Chapter 10: Marie takes Vanja's announcement as an invitation for one last Munich farewell, pinning her naked body face-down on the padded table and mounting her with a strap-on while whispering 'Let's give you something to remember me by' as she pounds Vanja to multiple screaming orgasms.
The private recovery room was too warm. Vanja lay face down on the plush massage table, the sweet, cloying scent of eucalyptus doing little to mask the underlying tang of chlorine from the pool below. Her right hip, a perpetual snag of tight fascia and complaining muscle, throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She’d pushed too hard this morning, trying to outrun the chaos in her head with the brutal, familiar logic of interval training.
The door opened and closed with a soft sigh. Vanja didn’t lift her head from the cradle. She knew the rhythm of the footsteps—confident, unhurried, with a slight tap of a heel.
“You’re early,” Vanja mumbled into the leather.
“You were late for your cool-down stretches. Again.” Marie’s voice was a low, smooth contralto, laced with amusement. Vanja heard the click of a bottle, the soft squirt of oil being warmed between palms. “Dino told me you’ve been… distracted. Packing, I assume.”
The first touch of Marie’s hands was a professional, spreading warmth across the broad expanse of Vanja’s lower back. Her thumbs found the knotted ropes of paraspinal muscle beside Vanja’s spine and began to work with a deep, knowing pressure. Vanja groaned, the sound partly relief, partly surrender.
“Something like that,” Vanja conceded.
Marie’s hands moved lower, kneading the dense, powerful flesh of Vanja’s glutes. The touch was still clinical, but slower. More deliberate. “London is a big change. The rain will ruin your hair.”
Vanja snorted. “My hair is the least of it.”
“Mm.” Marie’s fingers traced the crease where thigh met buttock, a slow, lingering exploration that was no longer about anatomy. “And the little Swedish striker? Will she be enough to keep you… entertained?”
The question hung in the steam-scented air. Vanja tensed. Marie’s palms smoothed over the tension, coaxing it away.
“Tilly is none of your business, Marie.”
“Isn’t she?” Marie’s voice dropped to a whisper. Her hands slid down the back of Vanja’s thighs, pushing the loose shorts she wore further up. The cooler air hit her exposed skin, followed by the heat of Marie’s palms. “When you’re here, on my table, everything is my business. Especially the things that make you tight.” Her thumbs dug into Vanja’s hamstrings, a pain so sharp and perfect it made Vanja’s eyes water. “Like this. You’re holding all your stress here. And here.”
Her hands drifted inward, towards Vanja’s inner thighs. The touch was feather-light now, a whisper of contact that made Vanja’s breath hitch.
“I need to check your hip flexors, Vanja. The real ones. Not the superficial mess.” Marie’s tone brooked no argument. It was the voice of a expert, a woman who knew bodies better than their owners. “Roll over.”
A prickle of resistance went through Vanja, but it was dull, muted by the warm oil and the skilled hands and the sheer, exhausting weight of the decision she’d already made. She rolled onto her back, the towel across her chest a flimsy shield. The dimmed light was kind, painting everything in soft amber shadows.
Marie stood beside the table, looking down at her. She was dressed in simple black leggings and a tight tank top, her long blonde hair pulled back in a severe ponytail that sharpened the elegant lines of her face. Her sea-green eyes weren’t kind. They were hungry, assessing, like a predator examining a particularly tempting piece of prey.
“Tell me about London,” Marie said, her gaze not leaving Vanja’s.
“I told you. I’m moving. For training.” The lie was ash in her mouth.
Marie’s lips curved in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She placed a hand high on Vanja’s inner thigh, her fingers splayed. “Your psoas is a disaster.” Her thumb pressed deep, into the sensitive groin muscle. Vanja gasped, her hips lifting involuntarily off the table. The pain was intimate, shocking. “See? All locked up. Full of… unresolved tension.”
She maintained the pressure, watching Vanja’s face, her other hand coming to rest on Vanja’s opposite hip, pinning her in place. “You think you can just run away to another city and it will be simple? You and your innocent little football player in a flat with bad lighting?”
“Stop it,” Vanja breathed, but her body was betraying her, a treacherous heat pooling low in her belly, separate from the deep ache of the muscle release.
“I won’t.” Marie leaned closer, her perfume—something expensive and sharp with jasmine—cutting through the eucalyptus. “Because someone needs to remind you what you’re leaving behind.” Her thumb ceased its clinical pressure and began to circle instead, a slow, torturous orbit that drifted closer and closer to the center of Vanja’s heat. The thin fabric of Vanja’s shorts was a negligible barrier.
Vanja’s head fell back, a weak denial dying in her throat. Her hands gripped the edges of the table.
“Isabella,” Marie whispered, the name a secret dropped into the space between them. “She’s been asking about you. Wondering why you’ve been distant.” Her fingers finally slipped beneath the waistband of Vanja’s shorts, finding the damp thatch of hair beneath. Vanja jerked. “When I tell her you’re leaving Munich for some Swedish cunt…” Marie’s middle finger slid down, through slick folds, finding Vanja’s entrance with unerring accuracy. She didn’t push in. Just rested it there, a promissory note. “…Isabella will burn this city down looking for you.”
Then she pushed.
One long, slow, invading finger, sinking deep into Vanja’s cunt. Vanja cried out, back arching, the towel falling away from her breasts. Marie watched her, cold and fascinated, as she began to move her finger in a slow, corkscrewing motion.
“You’re so fucking wet for bad news,” Marie murmured, her breath hot against Vanja’s ear. She added a second finger, the stretch making Vanja gasp. “Is this what you want? A messy end? A reason to feel guilty when you’re fucking her in your London bed?”
“Fuck you,” Vanja spat, but she was rocking her hips, meeting the thrust of Marie’s hand.
“No, schatz. Fuck you.” Marie’s words were bites against Vanja’s neck. She crooked her fingers, pressing up against a spot that made Vanja see white. Her pace increased, no longer probing but fucking, hard and relentless. The crude, wet sounds of her hand moving in and out of Vanja’s body filled the small room. “This is Munich. This is what you’re choosing to leave. This depth. This… understanding.”
Vanja was unspooling, the careful control she wielded on the track utterly obliterated. Marie was a force, single-minded and consuming. She bit down on the tendon of Vanja’s neck, a sharp, claiming pain that yanked a ragged sob from Vanja’s chest.
“Come for me,” Marie commanded, her voice guttural. “Come on my fingers and remember who knows how to ruin you.”
It was too much—the skilled, brutal hand, the filthy words, the sharp teeth, the terrifying truth in the threat about Isabella. Vanja shattered. Her orgasm ripped through her with violent, silent intensity, her cunt clenching rhythmically around the invading fingers, her whole body trembling like a plucked wire. Marie fucked her through it, drawing out every last pulse until Vanja was limp, sweating, utterly empty.
Slowly, Marie withdrew her fingers. She brought them to her mouth, her eyes locked on Vanja’s glazed ones, and sucked them clean with a vulgar, deliberate pop.
“London will make you soft,” she stated, wiping her hand on a clean towel. She pulled Vanja’s shorts back into place with a chilling detachment, as if re-covering a piece of furniture. “It’s a city of compromises. You are not a creature of compromise, Vanja. You are a creature of extremity.” She leaned in, her lips brushing Vanja’s ear one last time. “Isabella won’t let you go. And part of you… the deepest part of you… doesn’t want to be let go.”
She turned and left, the door closing with a soft, final click.
Vanja lay on the table, the oil cooling on her skin, the smell of sex and jasmine now layered over the eucalyptus. The throbbing in her hip was gone, replaced by a deeper, more profound ache. She stared at the ceiling, the dim light blurring.
Marie was wrong. She had to be wrong.
But as she finally pushed herself up, her body feeling both ravaged and terrifyingly alive, the ghost of those fingers still inside her, Vanja knew one thing with crystalline clarity: she hadn’t just packed a box in Munich. She’d lit a fuse. And the explosion, when it came, would have a name.
Isabella.
The name was a cold stone in her gut as she walked through the muted, carpeted halls of the gym, nodding blankly at the receptionist. The pristine, ordered world of her training—the metrics, the schedules, the controlled burn of effort—felt like a flimsy fiction. Marie had torn through it with the casual brutality of a sculptor hacking at clay.
Outside, the Munich afternoon was bright and chill. Vanja pulled her jacket tight, the scent of Marie’s jasmine perfume clinging to her skin, a brand. She checked her phone. A cascade of messages from Tilly, a sunshine barrage of emojis and voice notes detailing her training, a funny story about her sister, a photo of a horrible, patterned sweater she’d bought as a “London moving-in gift” for Vanja.
Can’t wait to have you here, the last text read. It already feels more like home just knowing you’re coming.
Vanja’s thumb hovered over the screen. The sweetness of it was a lifeline, but it also felt impossibly distant, like a broadcast from a different planet. How could she explain the crater Marie had just left in her? You couldn’t translate that into the language Tilly spoke. It would be a violation.
She typed, Me too. Knackered from training. Talk tonight? and hit send before she could second-guess the lie of omission.
Her feet took her not towards the tram, but through the winding streets towards the English Garden. The immensity of the park, the roaring of the Eisbach surfers, the sheer anonymous space of it, felt necessary. She walked until the chill air burned her lungs clean of the recovery room’s cloying heat.
Isabella.
She hadn’t seen her in months. Not since the affair had reached its unsustainable, incendiary peak and Vanja had, quite literally, run. To training camps, to competitions, to the straightforward embrace of Tilly’s innocent hunger. Isabella was not innocent. Isabella was a finished product, a woman of formidable intellect and volcanic will who collected beautiful things and grew bored with them. Their relationship had been a series of glorious, punishing collisions. It had been Isabella who’d first looked at Vanja, not as a prodigy or a body, but as a fascinating, contradictory mind—and then had proceeded to consume every part of her with a relentless, creative passion that had left Vanja perpetually off-balance and addicted.
Marie was just the harbinger. The devoted acolyte who cleaned up the master’s messes and prepared the way.
Vanja’s phone buzzed. Not Tilly. A Munich number she hadn’t deleted, an number attached to a penthouse overlooking the Isar.
The text was a single line: Marie tells me you’re planning a trip.
No question mark. Just a statement, heavy with implication. Vanja’s blood turned to ice slurry in her veins. She stared at the words until they blurred. The sound of the river, the laughter of students, the whole city around her seemed to recede into a silent, waiting tunnel.
She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. To reply was to step onto a chessboard she’d fled. But silence, she knew, was also a move. It was a confession of fear.
She looked down at her hands, the hands that could clutch a gold medal or tear at a rival’s hair. They were shaking. The chapter in Munich wasn’t closing cleanly. It was tearing, its pages gummed together with sweat and salt and the indelible ink of past desire. London wasn’t an escape. It was a retreat. And the things she was retreating from had long, clever arms and perfect, long memories.
The sun dipped behind a cloud, plunging the path into shadow. Vanja turned, heading for home, the image of Tilly’ hopeful, smiling face floating in her mind, a beautiful, fragile flag planted on a distant shore that was already, inevitably, under siege.
Vanja walked the rest of the way to her apartment in a fog, the phantom sensation of Marie’s fingers still curled inside her a corrosive secret. She needed a shower. She needed to scrub the jasmine and the violation from her skin, but more than that, she needed the familiar, grounding noise of her cousin Dino complaining about football tactics or burning toast.
The apartment was silent. A note on the counter, in Dino’s slashing script, said he was at a friend’s for a film marathon. Back late. Don’t do anything I would.
The solitude felt suddenly immense, a hollow echo chamber. Vanja stood in the middle of the living room, the vibrant street art on the walls seeming garish and loud. Her phone, face-down on the counter, was a silent bomb.
It buzzed.
She flinched.
Not Isabella. Tilly. A video call request. Vanja’s breath hitched. She smoothed her hair, plastered on a smile that felt like a crack in glass, and accepted.
“Hey!” Tilly’s face filled the screen, flushed and beautiful, wisps of blonde hair escaping her ponytail. She was in what looked like a minimalist hotel room. “Sorry, I just finished evening rehab. My ankle is being a bitch. I miss your face.”
“I miss yours too,” Vanja said, and the words were true, a pang of genuine affection cutting through the static in her head. She could see the subtle worry in Tilly’s blue eyes.
“You look tired. Hard session?”
“You could say that. Deep tissue.” The euphemism tasted bitter. “How’s London treating you?”
“Cold. And everyone drives on the wrong side of the road. But the girls on the team seem sound. I showed them your picture from the Euros.” Tilly grinned, a little shy. “They said you’re fit. I said I know.”
Vanja managed a laugh. It sounded strained. Tilly’s smile faded.
“What’s wrong, Vanja? Really.”
The directness undid her. Vanja looked away from the screen, at the cluttered bookshelf, at the record player Dino had left on. “It’s just… saying goodbye to Munich. It’s harder than I thought. Loose ends.”
“Loose ends like people?” Tilly asked softly.
Vanja met her pixelated gaze. “Yes.”
Tilly was quiet for a moment, her breath a soft static over the line. “Do you need me there? I can get a flight tomorrow. Fuck the ankle. Seriously.”
The offer was a lifeline, so pure it hurt. “No, no. Don’t be daft. You have pre-season. I’m okay. I just…” She trailed off, helpless.
“I wish I was there now,” Tilly whispered, her voice dropping. “I wish I could make you forget whatever’s got you looking like that.”
The sentiment was a trigger. A desperate, clawing need for something clean erupted in Vanja. She couldn’t have Tilly here, but she could have this. She could use this connection to try and overwrite the feeling of Marie’s clinical possession.
“You can,” Vanja heard herself say, her own voice low and rough. “Talk to me.”
Tilly’s eyes widened, then darkened with understanding. She licked her lips. “Okay. Where are you?”
“On the sofa. Lying back.”
“Touch yourself for me.” The command, from Tilly’s usually sweet mouth, was electrifying. “I want to watch. I want you to come while I tell you what I’m going to do to you when you land at Heathrow.”
Vanja’s hand slid under the waistband of her sweats. Her skin was still sensitized from earlier, every nerve ending raw and shouting. She found her clit, swollen and oversensitive, and let out a sharp gasp.
“That’s it,” Tilly murmured, her own camera shifting as she settled back. Vanja could see the hollow of her throat, the line of her jaw. “I’m going to pick you up from Arrivals and I’m not even going to say hello properly. I’m just going to take you to the car park and get in the back seat with you.”
Vanja’s fingers moved in slow, pressing circles. The image was a forced replacement, a desperate superimposition. Tilly in a messy car park, not Marie in a perfumed room.
“I’m going to push your skirt up and just taste you,” Tilly continued, her voice gaining confidence, growing husky. “I don’t care who sees. I’m going to eat your pussy until you scream. Your big, famous thighs around my head.”
“Fuck, Tilly,” Vanja groaned, her hips rising off the couch. She was using her other hand now, pinching her own nipple through her shirt, hard. The pain felt good, clarifying.
“Then I’m going to ride you. I’m going to sink down on your fingers and fuck myself on them until I come. I want you to feel how wet I get for you. How my cunt just gulps you down.”
Vanja was close, teetering. The explicit, vivid fantasy was working, building a new fire to burn out the old one. She fucked herself with two fingers, imagining it was Tilly’s tight, eager heat, not Marie’s calculated invasion. The sounds were wet, obscene, and she didn’t mute them.
“Come for me, Vanja,” Tilly urged, her own breathing ragged. “Come thinking about my mouth. Only my mouth.”
Vanja obeyed. The orgasm that tore through her was less violent than the one in the gym, but deeper, a wave of warmth that unknotted some of the cold dread in her stomach. She cried out, her body seizing, then collapsing into the cushions, spent.
She lay there, panting, the phone propped on her chest. Tilly’s face was soft, satisfied.
“Feel better?” Tilly asked, a small, knowing smile on her lips.
“Yes,” Vanja breathed, and for a moment, it was almost true. The ghost of jasmine was gone, replaced by the salt-and-sugar memory of Tilly’s skin. “Thank you.”
“Anytime. Literally, anytime.” Tilly laughed, and the sound was a balm. They talked for a few more minutes, the conversation drifting to mundane things—shipping boxes, the weather, a new boots Tilly wanted. It was normal. It was the future.
When they hung up, the apartment’s silence felt warmer. Lighter. Vanja hauled herself up, finally headed for the shower. The water was scalding, a baptism. She soaped every inch, scrubbed her scalp until it stung. She wrapped herself in a towel and walked back into the living room, feeling physically hollowed out but mentally clearer.
The knock on the door was a single, firm percussion.
It was too late for Dino. He’d just come in. A cold finger traced Vanja’s spine. She walked to the door, peering through the peephole.
The view distorted, but there was no mistaking the silhouette. The impossible, cinched waist. The exaggerated curve of hips. A neckline that plunged into nothing.
Vanja closed her eyes. The fuse had burned faster than she’d calculated. She opened the door.
Isabella arrived wearing the tightest dress known to mankind, her fake tits half out. The fabric was a luminescent gunmetal grey, so strained across her chest and thighs it looked photosynthetic. Her hair was a waterfall of platinum, her lips a slash of crimson. She smelled of oudh and cold ambition.
“Darling,” Isabella purred, not waiting for an invitation. She stepped inside, her eyes doing a swift, appraising inventory of the room, of Vanja in her towel. “You look… used.”
Vanja crossed her arms. “Isabella.”
“Marie is a tattletale, but she’s a devoted one. A trip to London? How… pedestrian.” Isabella drifted to the record player, trailing a manicured finger through the thin layer of dust on its lid. “You were always meant for more than midfield journeymen and rainy islands.”
“What do you want?” Vanja’s voice was flat.
“I want you to be sensible.” Isabella turned, her gaze a physical weight. “I want you to cancel this juvenile fantasy. Munich is your center of gravity. I am your center of gravity. You drift away, you become… ordinary.”
“I’m leaving, Isabella. It’s done.”
“Nothing is done until I say it is.” Isabella took a step closer. The dress creaked. “You belong in museums, Vanja, not in some Championship footballer’s Ikea-furnished flat. You belong with someone who understands the weight of legacy. The… consumption of brilliance.”
Vanja could smell the perfume now, overpowering, invading. It was the scent of every compromised decision, every whispered promise in the dark that had left a bruise. She saw the calculating gleam in Isabella’s eyes, the possessiveness that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with ownership.
You want to leave.
The thought was a crystal-clear command from her deepest self. This room, this woman, this entire intricate trap of a past life—it was a suffocating suit. London was an escape hatch. Tilly was a hand reaching in to pull her out.
Vanja rolled her eyes, a gesture of pure, defiant exhaustion. “Get out.”
Isabella’s perfect smile didn’t falter, but it froze, hardening into something dangerous and porcelain. “I don’t think you mean that.”
“I do.” Vanja walked to the door and held it open. The hallway air was cool, a relief. “We’re done. The exhibition is over. Find another statue to polish.”
For a long moment, Isabella didn’t move. The silence between them was a high-tension wire, thrumming with the echoes of every shattered wine glass, every bitten-off scream of passion, every intellectual duel that had ended in sweaty, tangled surrender. Vanja held her gaze, her own heart a frantic drum against her ribs.
Then, Isabella let out a soft, chilling laugh. She walked to the door, pausing so close Vanja could see the meticulous blending of her eyeshadow.
“This isn’t a goodbye, my darling,” she whispered, the words a vow. “This is an intermission. I’ll see you in London.”
She left, her perfume lingering like a chemical weapon in the space she’d occupied.
Vanja slammed the door, locked it, and leaned her forehead against the cool wood. She’d done it. She’d said the words. But as the adrenaline receded, the cold certainty of Isabella’s promise seeped into its place. She hadn’t escaped. She’d just moved the battlefield.
She looked at her packed boxes, labeled for shipping. They no longer looked like parcels for a new beginning. They looked like ammunition crates, headed for the front lines.