Chapter 13: Vanja moans as Neuer's tongue circles her clit with torturous precision, his fingers digging into her bare thighs while she grips the railing for support. 'Fuck, Manuel - yes, right there!' she gasps, her hips grinding against his face as he laps at her dripping slit, savoring her taste like a starving man.
The steam from the showers had clung to them like a second skin, washing away the whiskey and the sweat, but not the words. I love you. They hung in the air between Vanja and Manuel for a week, a silent, seismic fact that rearranged everything. The coldness was gone from his eyes, replaced by a watchful, simmering intensity that followed her around the training ground. He didn’t touch her in public, but his gaze was a physical caress, a constant, low-voltage current that only they felt.
It was she who suggested the rooftop. “A do-over,” she’d said, holding up a bag of takeout from the expensive Thai place he liked. “Without the shoving.”
He’d just nodded, a slow, knowing smile playing on his lips.
Now, standing where it all began, the setting sun bled orange and purple across the Munich skyline. The air was cool, carrying the distant scent of blooming linden trees from the city below. He took the food from her and set it aside, untouched, on a nearby bench. His hands, those legendary hands that commanded the penalty area, came up to frame her face.
“A do-over,” he murmured, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw. Then his mouth was on hers, not with the desperate fury of the locker room, but with a deep, claiming certainty that stole her breath. It was a kiss that spoke of ownership, not of possession, but of a profound, unsettling recognition.
He broke away, his eyes dark with intent. “Last time I had you against this railing, I was an asshole.”
“You were,” she agreed, her voice a little unsteady.
“This time,” he growled, his hands sliding from her face down her body, turning her smoothly to face the sprawling city, his front pressed against her back, “I’m going to worship you.”
His fingers worked the button of her jeans, dragged the zipper down. He pushed the denim and her underwear down to her thighs, the cool evening air a shock against her bare skin. He sank to his knees behind her.
“Manuel,” she breathed, her hands gripping the cold metal of the railing.
“Quiet.” His voice was a low rumble. “I want to taste you properly this time. Without anger. Without anyone else.”
His hands spread her apart, and his tongue found her in one long, slow, flat stroke. It was nothing like the brutal spearing in the closet. This was devotion. He lapped at her, his tongue exploring every fold with a languid, torturous patience that made her knees buckle. He groaned against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. “You taste like heaven. Fuck, Vanja.”
He focused on her clit, circling it with a relentless, perfect pressure, then sucking it gently into his mouth. His thumbs hooked over the crests of her hips, holding her open, completely vulnerable to his mouth. The contrast was dizzying—the hard, unyielding railing under her hands, the infinite drop of the city before her, and the devastating, tender assault between her legs.
“That’s it,” he muttered, his words muffled against her flesh. “Come on my tongue. Let go for me.”
He drove her relentlessly towards the edge. Her orgasm built not as a sudden explosion, but as a slow, rising tide, tightening every muscle, coiling the breath in her lungs. When it broke, it was a silent, shattering wave that left her trembling, her cries swallowed by the vastness of the sky. He didn’t stop, licking her through the aftershocks until she was whimpering, oversensitive and raw.
He rose, his own arousal a hard line against her ass. He turned her to face him, his eyes blazing with a possessive fire. He unzipped his jeans, freeing his cock, thick and ruddy in the twilight. He lifted her, his strength effortless, and sat her on the wide, cold railing. The city spun dizzily below her.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice rough. He guided himself into her, filling her with one deep, slow thrust. “Only me.”
He held her there, perched on the edge, his hands gripping her hips, his body the only thing anchoring her to the world. He moved inside her, a deep, rhythmic claiming. Each thrust was a punctuation to his earlier confession. I. Love. You. He fucked her with a raw, open need that was more intimate than any violence.
“This perfect, beautiful cunt is mine,” he grunted, his forehead pressed against hers, his breath coming in hot gusts. “Say it.”
“It’s yours,” she gasped, meaning it with her entire being.
He drove into her, harder, faster, his control fraying. “I’m going to fill you up. I’m going to come so deep inside you.” The filthy words, spoken with such fervent tenderness, undid her completely. She came again, a sharp, clenching climax that milked his own release from him. He groaned, a long, guttural sound, and pulsed within her, his body shuddering against hers.
He held her for a long time, both of them clinging to each other on the precipice.
The photograph was grainy, taken from a staggering distance with a long lens, but it was unmistakable. Vanja, perched on the railing, her head thrown back in ecstasy, Manuel Neuer buried between her legs. The headline in BILD was a masterpiece of German sensationalism: “DER TITAN UND SEIN FRÄULEIN! BAYERN’S KEEPER TAMES BECKENBAUER’S HEISSES MÄDCHEN!”
The fallout was instant and deafening.
Vanja’s phone exploded. Her father, her grandfather’s old friends, the U21 federation. Questions, concern, thinly veiled disapproval. The Bayern press office was in crisis mode, issuing bland statements about respecting players’ private lives.
Manuel found her in her office, staring at the tabloid on her screen. He closed the door and leaned against it. “Let them talk.”
“They’re calling me your ‘heisses Mädchen’. Your hot girl. They’re reducing everything I’ve worked for to this.” Her voice was tight.
“Fuck them.” He crossed the room in two strides, his gaze intense. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What?”
“A vacation. Somewhere no one knows us. Somewhere with no football, no cameras, no fucking closets.” He cupped her face. “Just you and me. We need it.”
He was right. The pressure was a physical weight, and the look in his eyes offered the only escape. She nodded.
The Greek island of Folegandros was a stark, beautiful world of whitewashed houses and sheer cliffs plunging into a sea of impossible blue. Their villa was perched on the edge of the caldera, a private infinity pool seeming to spill into the Aegean. For the first two days, they did nothing but sleep, swim, and fuck. They fucked in the pool as the sun set, his hands braced against the edge, her back to his chest as he moved inside her with a slow, aquatic rhythm. They fucked on the terrace under a blanket of stars, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the distant chirp of cicadas.
It was on the third night, tangled in the sweat-damp sheets of their massive bed, that the last wall came down. The moon was full, casting a silver light through the open windows.
He was moving over her, his thrusts deep and steady, when he stilled, looking down at her. The raw emotion in his blue eyes was more terrifying than any anger.
“When I saw you with Kimmich,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, “I thought I would lose my mind. The thought of another man touching you… it made me want to break things. To break him.”
He began to move again, each word punctuated by a slow, deliberate thrust. “I hated you for it. I hated that you could make me feel that… that savage.” He drove into her, harder. “And then I hated myself for wanting you even more because of it.”
He lowered his mouth to her ear. “I love you,” he whispered, the words a sacred vow in the moonlit room. “And I am never, ever letting you go.”
He captured her mouth in a searing kiss as his hips found a frantic, final rhythm. This time, when they fell over the edge together, it felt less like a ending and more like a beginning, the first true page of a story they were only just starting to write.
The villa’s silence was a living thing, broken only by the whisper of the sea far below and the slow, synced rhythm of their breathing. Manuel’s weight was a solid, comforting anchor on her, his skin cooling where it pressed against hers. He didn’t roll away, instead burying his face in her hair, his arms tightening around her in a wordless clutch.
“I meant it,” he murmured into the dark, his voice rough with spent passion. “Every word.”
“I know,” she whispered back, her fingers tracing the powerful lines of his back. The truth of it settled deep in her bones, a quiet, terrifying certainty.
Returning to Munich was like stepping back into a cage whose bars were made of flashing cameras and whispered speculation. But something fundamental had shifted. He held her hand, openly, walking through the airport’s chaos, his grip firm and unapologetic. The headlines shifted from scandal to fascination. “Neuer’s New Focus!” one sports magazine declared, alongside a photo of him making a breathtaking save during a Champions League match. His game had ascended to a preternatural level of calm, his reactions seeming almost prescient.
He was playing like a man who had finally laid down a heavy, unseen burden.
Vanja, in turn, carved her space with a new, unshakeable confidence. Her sessions with the U21 squad were sharper, her tactical insights delivered with a clarity that commanded respect. The players, initially wary of the gossip, now looked at her and saw only a formidable mind. She was doing wonderfully, her own success a quiet rebuttal to anyone who had doubted her.
The team dinner was Joshua’s idea, a gesture of uneasy peace. He arrived with Lina on his arm, a short, skinny brunette with a sharp, assessing gaze. She was polite, her smile not quite reaching her eyes as she shook Vanja’s hand. “So you’re the prodigy,” Lina said, her tone light but layered with a subtle acid. “Joshua talks about your… innovative methods.”
“I’m sure he does,” Vanja replied, her smile equally polished and equally false.
Throughout the meal, Lina’s dislike was a quiet, persistent hum. She hung on Joshua’s every word, her laughter a fraction too loud, her touches proprietary. She watched Vanja across the table, her eyes cataloging everything from her dress to the easy way Manuel’s hand rested on the small of Vanja’s back. It was the quiet, simmering jealousy of a woman who knew, on some instinctive level, that her partner’s history with the other woman was a ghost she could never quite exorcise.
Later, in the sanctuary of Manuel’s apartment, the tension of the evening melted under the heat of their need. He backed her against the front door the moment it closed, his mouth claiming hers in a kiss that tasted of wine and possession. “She couldn’t keep her eyes off you,” he growled, his hands already pulling at her clothes.
“She’s insecure,” Vanja gasped, her head falling back as his teeth grazed her neck.
“She sees what I see.” His fingers hooked into her lace underwear and tore them, the sound sharp and final in the quiet hall. “This perfect fucking cunt that haunts my every thought.” He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, her back against the cool wood of the door. He freed himself from his trousers, his cock springing free, thick and eager. He didn’t hesitate, driving into her with a single, deep thrust that stole her breath and drew a ragged cry from her lips.
He fucked her there with a raw, primal intensity, each slam of his hips a reaffirmation of his claim. “You’re mine,” he grunted, his breath hot against her ear. “Every smart, sarcastic, beautiful inch of you. Tell me.”
“I’m yours,” she chanted, the words dissolving into a moan as he hit a spot deep inside that made her vision blur. Her climax ripped through her, violent and overwhelming, her inner muscles clamping down on him in rhythmic pulses. With a guttural roar, he followed, pouring into her, his own release a hot, claiming flood.
He carried her to the bedroom, their limbs entangled. Later, sated and slick with sweat, he lay behind her, his body curving around hers. His hand splayed possessively over her lower belly. “I want to come inside you every day,” he whispered, his voice thick with sleep and something darker, more profound. “I want to fill you until there’s no doubt who you belong to.”
The words should have felt like a cage. Instead, they felt like a home. She drifted to sleep with the image of his hand on her stomach burned into her mind, a promise of a future that was as terrifying as it was inevitable. The game ahead was all that mattered now, a ninety-minute battle that would decide everything.