Chapter 12: Glowing and Groping
The late afternoon sun bled honey-gold through the sheer curtains of their Amsterdam townhouse. It caught the dust motes dancing in the air, each particle glowing like a tiny star before vanishing. Vanja stood in the center of their living room, one hand resting on the profound curve of her belly, the other holding Jens’s chubby hand. At two-and-a-half, he was a whirlwind in a state of uncharacteristic, bribed stillness, his wide blue eyes fixed on the woman with the camera.
“Beautiful, Vanja. Just tilt your chin down a touch. Look at Jens. That’s it.” The photographer, a friend of a friend, clicked away. “And Jens, can you show me your sister? Where’s the baby?”
Jens, solemn as a priest, placed his sticky palm flat against the tight, round dome of Vanja’s stomach. “In Mama’s tummy,” he announced. “She’s sleeping. She kicks.”
Vanja smiled, a real one, not the polished media smile she used on the touchlines. This was fatigue and awe and a deep, settled joy, all mixed together. At seven months pregnant, her body felt like a foreign country, vast and mysterious and subject to its own seismic laws. The Golden Ball from Qatar sat on a low shelf, currently serving as a makeshift garage for Jens’s toy trucks. The absurdity of it made her smile wider.
Mats leaned in the doorway, still in his training kit from Ajax’s morning session, damp with sweat. He’d been watching for ten minutes, silent. His eyes, always so fiercely focused, were soft. This was his other victory. More profound, more terrifying. The smell of grass and male sweat wafted from him, a familiar anchor in the sweet, staged air of the photoshoot.
“Okay, Mats, your turn,” the photographer called. “Come join your empire.”
He pushed off the doorframe and crossed the room, his movements still carrying the loose-limbed grace of an athlete, though he moved with a new caution around her, as if she were made of blown glass. He knelt behind her where she sat on the low, white sofa, his arms circling her, his big hands splaying over her belly, next to Jens’s. He pressed his cheek against her temple. The shutter clicked rapidly, capturing the unguarded moment: his closed eyes, her contented sigh, Jens’s puzzled look at the camera.
Later, after the photographer had packed up and left, and Jens was crashed out in his bed for a nap, the house settled into a deep, sleepy quiet. Mats cleared the remains of their lunch. Vanja waddled to the oversized armchair, groaning as she lowered herself into it. Her back ached with a persistent, dull throb.
“Here,” he said, appearing behind her. He nudged her forward gently and sat on the wide arm of the chair, his strong fingers finding the knots along her spine. She moaned, her head lolling forward.
“God, yes. Right there. Don’t stop.”
“I have no intention of stopping,” he murmured, working the muscle with a knowing pressure. His hands moved from her back, over her shoulders, down her arms. They were quiet for a long time. The only sounds were the distant hum of a boat on the canal and her soft sighs.
His touch changed. The therapeutic kneading became a caress. His palms slid around to cradle the heavy weight of her breasts, swollen and sensitive. He brushed his thumbs over her nipples through the thin cotton of her dress. She shuddered.
“Mats,” she breathed, not a protest.
“You were stunning today,” he said, his voice low and rough in her ear. “Fucking radiant. It drives me crazy. Has the whole time.”
“I’m a whale.”
“You’re a goddess. A fertile, gorgeous, maddening goddess.” He leaned down, nipping at her earlobe. “And I haven’t been inside you in two weeks.”
It was true. The third trimester had brought a wave of sheer exhaustion for her, and a protective, almost fearful hesitation from him. The want, however, had been a constant hum between them, banked but burning.
His hands drifted down, over the colossal swell of her belly, his touch possessive and reverent. He pushed her dress up her thighs, his fingers slipping beneath the edge of her underwear. She was already wet. The simple, shameless fact of it made her blush.
“See?” he growled, his fingers finding her slick heat, circling her clit with a deft, practiced pressure that made her hips jerk. “Your body knows. It wants me. It always wants me.”
She was too full, too heavy for coyness. “Then take me,” she said, the words guttural. “But I can’t… the chair…”
“I know.” He withdrew his hand, helped her to stand. He led her to the deep, plush rug before the cold fireplace, summer-dormant. He piled cushions from the sofa behind her. “Here. On your side.”
She lay down, her belly a great moon resting on the rug. He stripped off his kit quickly, his erection springing free, thick and eager. He knelt behind her, drawing her top leg up and over his hip, opening her. The position was intimate, deep, and spared her stomach any pressure. He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head nudging against her.
“Look at you,” he whispered, his voice thick with lust. “So fucking wet for me. So open.” He pushed in, not with a sudden thrust, but with a slow, relentless invasion that made her cry out. She was incredibly tight, her body stretched and full, and the sensation for both of them was blinding. He sank to the hilt, his pelvis meeting the curves of her ass, his groin pressed against her from behind. He stilled, buried completely, letting them both adjust. She felt impossibly full, stuffed, every nerve ending alight.
“Oh, fuck, Vanja,” he choked out. “You feel… you feel like heaven. A tight, wet, perfect heaven.”
He began to move. Slow, deep, grinding strokes that rubbed against a spot inside her that made stars burst behind her eyelids. Each thrust was a deliberate, claiming possession. His hand snaked around her hip, his fingers finding her clit again, working in tight circles in time with his penetration.
“This cunt is mine,” he panted, his breath hot on her neck. “This pregnant, beautiful cunt. You’re having my baby and you’re still the best fuck on the planet. How is that possible?”
The filth from his mouth, the sheer animal truth of it, pushed her higher. She reached back, grabbing his thigh, her nails digging into his skin, urging him deeper, harder. “Because you made it that way,” she gasped. “You fucking own it. Now own it harder.”
A guttural sound tore from his throat. He obeyed, his thrusts losing their measured pace, becoming powerful, pounding drives that shook her entire body. The slap of skin on skin, the wet, rhythmic sounds of their joining, filled the quiet room. She was hurtling towards her climax, a tidal wave building from her core.
“I’m going to come,” she warned, her voice breaking. “Mats, I’m going to—”
“Come,” he commanded, his fingers frantic on her clit. “Come all over my cock. Soak me. Let me feel it.”
It crashed over her, a devastating, full-body convulsion that clenched around him like a vise. She screamed into a cushion, her back arching as the waves ripped through her. Her contraction triggered his. With a raw, shattered shout, he drove home one last time and spilled into her, his heat pulsing deep inside as he shuddered against her, his body going rigid before collapsing heavily, careful to keep his weight off her.
They lay joined, breathing in ragged, broken unison. Slowly, he softened and slipped from her. He curled around her on the rug, his front to her back, his hand spread over her belly. A firm, distinct kick landed against his palm.
He laughed, a breathless, amazed sound. “She approves.”
Vanja, boneless and sated, chuckled. “Or she’s complaining about the noise.”
They dozed like that, in a pool of sunlight, sticky and spent. When the digital clock on the mantle clicked to the hour, Mats stirred. “Jens will be up soon.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t want to move. This was her center. The sweat cooling on her skin, his solid warmth at her back, the life kicking within her.
“We need to decide on a name,” he said softly, his lips against her shoulder. “We can’t just call her ‘the baby’ forever.”
“I was thinking,” Vanja said, her eyes still closed. “Luna.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Moon.”
“Yes. Because she’s been my little moon, growing full and round. And because… it’s soft. But strong. It’s celestial. After all the noise, the stadiums, the crowds… she feels like quiet starlight.”
He held her tighter. She could feel him smiling. “Luna de Visser.” He tested the sound. “Okay. Yeah. Luna.”
Upstairs, a small voice called out. “Mama? Papa?”
The empire was awakening. Mats pressed a kiss to her shoulder and stood, pulling on his boxers. He offered her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up with a gentle strength that made her feel weightless. She rearranged her dress, her body humming with a profound, well-loved ache.
He looked at her, his gaze sweeping over her disheveled hair, her flushed skin, her naked contentment. “You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, simply. It wasn’t flattery. It was a fact, as concrete to him as the trophies on the shelf.
She took his hand, and together they went to meet their son, their daughter waiting in the wings, their future an open field under a quiet, gathering moon.
She took his hand, and together they went to meet their son, their daughter waiting in the wings, their future an open field under a quiet, gathering moon.
Six weeks later, that moon was full and brilliant, glaring through the sterile window of the delivery room like a cold, watching eye. Vanja’s world had narrowed to a tunnel of pain and pressure, a primal scream tearing from her throat that drowned out the midwife’s calm instructions. Mats’s hand was a crushed, bloodless thing in her grip. “You’re doing it, you’re fucking doing it, one more, push,” he chanted, his voice raw, his face pale.
Then the pressure released, a sudden, shocking vacuum, followed by a thin, furious cry. The sound was alien and beautiful. Vanja collapsed back, drenched, every muscle trembling. They placed a squirming, purple-red creature on her chest, its skin slick with vernix, its mouth a perfect, wailing circle. Luna. Her quiet starlight had arrived with a tempest’s voice.
The following hours blurred into a haze of stitches, uncomfortable breastfeeding attempts, and a deep, bone-grinding exhaustion that made her previous fatigue seem quaint. Mats never left, a sentinel in a plastic chair, fielding a torrent of congratulatory texts on his buzzing phone. Dawn was bleeding into the sky when a nurse gently suggested Jens could visit. Vanja, propped up on pillows, felt a jolt of anxious energy. “I look like hell. I feel like hell.”
“You look like you just grew and birthed a human,” Mats said, brushing damp hair from her forehead. “He won’t care.”
When the door swung open, Jens stood there, holding his Oma’s hand, his beloved orange jersey on. He looked suddenly so small, and so old. His eyes, wide and unsure, scanned the room—the machines, the bed, his mother’s pale face—before landing on the tiny bundle in the crook of her arm.
“Hey, champ,” Mats said softly, crouching. “Come see.”
Jens approached the bed with slow, deliberate steps. Vanja’s heart hammered against her ribs. He peered over the edge, his nose wrinkling. “She’s red.”
Vanja laughed, a wet, choked sound. “She is. She was in a hurry to meet you.”
“Is she broken?”
“No, sweetheart. This is just how new babies look.” She shifted the blanket away from Luna’s face. The baby, milk-drunk and sleepy, made a soft, mewling sound, her tiny fist waving.
Jens’s expression shifted from skepticism to profound curiosity. He leaned closer, his breath ghosting over Luna’s head. “She’s little.”
“She is. And she’s your sister. Her name is Luna.”
“Loona,” he repeated, testing the word. He looked at Mats, then back at Vanja. “Can I touch?”
Vanja’s throat tightened. “Yes. Be very gentle. Use one finger.”
With immense concentration, Jens extended his index finger, pausing mid-air. He looked to his father for confirmation. Mats gave a single, encouraging nod. Jens lowered his finger and touched, with exquisite softness, the back of Luna’s hand. The baby’s fingers instantly curled around his, a reflex, but to Jens it was magic. His eyes flew open, a brilliant, triumphant smile breaking across his face.
“She’s holding me!” he whispered, awestruck.
“She knows you,” Vanja said, tears finally spilling over. “She’s been waiting to meet you.”
Mats’s arm came around Jens’s shoulders, pulling him into a three-person—now four-person—hug. The family orbit had recalibrated, gravity shifting to include this new, tiny star. Jens stayed like that, mesmerized, until Luna fell asleep and his own yawns became contagious. Oma took him home for a nap, promising he could return later.
Once they were alone, the room settled into a fragile quiet. Vanja felt hollowed out and stitched back together, a vessel of raw, throbbing sensation. Mats helped her to the attached bathroom, his hands supporting her shaking weight. The mirror showed a stranger—pale, swollen-eyed, hair matted. She started to cry, silently, from sheer overwhelm. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just held her, his chin resting on her head, until the storm passed.
He ran a warm cloth over her neck, her shoulders, the sweat-stained valley between her breasts. The touch was clinical at first, then it wasn’t. His thumb grazed her nipple, now sensitive and heavy with milk. A shocking bolt of sensation, utterly divorced from the exhaustion, shot through her. She gasped.
He stilled. “Sorry. I didn’t—”
“Don’t stop.” The words were out before she could think. Her body was a ruined landscape, yet a sharp, insistent need coiled low in her belly. She needed to feel something other than pain, other than the mechanical demands of motherhood. She needed to feel owned by him, reassembled by his hands. She turned within the circle of his arms, wincing at the pull of stitches, and looked up at him. “Make me feel real.”
His eyes darkened. He locked the bathroom door. He sat on the closed toilet lid and pulled her to stand before him, her hospital gown falling open. The cool air kissed her skin. He parted her thighs with his hands, his gaze fixed on the swollen, bruised reality of her. “You’re the most real thing I’ve ever seen,” he muttered, and leaned forward.
His mouth was hot and devastatingly soft on her inner thigh, a contrast to the rough stubble scraping her skin. He moved inward, ignoring the bulky maternity pad, his tongue finding the swollen, tender folds beneath. She cried out, her hands fisting in his hair. It was too much, an overload on shattered nerves, and it was everything. He licked and sucked with a focused intensity, one hand gripping her hip to steady her shaking.
“Taste yourself,” he growled against her, his voice vibrating through her. “Taste our daughter on you. Fuck, Vanja.”
The climax hit her suddenly, a sharp, unexpected detonation that ripped a broken shriek from her lungs. Her knees buckled. He held her up, mouth still working her through the violent, shuddering pulses until she pushed his head away, oversensitive and raw.
He stood, his own need straining against his jeans. He freed himself, his cock thick and urgent in his hand. He turned her gently, her back to his front, bracing her hands on the cool sink. “Look at us,” he whispered, his breath hot in her ear. He entered her from behind with a slow, careful push, filling the aching, empty space.
She was loose, sore, and impossibly tight all at once. A low moan escaped her. He moved with a shallow, grinding rhythm, one hand splayed across her lower belly, the other covering her breast, pinching her nipple. She watched in the mirror—his face, clenched in pleasure, buried in her neck; her own wrecked and flushed visage; their joined bodies, moving as one.
“This is ours,” he panted, his thrusts deepening slightly. “This mess, this beauty. All of it. You’re my fucking wife.” The word ‘wife’ had never sounded so crude, so possessive. He came inside her with a harsh groan, his body locking, spilling into the raw aftermath of birth. They stayed like that, leaning against the sink, breathing hard.
Later, clean and back in bed with Luna asleep in the clear bassinet beside her, Vanja watched Mats doze in the chair. Jens’s orange jersey was draped over its back, a splash of bright color in the sterile room. Her body hummed with a complex symphony of pain, satisfaction, and a fragile, towering love. The door clicked open, and a nurse entered for observations. She checked Luna’s vitals, then smiled at Vanja.
“She’s perfect. How are you feeling?”
Vanja looked at her sleeping daughter, at her exhausted husband, and thought of her son’s awestruck finger curled in a tiny fist. “Complete,” she said, and it was the truth.
The completeness fractured, of course, as all perfect moments must. It shattered into sleepless nights and Luna’s colicky screams, into Jens’s jealous tantrums and Mats’s away games, into the smell of spit-up and the desperate, quiet sex they stole during simultaneous naps. It reassembled itself, differently, when Luna first laughed, when Jens read her a picture book, when Mats lifted them both onto his shoulders after clinching the Eredivisie title. The foundation held.
Ten years is a blizzard of moments. It’s a procession of scars and trophies, of stretched skin and silvering hair at temples, of packed lunches and airport goodbyes. The quiet Amsterdam townhouse became a riotous, beautiful chaos. Luna’s tempest cry solidified into a permanent, skeptical eyebrow and a playlist of angry girl punk. Jens, at thirteen, had his father’s gait and his mother’s tactical eyes, a coveted starter for the Ajax U15s who still, secretly, loved when Vanja analyzed his match footage. And then came the twins, Max and Tobias, a hurricane of matching grins and muddy knees, and finally Mia, who at five was a serene, watchful ghost with Vanja’s golden-green eyes.
Vanja stood now in the sleek, steel-and-glass kitchen of their new, larger home, slicing apples. The sound of the twins arguing over a PlayStation controller rumbled from the den. Mia was drawing at the kitchen island. Vanja was thirty-five. Five children had written their histories on her body, and she wore them not as ruins but as topography. Her curves were fuller, her face was still super youthfull—dynamic, compelling, real. She’d traded the touchline for a Directorship of Football Development at the KNVB, her PhD long finished, her mind sharper than ever.
In London, Mats adjusted the captain’s armband on his bicep in the echoing, concrete tunnel of the Emirates. At thirty-four, he was a monument, his body maintained with ferocious discipline, his leadership innate. Liverpool was here for a Champions League group stage match against Arsenal. The tunnel buzzed with the primal energy of young millionaires. He heard the chatter, the English slang, the casual assessments of opponents. Then he heard his wife’s name.
“—see Jakobsen? Mat's ? who used to coach? In the exec box.”
“Fucking hell. That’s her? Thought she’d be older. Looks like a fucking film star.”
“Better. Like she’d know exactly what to do with you.”
A low, collective chuckle. Mats didn’t turn. He kept his eyes on the strip of light at the tunnel’s end, his jaw a knot of granite. He knew the player’s voice, a flashy 22-year-old winger with a reputation. A hot fury, pure and possessive, flooded his veins. It wasn’t jealousy of insecurity. It was the violation of it, the reduction. She was a director, a doctor, a mother of four, a fucking genius, and they saw only a body that had, improbably, ripened with time.
The match was a brutal, tactical stalemate. Mats played with a controlled, violent fury, shutting down attacks, his distribution pinpoint. He scored the equalizer off a set-piece in the 88th minute, a thunderous header. He didn’t smile. He ran back to the center circle, his gaze slicing toward the executive boxes. He couldn’t pick her out in the glare, but he knew she was there.
Later, in the mixed zone, he gave terse answers to journalists. Vanja met him by the team bus, having collected Mia from a friend’s in the city. She wore a simple, dark wool dress that clung to her hips and fell to her knees. Her hair was down. She looked radiant, intellectual, untouchable. The winger from earlier walked past with his entourage, his eyes dragging over Vanja like sticky hands. He had the audacity to wink.
Mats saw red.
The flight back to Liverpool was silent between them. He stared out the window at the black nothingness. His hand rested on her thigh, high up, his grip just shy of painful. She placed her hand over his, feeling the tension coiled in the tendons. She said nothing. She understood the language of his silence.
Their house was dark, the children all asleep, the live-in nanny briefed. He closed the front door and the lock engaged with a heavy, final click. He didn’t turn on the lights. The moonlight through the skylight painted the hallway in shades of bone and silver.
“They were talking about you,” he said, his voice gravel. “In the tunnel. That little cunt from Arsenal. He said you looked like you’d know what to do with him.”
Vanja leaned against the wall, watching him. “And what did you do?”
“I scored. I didn’t break his legs.” He stepped into her space, caging her with his arms. The smell of his sweat, grass, and iron filled her lungs. “He doesn’t get to think about you. He doesn’t get to have a single fucking thought in his empty head about what you know, what you’d do.”
“He’s a child,” she said, but her voice was low, a taunt.
“He’s a man. And he looked at what’s mine.” His hands went to the neckline of her dress. He didn’t bother with the zipper. He gripped the fabric and tore it downward in one brutal motion. The wool gave way with a sick, satisfying rend. Cool air hit her skin. Her bra followed, the clasp snapping. “They see a body. They have no idea what this body is. What it’s built. What it contains.”
He palmed her breast, rough, his thumb scraping over her nipple. He dipped his head and took it into his mouth, biting down just enough to make her gasp. It wasn’t love. It was branding. She arched into him, her fingers digging into his short hair. “Show me,” she breathed. “Show me what it is.”
He spun her around to face the wall, the plaster cool against her cheek. He kicked her legs apart with his foot. His hands ran down her spine, over the flare of her hips, gripping the torn remains of her dress and her underwear, yanking them down to her knees in one hard pull. He unzipped his jeans, freed himself. He was brutally hard. He spat into his hand, slicked himself, and notched the head of his cock against her entrance. No preamble. No gentleness.
“This is what you are,” he growled, and he drove into her, one deep, obliterating thrust that stole the air from her lungs.
She was wet, always wet for him, but the force was staggering. She cried out, the sound muffled by the wall. He didn’t pause. He set a relentless, pounding rhythm, each slam of his hips driving her into the plaster. The obscene, wet slap of their coupling echoed in the dark hall. His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. “You hear that? That’s my cock in my wife. That’s the sound he’ll never hear.”
“Fuck,” she choked, every nerve alight, the friction brutal and perfect. “Yes.”
“You’re a mother. You’re a director. You’re a fucking visionary.” He punctuated each title with a thrust. “And you’re this. This perfect, tight cunt taking me. This is your core. Mine.”
She was unspooling, the crude words and the raw physicality short-circuiting her higher mind. This was animal reclamation. She pushed back against him, meeting his violence with her own. “Harder. Mark me. Let me feel it tomorrow.”
With a snarl, he obeyed. His pace became frantic, savage. The wall shook. One of his hands left her hip and snaked around, his fingers finding her clit, rubbing rough, fast circles. The dual assault was too much. Her orgasm tore through her, a silent, seizing wave that clenched around him like a vise, milking him. He followed, burying himself to the root with a shattered groan, his hot release pumping into her in pulsing jets.
He collapsed against her, his weight pinning her to the wall, both of them slick with sweat, breathing in ragged, torn gasps. Slowly, he softened and slipped from her. A trail of his spend dripped down her inner thigh. He turned her, his eyes black in the moonlight. He looked at the torn dress, at the marks on her skin, at her wrecked, satisfied face. He kissed her, deep and slow, tasting the salt.
From the top of the stairs, a small, sleepy voice said, “Mama? I heard noises.”
Mats rested his forehead against Vanja’s, a silent laugh shaking his shoulders. She called out, her voice miraculously steady. “It’s nothing, Mia. Papa just dropped his kit bag. Go back to sleep.”
They listened to the pad of small feet retreating. Vanja looked at the wreckage of her dress, at the evidence of their joining glistening on her thigh. She looked at her husband, his eyes now soft, the fury spent. The completeness was back, not a pristine truth, but a forged, resilient, and deeply filthy one. She took his hand. Together, they walked naked through the dark house, past the closed doors of their sleeping children, towards their own room, where the night was still young.