Chapter 11: 'Hamstring Evaluation'
The silence in the private physio room was a different beast than the one in the storage closet. Here, it was amplified by sterile surfaces and the faint, astringent smell of antiseptic. The large framed portrait of Hansi on the wall, looking stern and authoritative in his club suit, felt like a silent judge.
Vanja lay on her stomach on the padded table, the blue paper sheet crinkling beneath her. She wore only her sports bra and a pair of tiny black training shorts. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin. Her hamstring did ache, a genuine tight pull from overextension during yesterday’s drills, but it was a convenient ache. One she’d mentioned quietly to him after everyone else had left the training ground.
The door opened and shut with a soft click. She didn’t turn. She listened to his footsteps, the familiar, purposeful tread on the linoleum floor. He stopped beside the table.
“Which leg?” His voice was all business, the coach’s voice.
“Left.”
She heard the squirt of gel, then his hands, strong and warm, were on her. He started at the back of her knee, working upward with firm, clinical pressure. His thumbs dug into the muscle, finding the knotted tension. She let out a shaky breath.
“Tight,” he remarked, his voice low.
“Mmm.”
His hands moved higher, up to the crease where her thigh met her buttock. The stroke was slow, deliberate. The gel was slick, his palms hot. He worked the muscle, but his fingertips strayed, brushing the very edge of her shorts. A casual, accidental touch. Then again. Less accidental.
Vanja closed her eyes, focusing on the sensation. The conflict in him was palpable in the room; she could feel it radiating from his stillness. He was fighting himself, and the fight was its own kind of foreplay.
His hands stilled. “You need to relax the muscle.”
“I am relaxed.”
“You’re not.” His voice had dropped an octave. One hand remained on her hamstring, a solid, warm weight. The other traced a idle path up her spine, between her shoulder blades. “You’re tense everywhere.”
His fingers hooked under the strap of her bra, a fleeting, testing touch, then retreated. He returned to her leg, but his touch had changed. It was no longer purely therapeutic. It was a caress. His palm slid over the curve of her backside, squeezing gently through the thin fabric of her shorts. Vanja bit her lip, pressing her hips down into the table.
“This is the treatment?” she murmured, her voice muffled by her folded arms.
“A comprehensive assessment,” he replied, his tone gravelly.
His hand slipped from her leg, sliding deliberately up the inside of her thigh. He pushed her legs apart just a fraction with his wrist. The paper sheet tore softly. His fingers found the hem of her shorts, and this time there was no pretense of accident. He pushed his hand underneath, his rough, calloused fingertips skating over the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, moving higher.
He stopped just short of where she desperately wanted him. He was breathing harder now; she could hear it.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Vanja,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. His breath was hot. “Scheduling private physio. What did you think would happen?”
“I thought you’d fix my hamstring,” she said, twisting her head to look at him. His eyes were dark, the blue almost swallowed by black. The portrait on the wall stared down at them.
A hard, humorless smirk touched his lips. “Liar.”
His fingers finally made contact, sliding through the slick heat he found there. She was soaked, just as he’d found her in the equipment room. A low groan escaped him. “Christ. Already?”
She didn’t answer, just pushed back against his hand. He cursed again, filthier this time, and hooked his fingers into the waistband of her shorts, yanking them down to her knees. The cool air hit her exposed skin, followed immediately by the heat of his full palm as he cupped her. He squeezed, possessively, his middle finger finding her entrance and pushing in, just an inch.
“You stay late, spread out like this… you wanted this.” He added a second finger, stretching her. “You wanted to be assessed. Tell me.”
“Yes.” The word was a gasp.
“Yes, what?”
“I wanted you to check me.” The obscenity was a thrill. She saw his jaw clench in the reflection of the large mirror across the room. He could see them both, her prone form, his hand working between her legs.
He withdrew his fingers and she heard the rustle of his clothes, the unmistakable sound of a zipper. He shoved her legs wider, the paper tearing completely. The broad, blunt head of his cock pressed against her, and he pushed inside without ceremony, burying himself to the hilt in one deep, brutal thrust.
Vanja cried out, the sound echoing off the tiled walls. He covered her mouth with his free hand, muffling her. His other hand braced on the table by her head.
“Quiet,” he hissed, beginning to move. He set a relentless, driving pace, each slam of his hips jolting her forward on the table. The clinical setting made it filthier. The motivational poster behind him read ‘DISCIPLINE’. His framed portrait watched. And here he was, fucking his teenage prodigy on the treatment table, his discipline in ashes.
“Look,” he grunted, forcing her head to the side toward the mirror. “Look at what you do. Look at how you take it.”
She opened her eyes. The sight was devastating. Her face flushed and desperate, his body looming over hers, pistoning into her from behind. Her breasts swayed with each impact. His expression was one of ravenous need, all his control incinerated.
“You’re mine,” he snarled, his rhythm faltering, becoming ragged. “My secret. My fucking problem.” He drove into her harder, deeper. “Come on. Let go. I want to feel you.”
The permission, the raw command in his voice, tipped her over. A silent scream tore through her as the orgasm clamped down, wave after wave of electric pleasure making her muscles seize around him. The clenching pull was too much for him. With a choked, guttural sound, he followed, his hips stuttering as he emptied himself inside her, his body collapsing over hers for a weightless, timeless moment.
The only sounds were their ragged breaths and the hum of the refrigerator holding cold packs. Slowly, he pulled out. The aftermath was a cold, sticky reality. He handed her a wad of paper towels from a dispenser on the wall.
He handed her a wad of paper towels from a dispenser on the wall. The utilitarian rasp of the paper being torn was obscenely loud. Vanja took them without looking at him, her hands trembling only slightly as she cleaned herself, the rough paper harsh against her sensitive skin.
She swung her legs over the side of the table, the gel on her thigh cold now, sticky. The air in the room felt different, charged with a new and brittle silence. She could feel his eyes on her back, a physical weight. She reached for her shorts, bunched around her knees, and pulled them up.
HE WATCHES HER DRESS.
He did not move from where he leaned against the treatment table, his own clothes rearranged but not quite right. He watched the fabric slide over her hips, watched her fasten the button with clumsy fingers. His gaze was a neutral, assessing thing, like he was studying a player’s form after a match. It tracked the sweep of her dark blond hair as she tossed it over her shoulder, followed the line of her spine as she bent to pick her training top off the floor.
She pulled the top over her head, the movement causing her breasts to sway heavily before being contained. He watched that too, his expression unreadable. His arms were crossed, his earlier frenzy replaced by a watchful, almost cold intensity. The portrait of him on the wall, frozen in stern approval, mocked the scene.
“Hamstring feel better?” he asked, his voice flat.
Vanja turned, meeting his eyes. “Looser.”
A faint, cynical smirk touched his mouth. “Good.” He pushed off the table and walked to the sink in the corner, turning on the tap. He washed his hands with clinical thoroughness, the scent of antiseptic soap cutting through the room’s other smells. “You know the drill. Nothing happened. You got treatment.”
“I know.”
He dried his hands on a white towel, then tossed it into a laundry bin. “The equipment room was one thing. This is my space. My clinic.” He turned, pinning her with that blue stare. “It doesn’t happen here again.”
She knew it was a lie even as he said it. The prohibition was just another part of the game. “Where, then?” The question came out softer than she intended.
He didn’t answer immediately. He just watched her, his eyes dropping to the swell of her chest under the fabric, then back to her face. The memory of his hands on her, in her, was a vivid heat between them.
“You tell me,” he finally said, a challenge. “You’re the one who stays late. You find the place. You make it happen.” He walked toward her, not to touch her, but to pass her on his way to the door. He stopped close enough for her to smell the soap on his skin and the faint, lingering scent of their sex on his clothes. “And you better be ready. No more of this… assessment pretense.”
She held her ground. “What, then?”
His smile was all teeth. “Then it’s just fucking.” He said it plainly, a tactical statement. “Next time, you come to me dripping and you say ‘I need your cock.’ Nothing else.” He reached past her, his hand closing around the doorknob. “Understood?”
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, thrilling rhythm. She nodded, her throat dry.
“Good.” He opened the door, the corridor light slicing into the dim room. He didn’t look back. “Lock up when you leave.”
And then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the hall. Vanja stood alone in the sterile silence, the ghost of his weight still pressing her into the table. She looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror: flushed, disheveled, alive. Her own green eyes stared back, wide with a fear that was indistinguishable from hunger. She touched her wrist, where his watch had dug into her skin in the equipment room. A bruise was forming. A mark.
She finished dressing slowly, every movement deliberate. She wiped the remaining gel from her leg. She straightened the torn paper sheet on the table, a futile attempt to erase the evidence. Then she turned off the light and stepped into the empty hall, locking the door behind her. The echo of his final command pulsed in her veins with every step she took toward the exit. I need your cock. The words were a key, twisted and dark, fitting a lock only they possessed. She already knew where she would go next time. The thought was a promise she made only to herself, sharp and thrilling in the stadium’s vast, sleeping dark.