Chapter 8: Morning Claim
The grey dawn light filtered through the rain-streaked window, painting Vanja’s bedroom in shades of charcoal and pearl. She surfaced slowly, consciousness returning not to silence, but to a soft, wet sound and a delicious, mounting pressure between her legs.
She blinked, her mind still fogged with sleep. Tilly was astride her, a pale, moving silhouette against the weak light. The Swede was riding her, but not the silicone prosthetic from their first night. Vanja, half-asleep, had already given her what she truly craved. Her own flesh, thickened and hardened by the unconscious will of her dreaming body, was buried to the hilt inside Tilly’s grasping heat.
“Fuck,” Vanja breathed, the word a ragged exhale.
Tilly’s rhythm hitched. Her head, which had been bowed in concentration, snapped up. Her blue eyes were dark pools in the gloom, glazed with a frantic, possessive need. A thin strand of saliva connected her lower lip to the crease of her elbow. She hadn’t even waited for Vanja to be fully awake.
“You were hard,” Tilly whispered, her voice husky from use. She didn’t stop moving, her hips rolling in a slow, deep grind that made Vanja’s toes curl. “I woke up and I could feel it… pressed against my thigh. So I just… climbed on.” She bit her lip, a flush blooming across her chest. “I needed it.”
Vanja’s hands came up, landing on Tilly’s hips, feeling the powerful muscles contract with each rise and fall. The sheer audacity of it, the raw entitlement, sent a jolt of pure lust straight to her core. Tilly wasn’t asking. She was taking. The transformation was stunning.
“You greedy little shit,” Vanja groaned, her grip tightening, nails digging into soft skin.
Tilly just moaned in response, picking up the pace. Her perky tits bounced with the motion, nipples hard peaks in the cool air. The cream-colored sheets were tangled around their legs, a damp spot spreading beneath them. The room smelled of sex and sleep and the jasmine from the window box, a cloying, intimate perfume.
Vanja watched her, mesmerized by the desperate concentration on her face. Tilly’s brows were furrowed, her lips parted on panting breaths. She was chasing her own pleasure with a single-minded focus Vanja recognized from the track, from the pitch. It was her competitive drive, channeled into this, into milking Vanja’s cock for her own release.
“That’s it,” Vanja urged, her own hips pushing up to meet a downward stroke. The slide was obscenely wet, a lewd, squelching sound punctuating Tilly’s gasps. “Ride it. Use my dick. You wanted it so bad you just helped yourself, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Tilly hissed, her hands braced on Vanja’s stomach. Her palms were slick with sweat. “I needed to feel you… all of you… inside me again. I couldn’t wait. I’m sorry, I just—”
“Don’t you dare apologize.” Vanja’s voice was a low growl. She loved this feral, demanding version of Tilly. It was her creation. “You see what you want, you take it. Just like this. Now fuck yourself harder. Make yourself come on my cock.”
The command unleashed something. Tilly’s movements became sharper, more frenetic. She rose up high, letting almost all of Vanja’s length slip free, then slammed back down, her cry echoing off the walls. She did it again, and again, her body slapping against Vanja’s thighs, the bedframe creaking a protest against the wall.
Vanja could feel the tight coil of her own orgasm building, spurred by the visual, the visceral feel of Tilly’s unrestrained hunger. “You close?” she grunted.
“I’m… I’m there… I just…” Tilly was trembling, her rhythm starting to fracture. “I need your cum. Vanja, please, I need to feel you fill me up again. I need it.”
The plea, so raw and specific, was the final trigger. Vanja’s control snapped. With a guttural roar, she surged upward, rolling them over in a tangle of limbs and damp sheets. She pinned Tilly beneath her, the sudden shift punching a shocked gasp from the blonde’s lungs.
“You want it?” Vanja panted, staring down at her, not stopping the deep, punishing thrusts of her hips. Tilly’s legs hooked around her waist, heels digging into the small of her back. “You want my cum so bad? Then take it. Take every fucking drop.”
She drove into her, each thrust a claim, a ratification of the ownership Tilly had so brazenly asserted. Tilly’s head tossed side to side on the pillow, her cries breaking into sobs. Her fingernails scraped down Vanja’s back, sure to leave raised, red trails.
“I can feel you… so deep… oh God, right there, right there, Vanja, I’m coming, I’m coming, please, give it to me, give me your—”
Tilly’s sentence dissolved into a wordless shriek as her body convulsed. Her cunt clamped down on Vanja’s cock in a series of vicious, fluttering spasms, a flood of fresh wetness soaking them both. The intense squeeze pushed Vanja over the edge.
With a final, brutal thrust, she buried herself as deep as she could go and let go. Her orgasm ripped through her, a blinding white current of release. She came in hot, pulsing jets, pumping her essence into Tilly’s clutching depths until she was spent, until she collapsed onto the shuddering body beneath her, her forehead damp against Tilly’s shoulder.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing harmonizing in the quiet room. The jasmine scent was now completely overpowered by the musk of sex. Vanja’s extraordinary flesh softened, retracting, becoming ordinary once more as she slipped from Tilly’s swollen, well-used heat.
Tilly’s arms came up, wrapping around Vanja’s back, holding her close. Her skin was fever-hot.
“I’m not sorry,” Tilly murmured into her hair, her voice wrecked but defiant.
A laugh, low and surprised, rumbled in Vanja’s chest. “I didn’t ask you to be.”
They dozed, a heavy, sated doze, until the reality of the day began to intrude. Vanja’s phone buzzed insistently on the nightstand. With a groan, she disentangled herself and grabbed it. A text from her coach. Time trials. This afternoon. Mandatory.
She flopped back onto the pillow. “I have to go to the track.”
Tilly curled into her side, a contented hum in her throat. “Okay. I’ll be here.”
The domestic simplicity of the statement was a grenade. Vanja turned her head. “You can’t just… stay in my bed all day.”
“Why not?” Tilly opened one blue eye. “I don’t have to fly back until tonight. I want to be here when you get home.” She said ‘home’ as if it were a given, as if Vanja’s Munich apartment was now a shared destination.
Vanja’s stomach did a slow, uneasy roll. This was moving too fast. It was one thing to have a chaotic, passionate weekend. It was another to have Tilly casually planning the rhythm of her day, claiming space in her life with the same unthinking confidence she’d claimed Vanja’s body at dawn. She got up, the cool air a shock. “Do what you want. There’s food in the kitchen. Don’t bother Dino.”
The training session was a torment. Her muscles, worked in an entirely different way all morning, protested every sprint. Her focus was shot. All she could think about was the image of Tilly, bathed in dawn light, riding her with desperate hunger. The memory of Tilly demanding her cum. Her coach yelled at her for a sloppy start. She pushed harder, using the burn in her lungs to try and outrun the creeping sense of enclosure.
When she returned, sweaty and irritable, the apartment smelled of garlic and onion. Tilly was in the kitchen, wearing another of Vanja’s hoodies and a pair of borrowed joggers, stirring something in a pot. She’d showered. Her hair was damp.
“Hey,” she said, smiling. “I found pasta. And some sad-looking vegetables. I made a thing.”
Dino was at the small table, a bowl already in front of him. He gave Vanja a look that was equal parts amusement and warning. “She cooks better than you,” he said, shoveling a forkful in.
Vanja stood in the doorway, her kit bag over her shoulder, feeling like a stranger in her own home. The scene was disarmingly normal. It felt like a rehearsed future. It terrified her.
She showered, the hot water sluicing away the track grit but not the unease. When she came out, towel around her waist, Tilly was in her bedroom, folding the cream-colored sheets from the bed, now stained and irredeemable. She’d put fresh ones on.
“What are you doing?” Vanja asked, her voice tighter than she intended.
Tilly looked up, the clean linen in her arms. “The sheets were… a mess. I was just changing them.” She paused, reading Vanja’s stance. “Was that wrong?”
Yes. No. Vanja didn’t know. It was the intimacy of it. The wifely, domestic gesture following the raw, dawn fucking. It created a wholeness that felt like a trap.
“It’s fine,” Vanja said shortly, walking to her dresser. She could feel Tilly’s eyes on her back.
“You’re upset.”
“I’m tired.”
“It’s more than that.” Tilly dropped the sheets into a basket and came up behind her. She didn’t touch her, just stood close. Vanja could feel the heat of her through the towel. “Is it… because of this morning? Did I go too far?”
Vanja turned. Tilly’s face was open, worried. This was the innocence that still lived beside the newfound ferocity. It was the combination that was so disarming.
“No,” Vanja sighed, the fight going out of her. She reached out, hooked a finger in the neck of the hoodie, and pulled Tilly in. She kissed her, a slow, deep kiss that tasted of tomatoes and basil. “You didn’t go too far. It was fucking perfect.”
Tilly melted against her, the worry dissolving. “Then what is it?”
Vanja rested her forehead against Tilly’s. How could she explain the claustrophobia that came with being so perfectly understood, so completely claimed? “You have to go back to London tonight.”
“I know.”
“And I have the European Championships qualifying meet in Berlin next weekend.”
“I know that too. Amanda sent me your schedule.” A faint, guilty smile. “I might have asked.”
Of course she had. Vanja should have been furious. She felt only a weary inevitability. “So we won’t see each other for a bit.”
Tilly’s hands came up, framing Vanja’s face. Her thumbs stroked her cheekbones. “So we make tonight count.”
This time, it was Vanja who initiated the transformation. A focused, deliberate summoning. She let the towel drop. She watched Tilly’s eyes darken as her flesh thickened, swelled, rose into the heavy, veined cock that now seemed to belong to both of them.
“On the bed,” Vanja said, her voice quiet. “On your hands and knees.”
There was no hesitation. Tilly crawled onto the fresh sheets, presenting herself, looking back over her shoulder with an expression of eager submission. Vanja approached, her hand running down the curve of Tilly’s spine, over the swell of her ass. She positioned herself, the head nudging at Tilly’s entrance, already slick from anticipation.
“This isn’t goodbye,” Vanja said, not sure who she was convincing.
“It’s not,” Tilly whispered, pushing back against her.
Vanja entered her in one slow, relentless push. Tilly cried out, her back arching, taking every inch. It was different this time. Deeper, slower, less frantic. It was a possession laced with a melancholy Vanja couldn’t shake. She fucked her with long, measured strokes, her hands gripping Tilly’s hips, her eyes fixed on the point where their bodies joined and parted. The wet, rhythmic slap of skin filled the room, a somber drumbeat.
Tilly reached back, her fingers finding Vanja’s thigh, clutching it. “Harder,” she pleaded, her voice muffled by the pillow. “Please, Vanja, I want to feel it tomorrow. I want to remember.”
Vanja obliged, her thrusts becoming more powerful, driving Tilly forward with each one. She leaned over, covering Tilly’s body with her own, her mouth at her ear. “You’ll remember. Every time you sit on the team bus. Every time you stretch. You’ll feel how deep I fucked you. You’ll feel me.”
She felt Tilly’s inner muscles begin to flutter, the tightening that signaled her climax. Vanja was right there with her, the emotional ache coalescing into a physical peak. When Tilly came, her scream was stifled by the bedding, her body shaking violently. Vanja followed seconds after, spilling into her with a choked groan, her own release feeling like a surrender.
Later, at the airport S-Bahn station, they stood in an awkward silence. Tilly’s bag was at her feet. The scent of Vanja was still on her skin, buried under her clothes.
“I’ll text when I land,” Tilly said.
“Okay.”
“Good luck in Berlin.”
“Thanks.”
They looked at each other, two athletes used to clear goals and finish lines, stranded in something that had neither. Tilly stepped forward, rose on her toes, and kissed her. It was soft, final.
“I’m not going anywhere, Vanja,” she said quietly, pulling back. Her blue eyes were deadly serious. “However you want this. However fast or slow. However many… parts of you there are to know. I’m in.”
She turned and walked towards the platform gates, not looking back.
Vanja stood rooted to the spot, the echo of the words I’m in hitting her with the force of a physical blow. It wasn’t a promise of passion. It was a declaration of war on her solitude. She had wanted to own, to corrupt, to ruin. She had instead ignited a loyalty that was now advancing on her position, patiently, inexorably. The qualifier in Berlin felt trivial. The real competition had just begun, and she had no idea what the rules were, or if she even wanted to win.
The flat felt sterile without her. Vanja paced the length of it, from the bedroom with its newly changed sheets to the kitchen that still smelled faintly of Tilly’s improvised pasta sauce. Dino had gone out. The silence was a physical presence.
I’m in.
The words circled like sharks. She hadn’t asked for that. She’d wanted a thrilling, temporary corruption—a pretty, talented girl she could bend to a forbidden appetite, then send back to her own life, gloriously ruined. Not this. Not a steadfast declaration that somehow turned Vanja into the unstable variable.
Her phone buzzed on the counter.A text. Not Tilly.Coach. 6 AM tomorrow. Final prep. No fucking around.
She threw the phone onto the sofa. It bounced off the cushion and landed on the floor. She left it there. The柏林 qualifier was a distraction, a trivial physical challenge compared to the tangle in her chest. She stood at the window, watching the Munich evening settle. The jasmine scent from the window box was too sweet. It reminded her of Tilly’s throaty moans.
She needed to run. Not on a track, with defined lanes and a finish line. Just to move in the dark, to outpace the feeling. She changed into black trainers and leggings, pulling a hoodie over her head. She didn’t tell Dino. She just left, taking the stairs two at a time, hitting the pavement at a pace meant to burn, not train.
The city blurred. Her breathing settled into a harsh rhythm, her feet pounding a staccato beat on the cobblestones of the old town, then the smooth asphalt of the Englischer Garten. The burn in her lungs was clean. It simplified everything to oxygen and motion. She pushed harder, her powerful legs devouring distance, chasing the emptiness ahead.
It didn’t work.
Images flashed with each footfall. Tilly folding her sheets. Tilly looking back over her shoulder, eyes wide with want. Tilly saying I need your cum with a desperation that felt like worship. Tilly at the S-Bahn station, calm and sure. I’m not going anywhere.
Vanja stumbled, catching herself against the rough bark of a tree by the Eisbach. She bent over, hands on her knees, gulping air that felt thick. The water rushed past, cold and indifferent. She was the most disciplined athlete she knew. She controlled her body, her diet, her mind, with iron precision. Yet this girl, in three days, had bypassed every defense. She’d welcomed the monstrous part of her, had fucking craved it, and then calmly promised to stay.
Was that the trap? The acceptance? Not rejection, but an embrace so complete it felt like surrender?
Her phone, tucked in her armband, buzzed again. She straightened, sweat cooling on her spine. She pulled it out. The screen glowed in the dark.
Tilly: Landed. My sister hasn’t stopped talking about Tottenham’s training facilities for 20 minutes. It’s a lot. I wish I was still in your bed.
A simple message.Casual. It carried the echo of the dawn.
Vanja’s thumb hovered. What was the right play here? A crude joke? A cold dismissal to re-establish distance? She typed, deleted, typed again.
Vanja: Which part? The one where you were asleep, or the part where you were riding my cock like you owned it?
She hit send. Aggression was her native language. It was safe.
The reply came fast.
Tilly: The second part. Definitely the second part. I did own it. For a little while.
Vanja stared at the words.No shame. No playful emoji to soften it. A simple, factual correction. She leaned back against the tree, the bark biting through her hoodie. She felt a dangerous, unwelcome surge of something hot and bright behind her ribs.Pride? Affection? It was terrifying.
Vanja: You’ve got a big fucking mouth for a rookie.
Tilly: You’re the one who filled it last night.
A laugh punched out of Vanja, loud in the quiet park. She clapped a hand over her mouth, the sound alien. She typed slowly, the aggression seeping away, leaving something raw underneath.
Vanja: Berlin this weekend.Qualifiers. It’s a circus.
Tilly: I know. I’ll be watching. Break their legs. Metaphorically.
Vanja: Literally if they get in my way.
There was a pause. Three dots appeared, vanished, reappeared.
Tilly: After… when it’s done… can I come? Not to Berlin. To wherever you are after?
The question hung in the digital air. A direct advance. Vanja felt the earlier claustrophobia threaten to return. She could shut it down. It’s a busy season. I’ll be travelling. A clean, athletic dodge.
She thought of the sterile flat. The neatly made bed. The perfect, controlled loneliness of her life before Tilly Nilsen climbed onto her and took what she wanted.
Her fingers moved on their own.
Vanja: Yeah.Okay.
She didn’t add conditions. She just sent it.
Tilly: Okay.
A single word, but it felt like a seismic shift. The terms were set, and Vanja had just agreed to them. The running hadn’t helped. The confrontation with the feeling was now unavoidable, and it wasn’t a battle. It was a quiet, terrifying acknowledgment. She pushed off from the tree and began the slow jog home, the rhythm different now, thoughtful. The competition wasn’t with Tilly. It was with the part of herself that wanted to run, and the newer, weaker part that wanted to see what happened if she stayed.
It was with the part of herself that wanted to run, and the newer, weaker part that wanted to see what happened if she stayed. The conflict fueled her in Berlin. The qualifying meet was a blur of synthetic track, roaring crowds, and the silent, screaming focus she used to drown out everything else. She won the 400m final not with joy, but with a brutal, mechanical efficiency that left her competitors looking broken in her wake. She stood on the podium, the gold medal cool against her chest, the anthem playing, and felt nothing but a hollow echo. The only thing that felt real was the phone in her bag, still warm from Tilly’s last message: You looked like a god destroying mortals. I’m so wet.
Back in the athletes’ lounge, still in her singlet and sweats, she scrolled past congratulations. She found Tilly’s contact and called.
“Hello, champion.” Tilly’s voice was a smile pressed against the receiver.
“Where are you right now?” Vanja asked, her tone leaving no room for pleasantries.
“My sister’s flat. I’m unpacking my training gear. It’s depressing.”
“Get on a plane.”
A pause. “What?”
“I won. We’re going.” Vanja stared at her own reflection in the glass of a fire extinguisher case, her expression unreadable even to herself.
“Going where? To Munich?”
“Somewhere with no track, no pitch, and no family.” Vanja finally let the plan, formed in some unconscious chamber of her mind during the final straight, solidify into words. “Pack light. Just swimsuits. And that tiny black thong I like.”
She could hear Tilly’s breath catch, the soft rustle of her moving, perhaps sitting down. “Vanja, I have training next week. Pre-season is—”
“I don’t care. Tell them you have a family emergency. Tell them whatever you need to tell them.” Vanja’s voice dropped, a low, possessive thrum. “You’re mine for a week. I just decided.”
“Where?” The word was a whisper, laced with excitement and submission.
“Surprise,” Vanja said, a real smile touching her lips for the first time that day. “Now pack light. We’re going to the Maldives.”
A sharp, delighted squeal pierced her ear, followed by a muffled sound as if Tilly had shoved her face into a pillow. When she came back, she was breathless. “You’re serious.”
“Flight details are in your inbox. I leave tonight. You leave tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the villa.”
“I— okay. Yes.” Tilly’s voice broke. “Thank you. I’ll be there. I’ll…”
“Just be there.” Vanja hung up, the hollow feeling gone, replaced by a sharp, anticipatory greed.
The villa was a monument to distilled luxury, a private overwater structure where the only sounds were the lap of turquoise water against polished wood and the whisper of the tropical wind. Vanja arrived first, letting the immense solitude of the place settle over her. It was a different kind of quiet than her Munich flat. This was a silence she had bought, a blank page. She stood on the deck, watching a stingray glide through the shallow, crystal water beneath the glass floor, and waited.
Tilly arrived as the sun began to dissolve into a furnace of orange and purple. Vanja heard the soft putter of the transfer boat, the quiet murmur of the staff. Then there was just the click of a latch, and she was there, standing in the vast open living space, a duffel bag at her feet, her blond hair bright against the deepening sky.
She looked young, overwhelmed, beautiful. “This is… insane.”
Vanja didn’t answer with words. She crossed the room, the space between them feeling like the final meters of a race she desperately needed to win. She cupped Tilly’s face, her thumbs stroking the high swell of her cheekbones, and kissed her. It was a claiming, deep and searching, tasting of airplane air and peppermint gum and Tilly herself. When she pulled back, Tilly’s blue eyes were wide, her lips parted.
“No running here,” Vanja murmured. “No football. Just this.”
“Just this,” Tilly repeated, her hands coming up to grasp Vanja’s wrists.
Vanja’s desire, banked and controlled for the week of competition, roared to the surface, messy and impatient. That careful, melancholic pace from their last night in Munich was gone, burned away by sun and distance and victory. She walked Tilly backwards towards the open bedroom, where a massive bed faced a wall of glass overlooking the infinite ocean.
“Take off your clothes,” Vanja said, her own fingers already pulling at the hem of her tank top. “I want to see you in this light.”
They undressed each other with a rushed, clumsy urgency, fabric catching on elbows, a soft laugh escaping Tilly as Vanja nearly tore her own shorts in her hurry. The last of the sun’s rays painted their skin in gilded hues. Vanja looked her fill: the strong, thick lines of Tilly’s footballer’s body, the perfect swell of her breasts, the thatch of blond hair at the junction of her thighs. Her own body responded not with a thought, but with a direct, pulsing need, her flesh thickening and rising in a smooth, heavy arc.
“God, look at you,” Tilly breathed, reaching out to touch, her fingers tracing the prominent veins.
Vanja grabbed her wrist, guiding that hand to wrap around her girth. “Get used to it. It’s all you’re going to feel for a week.”
She pushed Tilly down onto the bed, the crisp linens cool against their heated skin. She didn’t bother with ceremony or gentle exploration. The memory of Tilly taking charge at dawn was a live wire in her mind. She wanted that surrender back. She crawled over her, kissing her again, a dirty, open-mouthed kiss as her hand slid between Tilly’s legs.
She was soaked, her slit already swollen and hot. Vanja groaned into her mouth. “Fuck, you’re drenched. Just from the plane ride? From thinking about this?”
“Yes,” Tilly gasped, her hips bucking up against Vanja’s fingers.
Vanja rubbed two fingers through her folds, gathering the slickness, before pushing them deep inside. Tilly cried out, her back arching. “You like that? You like being stretched?” Vanja worked her fingers in and out, the wet sound obscenely loud in the quiet room.
“I love it. More. Please, Vanja, I need your cock. I need you to fuck me properly.”
The crude demand shattered Vanja’s last shred of restraint. She withdrew her fingers, slick and gleaming, and guided the broad head of her own erection to Tilly’s entrance. She paused, applying pressure, watching Tilly’s face contort with agonized anticipation.
“You’re going to take every inch,” Vanja stated, her voice rough. “And you’re going to come so hard you see stars over this fucking ocean.”
She pushed forward, not slowly, but with a relentless, continuous thrust that buried her to the root in one stunning movement. Tilly’s mouth opened in a silent scream, her nails digging into Vanja’s shoulders. She was exquisitely tight, her inner walls fluttering around the sudden, massive intrusion.
“Oh fuck, oh God, Vanja… it’s so deep…” Tilly’s words were ragged gasps.
Vanja began to move, setting a punishing rhythm from the start. There was no slow build. This was a claiming. Each withdrawal was almost complete, each thrust a hard, bottoming-out slam that rocked the bedframe. The slap of skin, the wet, rhythmic squelch of her cock driving into drenched heat, filled the villa.
“This is what you wanted,” Vanja grunted, her abdomen tightening with each drive forward. “This is what you thought about during your boring packing. My dick splitting you open.”
“Yes! Yes, I did! I thought about you fucking me just like this!” Tilly choked out, her legs wrapping high around Vanja’s back, heels locking. “Harder. Don’t you dare go easy on me.”
Vanja obeyed, her pace becoming brutal, animalistic. She shifted the angle, and Tilly shrieked, a raw, broken sound. “There! Right there, don’t stop, please don’t stop!”
Vanja could feel the coiling tension in her own balls, the familiar, urgent rise of her climax. She was pounding into Tilly now, her vision narrowing to the sight of Tilly’s bouncing breasts, her glazed eyes, the drool slipping from the corner of her open mouth. She was unravelling, and she was taking Tilly with her.
“You going to come?” Vanja demanded, her rhythm faltering, growing erratic. “You going to squirt all over this expensive bed?”
“I’m going to— I can’t— Vanja!” Tilly’s body locked, her cunt clamping down in a series of violent, pulsating spasms that felt like a hot, milking fist. The sensation tore Vanja’s own orgasm from her. With a final, deep grind, she felt her release surge up through her shaft and erupt, jet after hot jet flooding into Tilly’s clutching depths, marking her insides as the distant sun finally vanished below the horizon.
She collapsed, spent, her weight pressing Tilly into the mattress. Their sweat mingled. The only light now came from the moon on the water, painting them in silver. Vanja softened, slipping from Tilly’s swollen flesh, a trickle of their combined release following.
For a long time, they just breathed. The Indian Ocean breeze cooled their skin. Vanja, to her own surprise, didn’t move to separate. She kept her head on Tilly’s chest, listening to the frantic gallop of her heart gradually slow.
Tilly’s fingers trailed through Vanja’s dark blond hair, a tender, absent-minded motion. “I won’t feel anything but you for days,” she murmured, her voice hoarse.
“Good,” Vanja said, the word muffled against her skin.
The hollow victory in Berlin was gone. This felt like a different kind of win. The week stretched before them, an empty canvas of sun and saltwater and skin. The part of her that wanted to run was silent, exhausted, drowned in the sea. The newer, weaker part stretched, tentatively, and found it was not weak at all. It was ravenous. And it was just getting started.