Chapter 4: The Morning After
The first sliver of dawn was a pale knife-edge between the blinds. It cut across Pedri’s bare shoulder, the line of his neck, the stubbled plane of his jaw. Vanja watched it, propped on one elbow, the duvet pooled at her waist. The city’s nocturnal hum had given way to a fragile, pre-awakening silence. In it, she could hear the soft rush of his breath.
He slept like he played: with a focused calm. No twitching, no murmurs. Just deep, replenishing stillness. She traced the outline of a faded bruise on his ribs, then the dark ink of a tattoo on his shoulder blade—a coordinate point she knew was his hometown, Tegueste. Her finger drifted lower, over the dip of his spine, to the sheet tented over his hip.
A slow, wicked smile touched her lips. She shifted silently, the mattress giving just enough to make him sigh in his sleep. She slid down the bed, the cool air raising goosebumps on her skin. She peeled the sheet back.
His cock lay half-hard against his thigh, even in sleep an impressive weight. She bent her head, her blonde hair a curtain falling around her face, and breathed him in. Clean skin, sleep, and the faint, musky scent of their fucking hours before. She licked a slow stripe from base to tip, tasting salt and her own essence. He stirred, a soft groan escaping his lips.
She took him into her mouth, sinking down slowly, letting her throat relax and open. She hollowed her cheeks, applying a firm, steady suction as she rose, then plunged back down, taking him deeper. He was fully hard now, pulsing against her tongue.
“Vanja… fuck,” he slurred, his hand coming down to tangle in her hair, not guiding, just feeling.
She looked up, meeting his drowsy, dark eyes. She released him with a wet pop. “Good morning,” she said, her voice raspy.
“Jesus Christ.” He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down with a hand on his chest.
“My turn,” she murmured, and went back to work. She used her hand at the base, twisting in time with the rhythm of her mouth, her other hand cupping and gently squeezing his balls. She could feel the tension coiling in his thighs, the involuntary hitch of his hips. She increased her pace, the sounds obscenely wet in the quiet room. He cursed in a fluent, breathless stream of Spanish, his fingers tightening in her hair.
Just as she felt him begin to tremble on the edge, she pulled off again. He groaned in frustration.
She crawled back up his body, straddling his hips, her wet core hovering just above his erection. “You don’t get to come yet,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss him, letting him taste himself on her tongue.
He flipped her then, a sudden, powerful movement that spoke of his strength. In one fluid motion, he had her on her stomach, a pillow shoved under her hips, lifting her ass. He kneeled behind her, his hands spreading her open. He didn’t enter her. He just looked, breathing heavily.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” he growled, and then he leaned down and licked her from clit to asshole, a broad, filthy stroke that made her scream into the mattress.
He fucked her with his tongue, then slid two fingers inside her, crooking them to find that spot as his mouth worked her clit. She came violently, her thighs shaking, her fingers clawing at the sheets.
Before the last pulse faded, he was mounting her. He gripped her hips, his fingers digging into the muscle, and drove into her with one long, deep thrust. She was so wet, so open from her orgasm, he slid in to the hilt effortlessly.
“Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against him. “Just like that.”
He set a brutal, punishing pace, each slam of his hips jolting her forward. The headboard knocked a relentless, rhythmic tattoo against the wall. The sound of skin slapping skin, their ragged grunts, the creak of the bed—it was a symphony of raw need. He leaned over her, his chest pressed against her back, his mouth at her ear.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he breathed, his thrusts becoming shorter, harder, aimed directly at her most sensitive spot.
“I’m yours,” she gasped, the words torn from her. “Yours, Pedro. Fuck!”
“Come for me again. Now.”
His command, the relentless friction, the feel of him so deep—it detonated another orgasm, this one a blinding white wave that stole her vision. She clenched around him, milking him, and with a shattered cry, he followed, emptying himself inside her, his body shuddering against hers.
They collapsed, a sweaty, breathing tangle of limbs. He rolled off, pulling her with him, her back against his chest. For long minutes, there was only the sound of their heartbeats slowing.
“We’re going to be late for training,” he finally mumbled into her hair.
“Hansi will understand. We were… calibrating our connection.”
He snorted a laugh. “That’s one word for it.”
She twisted to look at him. “It’s the correct one.”
The year that followed was a blur of light and noise, a constant, thrilling pressure. Vanja’s star burned meteoric. She wasn’t a novelty by Christmas; she was a necessity. Defenders studied her with a kind of terrified respect. She broke records for assists, her understanding with Pedri—and gradually, with Gavi, with Lewandowski—becoming the stuff of tactical legend. The “alien superstar” nickname stuck, used with affection by teammates and with grudging awe by commentators.
The press fascination morphed. It was no longer just “the girl in the men’s game.” It was “Vanja and Pedri: Football’s Perfect Duet?” The speculation about their relationship was a constant background buzz. They never confirmed. They never denied. They were just… together. At his apartment, at her loft, in quiet corners of the city. They built a private world within the global spectacle.
It was after a Champions League semi-final, a hard-fought victory in Munich. The dressing room was chaos, beer spraying, music blaring. Vanja, still in her kit, her hair damp with sweat and champagne, found Pedri by the physio’s table. He had a cut over his eyebrow, freshly glued. He looked exhausted, exhilarated.
He pulled her into a storage closet, away from the riot. The air smelled of antiseptic and old mops. He held her face, his thumbs wiping champagne from her cheeks.
“Marry me,” he said.
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, simple and direct, like a perfect pass into space.
She stared at him, her golden-green eyes wide in the dim light. She saw the boy terrified of complications, and the man who had decided the complication was the only thing that made sense. She saw the future: more cameras, more noise, more pressure. She saw quiet mornings in Tegueste, loud dinners with her complicated family, a lifetime of this silent, perfect understanding on and off the pitch.
“Okay,” she said.
He kissed her, there among the mop buckets and stacked towels, the roar of their celebrating teammates just a wall away. When they pulled apart, he fished in his track pants pocket. He pulled out a simple, stunning ring—a band of brushed platinum, set with a single, square-cut emerald.
“Green for your eyes,” he said, his voice rough. “For the pitch. For go.”
She let him slide it onto her finger. It fit perfectly.
They told no one that night. Not even Gavi. It was theirs for a week—a secret talisman she felt against her thigh when she put her hand in her pocket, a glance they shared across the breakfast table.
It was her mother who ferreted it out, of course, during a video call to Basel. Vanja was absently adjusting the ring on her finger as she talked about the Munich match.
“Vanja,” her mother said in Serbian, her voice sharp. “What is on your hand?”
Vanja froze, then slowly held her hand up to the camera. Her mother’s scream was piercing. Her father’s face appeared, beaming. The secret was over.
The public announcement was a managed thing, a joint statement from their agents. The frenzy was unprecedented. The world obsessed over the emerald, over the potential wedding date, over the probability of “footballer babies.”
They trained through it. They played through it. The dynamic in the locker room shifted subtly, into a warmer, more protective space. Even the most ribald jokes from the guys had a layer of respect.
Tonight, they were back in Pedri’s apartment. A year to the day, almost, since that first night. A bottle of non-alcoholic cava sat open on the counter—her choice, always meticulous about recovery. She was at the piano, the one she’d finally had moved from her loft, her fingers picking out a melancholic Serbian folk song. She played in a pair of his old shorts and a tight tank top, the emerald glinting in the low light.
He watched from the sofa, a physics textbook open on his lap—her influence, her curiosity rubbing off. He was learning, slowly.
The song trailed off. She turned on the stool, her eyes finding his. “They want to know the date,” she said.
“I know.”
“My mother suggests Lake Bled. My father suggests a Berlin football stadium as a compromise. Yours just cries whenever you call.”
He smiled. “We’ll find a place. Somewhere quiet. Just us, and the people who matter.”
She walked over to him, took the book from his hands, and straddled his lap. She kissed him, slow and deep, a promise with no urgency behind it. The future was a vast, open pitch in front of them, full of unknown defenders and screaming crowds. But here, in this quiet apartment, with the taste of her on his lips and the weight of her ring on her finger, the only play that mattered was the next one. And they would make it, together.
And they would make it, together.
The place they found was not quiet. How could it be? They were who they were. They married in Barcelona, in the soaring, light-drenched interior of the Santa María del Mar, all ancient stone and filtered gold. It was a leak, of course, not the planned announcement, that filled the surrounding streets with a thousand smartphones held aloft. The roar outside was a distant, oceanic thing, a counterpoint to the solemnity within.
Vanja walked alone. She had insisted. Her father waited, beaming, at the end of the aisle, but she wanted those steps to be hers. The silk of her gown, a ruthless, architectural cut that mirrored the ribbed vaults above, whispered against the old stones. Her eyes were only on Pedri, standing stiff and pale in his morning suit, Gavi sniffling audibly beside him.
She saw the panic in his dark eyes, the sheer scale of the spectacle swallowing them. When she reached him, she leaned in, her bouquet between them. “Look at me,” she murmured in Catalan, a language that was theirs alone here. “Just me. It’s just a game. Play it with me.”
He breathed out, a sharp release of tension, and his fingers found hers. The priest spoke. They repeated words. The rings—his a matching band of platinum, hers now joined by a simple gold band—were exchanged. When he kissed her, it was not chaste. It was a claiming, a promise, a raw and visceral seal in front of God and agents and flashing lights. The cathedral erupted.
A year later, the noise was different. It was the sound of his key in the lock, deliberately quiet. The soft pad of his feet on the engineered oak. The almost inaudible sigh as he placed his gym bag by the door, as if a heavier drop might disturb the equilibrium of the apartment.
Vanja was on the vast sectional, one leg stretched out, the other bent. A physiology textbook lay open on her swollen abdomen, rising and falling with her breath. She was five months along. The pregnancy was a brutal, beautiful athletic event, and she approached it with the same focused intensity she applied to a match tape. She tracked everything.
“I heard you creeping,” she said without opening her eyes. “You’re worse than a cat.”
Pedri crossed the room and knelt before her. He placed his hands on her belly, his thumbs stroching the taut fabric of her shirt. He pressed his forehead to the subtle curve. This was his new ritual, his silent communion. His protectiveness was not a gentle thing. It was a primal, rigid force. He scanned every room for trip hazards. He’d fired a nutritionist for suggesting a supplement he hadn’t personally vetted. He woke in the night, his hand automatically seeking the rise of her stomach, confirming the life within.
“How was training?” she asked, her fingers threading into his dark hair.
“Fine. Gavi asks about you. Every day. It’s annoying.”
“He’s sweet.”
“He’s a child.” Pedri looked up, his eyes serious. “The doctor’s appointment is tomorrow at ten. I moved the video session.”
“Pedro, you don’t have to—”
“I’m going.” The statement left no room. It was the same tone he used to call for the ball in a crowded midfield: absolute.
She smiled, a slow, knowing curve of her lips. She shifted, wincing slightly as her back protested. “I’m stiff. Everything aches.”
He stood in one fluid motion. “Turn over.”
She obeyed, maneuvering onto her stomach with a grunt, her cheek on a velvet cushion. He kneeled over her, straddling her thighs, and began to work the muscles of her lower back with his strong, practiced hands. He found the knots along her spine, the tension in her shoulders, his touch reverent and specific.
But the touch changed. His fingers slowed, tracing not just muscle, but skin. They slipped under the waistband of her soft pants, dipping lower, cupping the full, incredible swell of her ass. She inhaled sharply. His hands grew possessive, kneading, spreading. The therapeutic pressure was gone, replaced by something hotter, more urgent.
“Pedri,” she whispered.
His answer was to hook his fingers into her pants and panties, dragging them down to her knees in one rough pull. The cool air kissed her exposed skin. He leaned down, his mouth at her ear. “You’re so fucking huge. It drives me insane.”
He didn’t wait. He spit, a wet, deliberate sound, onto his fingers and pressed them against her. She was already wet. His touch, his voice, the sheer animal fact of her changed body had seen to that. He rubbed slow, torturous circles around her clit, then pushed two fingers inside her, deeper, crooking them.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, pushing back against his hand.
He withdrew his fingers, slick and shining, and she heard the frantic tear of a foil packet, the rustle of his track pants. He sheathed himself and positioned the head of his cock at her entrance. He didn’t enter her. He rubbed the length of himself through her soaked folds, the drag exquisite and maddening.
“Please,” she begged, the word muffled by the cushion.
With one hand braced on the sofa by her head, the other gripping her hip, he sank into her. It was a slow, relentless invasion, filling the new, profound depth of her. She cried out, a sound of pure relief. He set a deep, rolling rhythm, each thrust a perfect, measured claim. The sound of their joining was obscenely loud in the quiet apartment—wet flesh, his grunts, the creak of the sofa.
“You feel different,” he groaned, his control fraying. “Deeper. So fucking deep.”
He slid a hand around her hip, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing in hard, frantic circles that matched the pistoning of his hips. The dual assault unspooled her too quickly. Her orgasm built from her core, a tidal wave pulled by the moon of his body inside hers. She came with a shattered scream, clenching violently around him.
The feel of her internal contractions shattered his control. His thrusts became erratic, brutal. He slammed into her one final, searing time, his roar loud against her neck as he emptied himself. He collapsed over her, careful of his weight, his body shuddering.
They lay like that, joined, gasping. His hand crept around to rest again on her belly. A firm, sudden kick landed directly against his palm.
He froze. Then he laughed, a breathless, awed sound against her skin. “He’s strong.”
“Or she’s telling you to get off her mother,” Vanja mumbled, her face still buried.
He withdrew gently, disposing of the condom before gathering her into his arms, rearranging their clothes. He held her from behind on the wide sofa, his palm a permanent brand over the life they’d made. The city glittered beyond the windows, a constellation of expectations and eyes. In here, there was only this: her breath syncing with his, the faint, restless movement under his hand, and a silence so profound it felt like the only real thing in the world. The next match, the next headline, the next impossible challenge was out there waiting. But for now, his world was contained in the arch of her back against his chest, and the future, small and fierce, kicking against his hand.