Chapter 7: The Captain's Reward
The dawn was a pale, reluctant scrape of grey at the windows. Mats’s heavy arm was slung across her waist, his breathing a deep, satisfied rumble against her neck. Vanja lay perfectly still, watching the silhouettes of rooftops solidify against the lightening sky. The power she’d wielded over his big, capable body hours before had dissipated, leaving only the dull weight of his admiration and the stale smell of sex in her clean sheets.
She carefully lifted his arm and slid from the bed. The wooden floor was cold under her bare feet. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her skin under water so hot it turned her flesh pink, as if she could scour away the memory of his reverent whispers. Goddess. Perfect. Everything. The words felt like lint, clinging where they didn’t belong.
When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, he was awake, propped on the pillows, watching her with a soft, dazed smile that made her stomach clench.
“Morning,” he said, his voice gravelly with sleep and awe.
“You should go,” she said, her tone not unkind, but utterly final. “Early training.”
The smile faltered. “Right. Of course.” He scrambled out of bed, his nakedness suddenly awkward, boyish. He dressed in the clothes from last night, his movements hurried. At the door, he hovered. “Last night was… Vanja, it meant something. To me.”
She looked at him, at his earnest, open face, and felt a sudden, terrifying wave of loneliness. Here was simple devotion, uncomplicated by genius or cruelty. It was a warm blanket she could smother in. “I know, Mats,” she said, softening her voice just a fraction. “It was… intense.”
He seized the scrap of kindness. “Can I see you again? Tonight? I could cook. My place is a dump, but I make a good muckalica.”
She almost said no. The word was on her tongue. But the image of Niko’s silent, contemptuous fury flashed behind her eyes. The Bayern offer, a digital ghost in her inbox. The cool, intellectual pull of Joshua, hundreds of kilometers away. Mats was here. He was heat and immediate, tangible need. “Okay,” she heard herself say. “Text me the address.”
His grin was dazzling. He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned her face, letting his lips brush her cheek. He didn’t seem to mind. He floated out her door.
The day was a study in polarized silence. On the training pitch, Niko’s dispassionate instructions continued. “Your first touch was a cemetery, Oldenburg. Bury it.” He addressed the group, but the criticism was a personal dart aimed only at her. When she executed a flawless, one-touch pass that split the defense in a drill, he said nothing, simply turned his clipboard to the next page.
Mats, meanwhile, moved in a orbit of palpable worship. He fetched her water without being asked. He positioned himself beside her in every huddle, his body a protective barrier. The other players noticed. The nudges, the knowing looks. Vanja ignored them all.
That evening, his apartment was exactly as described: a functional, messy bachelor pad smelling of fried onions and laundry powder. The muckalica was hearty and too salty. He drank Rakija from the bottle and talked about his village in Serbia, his eyes growing moist. She listened, nodding, a sociologist observing a simple, passionate subject. His hand found her knee under the small table, his thumb rubbing circles.
“You’re different from anyone,” he said, his voice thick. “You make me feel like I could be different, too.”
That was her cue. She stood, took his hand, and led him to his unmade bed. This time, there was no slow burn, no pretend seduction. She pushed him down onto the mattress and knelt before him, pulling his cock from his jeans. She took him deep, using her throat with a practiced, merciless efficiency she had never shown him before. He cried out, fingers tangling in her hair, not to guide her, but to hold on for dear life.
“Fuck, Vanja, your mouth… it’s like heaven and hell, Christ…”
She pulled off, a slick pop. “Stand up.” He obeyed, swaying. She turned, bending over the foot of the bed, presenting herself. “Do it. Hard. Don’t talk.”
He didn’t need telling twice. He drove into her from behind, a single, brutal thrust that punched the air from her lungs. He set a rhythm that was all primal force, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. The bedframe slammed against the wall in a frantic, ugly tempo. She closed her eyes, letting the sheer physicality of it obliterate thought. This was the opposite of Niko’s calculated defilement. This was animal function. She reached between her own legs, rubbing her clit with rough, hurried circles, chasing a release that was purely mechanical.
“This cunt…” Mats grunted, slamming into her. “This perfect, famous cunt… is mine right now. Telling me to fuck it. Jesus.”
She came with a sharp, stifled cry, her inner muscles fluttering around his pounding length. The sensation tipped him over. He roared, emptying into her with a final, shuddering thrust, then collapsed his weight onto her back, his sweat soaking her shirt.
When he could breathe again, he nuzzled her hair. “Stay. Please.”
She didn’t stay. She left him sleeping, the empty Rakija bottle on the floor beside the bed.
A pattern solidified over the next week. Training under Niko’s arctic gaze. Secret, wordless couplings with Mats in his apartment, where she dictated the terms with silent, physical commands. He was becoming addicted to her cold control, to the privilege of being used by her. His adoration was a cage she could see being built around her, its bars crafted from his desperate love.
The Bayern offer required a response. Her father called daily, anxious. “They need an answer, Vanja. This is your life! Don’t let that man bully you.” That man. He meant Niko.
She was sitting on her pristine sofa, the sky outside a deep violet, turning the city lights into sharp jewels, when her phone buzzed. Not Mats. Not her father.
Joshua Kimmich: So. Are you staying in Dortmund to be a statue on a pedestal?
Her breath hitched. It was the first direct challenge, the first acknowledgment of the unspoken war.
Vanja: Statues don’t score goals.
Joshua Kimmich: No. But they gather dust. And pigeons. Thursday. I’m in town. Same cafe. 7 PM. I want to hear you say what you want.
She stared at the message. I want to hear you say what you want. It was a question no one else had truly asked. Niko told her what she was. Mats worshipped what she appeared to be. Her father wanted what was safest. Joshua was asking her to define her own desire.
The door to her apartment buzzer sounded, harsh and unexpected. She wasn’t expecting anyone. A tremor of foreboding passed through her. She went to the intercom. “Yes?”
“It’s Niko.”
The voice was flat, devoid of its usual coached authority. It was just a man’s voice. Cold fear, sharp and acrid, flooded her mouth. She pressed the entry button without a word.
She heard his footsteps in the hall, measured, heavy. She opened the door before he could knock. He stood there, out of his coaching suit, dressed in dark jeans and a leather jacket. He looked older. He looked tired. And his eyes, those usually impenetrable eyes, were dark with a turmoil that made her step back.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a soft, definitive click. He didn’t move further into the room. He just looked at her, his gaze traveling from her bare feet up her legs, over her loose sweats, settling on her face.
“The board is selling you,” he said, his voice rough.
The words were a physical blow. “What?”
“To Bayern. They accepted the improved offer this afternoon. I fought them. I told them you were not ready, that it would destroy your development. They see a number too large to ignore.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, a rare gesture of helplessness. “They see a marketing miracle. They don’t see a player.”
The news should have felt like freedom. It felt like falling. “When?”
“End of the season. The deal is done.” He took a step toward her, then another, until he was close enough for her to smell the faint scent of his cologne and the cold night air on his jacket. The professional mask was gone, completely. What remained was raw, hungry, and furious. “You got what you wanted. Your escape. Your chance to play for a real club.” The last words were a sneer, but it was directed at himself, at the situation.
“It’s not what I—”
“Don’t lie!” The shout echoed in her minimal apartment. He grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging in. “You’ve been looking for a way out since the moment you arrived. Through Bruckner’s pathetic adoration. Through Kimmich’s intellectual flirtation. Now you have it. A golden ticket.”
She tried to pull away, but his grip was iron. “You told me I wasn’t finished here! You told them it was a mistake!”
“Because it is!” He shook her, once. “For you! You think Munich will be different? You’ll be a bigger novelty, a louder circus. And he will be there. In the same city. Waiting to collect his interesting new project.” His face was inches from hers, his breath hot. “Is that what you want? Him? After everything?”
The question hung between them, charged with all the unsaid things, the spit on her tongue, the rough ownership in the locker room, the silent war of the last month. Her fear crystalized into a sharp, defiant anger.
“What do you care what I want?” she spat. “You don’t own me. The deal is done. You just said so.”
Something in his eyes snapped. The control, the carefully maintained distance, evaporated. The look he gave her was one of pure, unadulterated hunger, leashed for so long it had turned feral.
“No,” he growled. “The deal is done in two months.”
In one violent motion, he spun her around and pushed her face-first against the cool glass of her floor-to-ceiling window. The city glittered below, a thousand indifferent lights. He yanked her sweatpants and underwear down to her knees in one brutal pull. The cold glass shocked her skin.
“Niko, don’t–”
The plea was cut short as he pressed against her, his own clothes shoved down just enough. There was no preparation, no tenderness, only the hard, relentless push as he forced himself inside her. She was dry, and it burned, a sharp, tearing friction. She gasped, her forehead pressed against the cold pane, her breath fogging the glass.
“You see this?” he snarled in her ear, his hips pistoning against her ass, each thrust a punishment. “This is what you are to me. Not a statue. Not a fucking marketing miracle. This. A tight, defiant cunt I have to claim because it’s the only truth you understand.” He wrapped a hand around her throat, not squeezing, just holding, a dominant collar. “You hate me for it. Good. Hate me. It’s real. It’s more real than that boy’ worship or that pretty midfielder’s clever chats.”
Tears of pain and humiliation welled in her eyes, blurring the city lights. But beneath the burn, her body, traitorously, began to respond. The sheer audacity of it, the raw, vulgar truth of his possession, sparked a low, dark fire in her belly. She felt herself wetting around him, accommodating his brutal march. A sob escaped her, part agony, part shocking arousal.
He felt it. Of course he did. His rhythm changed, becoming deeper, more focused, aiming for a place that made her knees buckle. “That’s it,” he breathed, the triumph in his voice savage. “Your body knows. It knows who it belongs to. Even when your mind is dreaming of escapes.”
He took his hand from her throat and slid it around her hip, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing with a crude, precise pressure. The dual assault was overwhelming. The pain morphed, twisted into a perverse, all-consuming pleasure. She came against the glass, a silent, shaking convulsion that rippled through her core and around his invading cock. Her cry was muffled by the window.
His own release followed, a harsh groan against her shoulder as he emptied into her, his hips stuttering their final, possessive claim. He stayed inside her, buried to the hilt, his weight pinning her against the cold, fogged glass for a long minute.
Slowly, he pulled out. He straightened his clothes with swift, efficient motions. Vanja slid down the glass, her sweatpants around her ankles, her body trembling. She didn’t turn around. She heard him walk to the door.
His voice, when it came, was quiet again, drained of all fury, hollow.
“Two months, Vanja. Then you’re their problem.”
The door opened and closed.
She remained on the floor, the ghost of the city shimmering through the fog her body had left on the window. The ache between her legs was profound, a fresh brand. The Bayern deal was done. She was leaving. She had won.
Why did it feel like such a devastating defeat?
Her phone, face-up on the sofa, lit up with a new notification.
Joshua Kimmich: So. 7 PM Thursday?
She stared at the words, then at her blurred reflection in the glass. She saw a girl with tangled hair and wild, swollen eyes. A girl who had just been fucked as a punishment and came from it. A girl who was being sold for a record fee. A girl who had a captain in love with her and a genius midfielder asking for her truth.
She picked up the phone. Her thumbs were steady.
Vanja: Yes.
She sent it. Then she pulled up Mats’s contact. She typed a different message.
Vanja: Can’t come over tonight. Not feeling well.
His reply was instant, dripping with concern. Do you need anything? Soup? Medicine?
She didn’t answer. She sat in the dark, on the floor, feeling the proof of Niko’s final claim slowly cooling on her inner thighs, and made a silent, furious vow to herself.
In Munich, she would never be anyone’s claim again.