clawed back a win. The victory felt hollow, the cheers a distant noise. That frozen moment after the crossbar, the echo of Vanja’s laugh… it lingered like a phantom limb.
"Stop it," Lina murmured, leaning close so her lips brushed his ear over the pounding music. Her breath was warm, scented faintly with mint and vodka. "You’re doing it again."
Joshua didn’t look at her. His gaze tracked a flash of red-streaked blonde hair near the VIP section. It wasn’t her. Just someone else trying too hard. "Doing what?"
"Scanning." Lina’s voice held a note of frustration now, sharpened by the alcohol and the simmering tension of the past days. "Looking for her." The name hung unspoken but potent between them.
He finally turned his head, his blue eyes meeting hers. The neon lights flashed across his face, highlighting the sharp planes, the guarded stillness. "Who?" The word was flat, deliberate. A dismissal. A wall slammed down.
Lina stared at him. The noise of the club seemed to recede for a second, replaced by the pounding of her own heart. Jealousy, hot and acidic, surged. She knew. She’d seen the fracture. Obsidian was Vanja’s territory, her playground. The thought of her here, laughing, dancing, effortlessly commanding attention while Joshua… looked… was unbearable. She hated Vanja’s confidence, her blatant disregard for boundaries, the way she seemed to exist just to disrupt Joshua’s meticulously ordered world. Hated how Joshua reacted to it, even if he denied it.
Before he could deflect again, before he could rebuild that icy wall completely, Lina acted. She grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him down. Her kiss wasn’t gentle. It was fierce, possessive, fueled by insecurity and a desperate need to reclaim him, to blot out the ghost of the other woman. Her lips pressed hard against his, her tongue demanding entry.
Joshua stiffened for a fraction of a second, surprised. Then, almost mechanically, he responded. His hand came up to cradle the back of her head, his mouth moving against hers. It wasn’t passion; it was acquiescence. A performance. A distraction he allowed himself to sink into because the alternative – the gnawing, unfamiliar void Alex’s words and Vanja’s absence had opened – was worse. He kissed her back, deepening it, letting the heat and the noise and the taste of her vodka drown out everything else.
Lina melted against him, a soft sigh escaping into his mouth. Relief flooded her, warm and dizzying. He’s mine, she thought fiercely, her fingers tightening in his hair. He chose me. He’s here, with me. The image of Vanja on Calafiori’s arm, the echo of her laugh at the stadium, momentarily faded under the physical reality of Joshua’s arms around her, his mouth on hers. She broke the kiss, resting her forehead against his, breathing heavily. "Okay?" she whispered, searching his eyes.
Joshua’s gaze was distant, looking over her shoulder into the swirling chaos of the dance floor. "Yeah," he murmured, his voice rough. "Okay." He pulled her closer, burying his face momentarily in her hair, inhaling the familiar scent of her shampoo. A temporary harbor. The bass thumped on.
Milan breathed differently than Munich. Warmer, louder, infused with espresso and exhaust fumes and centuries of layered history. Vanja leaned on the wrought-iron balcony railing of Ricardo’s sleek apartment overlooking the Duomo, bathed in the golden glow of streetlights below. The city hummed, a constant, vibrant backdrop. She wore one of Ricardo’s oversized white shirts, the sleeves rolled up. Inside, the remnants of their late dinner cluttered the table – empty wine bottles, plates smeared with truffle risotto.
Ricardo stepped out behind her, barefoot, wearing only low-slung sweatpants. He slid his arms around her waist from behind, pulling her back against his solid chest. His skin was warm, radiating heat. He nuzzled her neck, his stubble rough against her sensitive skin. "Bella," he murmured, his voice thick with wine and desire. His hands slid up under the shirt, finding bare skin, tracing the curve of her hip, moving higher.
Vanja closed her eyes, leaning back into him. The familiar scent of him – spice, clean sweat, Milan – enveloped her. It was easy. Comfortable. Passionate. He turned her in his arms, his dark eyes intense in the dim balcony light. He kissed her, deep and slow, tasting of red wine and promise. His hands were everywhere, possessive, skilled, igniting familiar pathways of pleasure. She responded, arching into him, her fingers tangling in his dark hair, pulling him closer. The cool night air contrasted sharply with the heat building between them.
He walked her backwards, through the open French doors, into the shadowed bedroom. The shirt fell away. Skin met skin. The city lights cast long, shifting patterns on the walls as they moved together on the rumpled sheets. It was fierce, hungry, a reclaiming. Ricardo’s touch was demanding, leaving marks she knew she’d find later. He knew her body, knew how to draw gasps, how to make her forget. And for stretches of time, she did. The disciplined focus of Joshua’s eyes, the cold dismissal, Alex’s cutting "why waste time?", the sting of seeing Lina’s hand on his arm at Alex’s dinner… it all blurred under Ricardo’s consuming presence.
Afterwards, they lay tangled in the damp sheets, breathing heavily. Ricardo propped himself up on one elbow, tracing a fingertip along the line of her collarbone, down towards the swell of her breast. A satisfied smirk played on his lips. "He missed this," he stated, his voice low and confident. It wasn’t a question.
Vanja turned her head on the pillow, meeting his gaze. A flicker of defiance, sharp and familiar, sparked in her eyes, cutting through the post-coital haze. She reached up, her fingers brushing his jawline. "Yeah," she conceded, her voice husky. Then, a slow, knowing smirk curved her own lips, mirroring his. "And you didn’t." She pulled his face down to hers, kissing him hard, a punctuation mark. A claim of her own. The ghost of another man’s indifference lingered in the shadows of the Milanese night, momentarily banished by the heat of the body beside her. But not erased. Never erased.
The morning light sliced through the slats of the blinds, painting stripes of gold across the tangle of limbs and damp sheets. Ricardo woke hard and demanding, his thick forearm already snaking possessively around Vanja’s waist, pulling her bare back flush against his hotter, broader chest. He didn’t speak, just grunted low in his throat, a primal sound that vibrated through her, as his calloused hand slid roughly up her stomach to palm her breast, his thumb finding her nipple and pinching, hard.
“Fuck, you’re already wet for me,” he rasped, voice thick with sleep and lust, his fingers dipping lower, past the thatch of curls, finding her slick heat easily. He shoved two thick fingers inside her without preamble, curling them, making her gasp. “Like a little slut,” he breathed against her neck, biting the tendon there, his other hand gripping her hip, holding her in place. She arched, pressing back against the solid wall of muscle and ink that was Ricardo, a moan escaping her lips – part surrender, part performance.
He pulled his fingers out, slick and glistening, and spat roughly into his palm before slicking himself. The thick, heavy length of him pressed against her entrance, blunt and insistent. He didn’t ask. He never asked. Just gripped her hip tighter, positioned her how he wanted, and slammed home in one brutal thrust, burying himself to the hilt with a guttural groan. “Christ, you take it so good,” he panted, his hips already pistoning, setting a punishing rhythm that rocked the bed frame against the wall. Vanja cried out, the force of it driving the air from her lungs, her fingers scrabbling at the sheets. He felt huge inside her, stretching her, claiming her, the familiar burn a counterpoint to the deep, bruising ache blooming on her hip where his fingers dug in.
His rhythm was relentless, animalistic. Skin slapped against skin, a wet, obscene counterpoint to his ragged breaths near her ear. Sweat beaded on his sculpted back, tracing the intricate patterns of his tattoos – snarling beasts and cryptic symbols she’d traced a hundred times. He fucked her like he owned her, which, in this moment, he did. His grip shifted, one hand fisting in her hair, pulling her head back sharply, exposing her throat to his teeth, the other hand sliding around to rub tight, urgent circles on her clit. “Come for me, puta,” he growled, his thrusts becoming shorter, harder, desperate. “Scream my fucking name.”
Sensation crashed over her, sharp and physical – the relentless stretch, the rough stimulation, the bite of his fingers – triggering a hard, clenching orgasm that made her back bow and her cry tear from her throat, raw and loud. Her inner muscles clamped down hard on him. Ricardo roared, his rhythm fracturing, his hips slamming into her with brutal finality as he emptied himself deep inside her, shuddering violently, his weight collapsing onto her back, pinning her to the mattress, soaked in sweat and the scent of sex.
He lay heavy and spent, his breath hot on her shoulder, one arm still draped possessively across her. Vanja stared at the sunlit dust motes dancing in the air. Her body hummed, thoroughly used, thoroughly fucked. Yet, as the frantic pulse between her legs faded, something else surfaced. Not satisfaction. A hollow ache, sharper than any physical sensation. Behind her closed lids, instead of Ricardo’s dark, possessive gaze, she saw cool, analytical blue eyes. Joshua’s eyes. The intense, focused stare he leveled on the pitch, the one that had once, fleetingly, locked onto hers across Alex’s crowded backyard. The image was absurd, intrusive, cutting through the haze of sweat and semen.
Ricardo nuzzled her shoulder, pressing a surprisingly tender kiss there, his thumb tracing lazy circles on her hip. “Mine,” he murmured, voice thick with sated contentment. Her heart clenched, not with reciprocal feeling, but with a cold stab of guilt. He was in love with her, she realized with sudden, painful clarity. This tattooed, passionate, demanding man, who flew across Europe just to fuck her senseless, genuinely loved her. And all she could think about was another man. A man who barely acknowledged her existence. A man who had Joshua Kimmich, the footballing metronome, wrapped securely in his ordered, disciplined life. A man whose girlfriend, Lina, looked at Vanja with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Vanja couldn’t blame her. Lina saw the threat, the chaos Vanja represented. Lina saw what Vanja herself couldn't bear to face in the mirror. A selfish, destructive impulse wrapped in expensive clothes. A walking complication. Joshua had moved on, found someone stable, someone who fit. Someone who wasn't her. He’d probably forgotten her the moment she walked out of Alex’s yard. The self-loathing rose like bile in her throat, thick and choking, far more potent than any lingering pleasure from Ricardo’s possession. She hated the girl Joshua had chosen. She hated Ricardo for loving her. Most of all, staring at the blinding stripes of sunlight, she hated the reflection she couldn’t escape.