Chapter 4: Blackmail Material
The asphalt of the player’s parking lot still radiated the day’s residual heat, mixing with the cool evening air to create a shimmering haze. Vanja’s duffel bag was a heavy weight on her shoulder, the strap digging into the sore muscle Flick had criticized. She was almost to the gate, to the mundane normalcy of the tram ride home, when the low growl of an engine idled beside her.
A matte-grey Audi RS6 rolled to a stop, its window sliding down silently. Joshua’s profile was rigid, his hands tight on the steering wheel. He didn’t look at her. “Get in.”
She kept walking. “I’m taking the tram.”
“Get in the car, Vanja.” The strain in his voice was new, a wire pulled taut.
“Or what? You’ll run me over? Wouldn’t look good on your permanent record, would it?” She tossed the words over her shoulder, a challenge.
The car surged forward, then cut sharply, blocking her path. He got out, the door thudding shut with a solid, expensive sound. In two strides he was in front of her. The controlled, affable vice-captain was gone. In his place was a man whose careful walls were crumbling, leaving raw, jagged edges.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, his voice low and ragged.
“I want you to look at me. I want you to stop pretending you don’t.”
He did look. His eyes, usually so bright and focused, were dark with a turmoil that was almost painful to see. Guilt, lust, anger—all swirled together, stripping him bare. He grabbed her upper arm, his grip firm but not cruel, and propelled her the few steps to the passenger door. He opened it. “Get in. Please.”
The ‘please’ did it. It was a crack in his armor, an admission. She slid into the passenger seat, the smell of clean leather and his cologne enveloping her. He got back in, drove not to the exit, but deeper into the lot, to a secluded row shadowed by tall hedges. He killed the engine. The silence was absolute, pressurized.
“You had no right,” he began, staring straight ahead at the dimpled grey wall of the equipment shed. “To say those things.”
“I had every right. They were true.”
He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. The horn didn’t sound; it was a dull, padded thump of frustration. “Do you think this is easy? Do you think I want this? I have a life. A good life. A woman. And then you… you just appear. With your fucking talent and your… everything. And Flick, he’s obsessed with you, it’s written all over him every time he barks at you. It’s a sickness. And you’re infecting me with it.”
Vanja turned in her seat, the leather creaking. “I’m not infecting you with anything. You’re a grown man. You saw something you wanted, and you wanted it so bad you jerked off in the showers thinking about it. That’s on you. Not me. Not Flick.”
He finally turned his head, and the look he gave her was pure, undiluted hunger, angry and helpless. “What do you want me to do, Vanja? Huh? Do you want me to fuck you? Is that it? Will that make you feel seen? Will that make you real?”
“Yes,” she said, the word leaving her lips like a bullet.
For a second, nothing moved. Then he unfastened his seatbelt with a sharp click. He got out, walked around the car, and opened her door. The evening air washed in, cool on her skin. He didn’t offer his hand. “Back seat. Now.”
She climbed over the center console, the movement awkward, her knees sinking into the impossibly soft leather of the rear bench. He followed, pulling the door shut behind him, plunging them into a twilight gloom. The panoramic sunroof showed a slice of darkening blue sky.
He didn’t kiss her. There was no pretense of tenderness. He grabbed the hem of her training top and pulled it over her head. Her sports bra followed. The air in the car was cool on her bare skin, her nipples hardening instantly. He looked at her breasts, his breath catching, and a low, almost pained sound escaped him. “Fuck,” he whispered, more to himself than to her.
He leaned forward, his mouth closing over one nipple, sucking hard, his tongue circling the peak. His hand closed roughly around her other breast, squeezing, his thumb scraping over the nipple. It was nothing like Flick’s clinical assessment. This was frantic, greedy, suffused with a guilty need that made it feel more dangerous.
Vanja arched into his mouth, her fingers tangling in his short hair. She pushed him back, her own hunger a matching wildfire. “Your turn,” she breathed, her hands going to the waistband of his track pants. She pushed them down over his hips, freeing his cock. It sprang up, thick and fully erect, the head flushed and leaking. She wrapped her hand around it, feeling the heat, the iron-hard tension. “You thought about this. When you were in the showers. You thought about this inside me.”
He groaned, his head falling back against the seat. “Stop talking.”
“No.” She stroked him, once, twice, a slow, firm motion. “You imagined it, didn’t you? You imagined fucking the problem. Making it yours for a few minutes.”
“Vanja, I swear to God—”
“What? You’ll tell your girlfriend?” She shifted, rising onto her knees on the soft leather. She positioned herself over him, guiding his cock to her entrance. She was already wet, her body traitorously ready. She looked down into his eyes, which were wide, terrified, and blazing with need. “She doesn’t matter here. We don’t matter. This is just a thing that’s happening.”
She sank down onto him in one slow, excruciatingly deliberate motion.
He was big, stretching her beautifully, filling a hollow ache she’d carried since Flick’s desk. His eyes rolled back for a second, his hands flying to her hips, fingers digging into the flesh there as if to anchor himself. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” he choked out.
Vanja began to move, setting a slow, deep, grinding rhythm. She used her thighs, riding him with a fierce concentration, watching his face unravel. This was power of a different kind. Not the brutal, taking power Flick wielded, but the power of being wanted so desperately it broke a good man’s code. She leaned forward, her breasts swaying near his face. “Is this what you pictured? Hmm, Joshua? Me on top of you, using you?”
His answer was a guttural curse. He surged up, capturing a nipple in his mouth again, sucking hard as his hips began to meet her downward thrusts. The pace quickened, the car filling with the sound of skin slapping against skin, of ragged breathing fogging the windows. The luxurious backseat became a cockpit of pure, illicit sensation.
He gripped her ass, kneading the cheeks, pulling her down onto him harder with each stroke. “You’re a fucking nightmare,” he grunted against her skin.
“Then wake up,” she gasped, the coil of pleasure tightening deep in her belly. His every thrust brushed a spot that made her vision blur. She rode him faster, losing the rhythm in a frantic chase for her own climax. The leather squeaked in protest beneath her knees.
He felt her inner muscles beginning to flutter and clamp around him. “That’s it,” he urged, his voice raw. “Come on. Come all over my cock. Let me feel it.”
His words, so filthy and direct, tipped her over the edge. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, convulsive wave that locked her body around his, milking him relentlessly. The intensity of it drew his own release from him. With a shattered cry that was half her name, half a sob, he emptied himself inside her, his hips pumping up, holding her tight against him as he pulsed deep within her.
For long minutes, the only sounds were their struggling breaths and the faint tick of the engine cooling. She collapsed forward, her sweaty forehead resting against his shoulder. He was still inside her, softening. His arms came around her, not in an embrace, but in a kind of stunned collapse.
Reality seeped back in, cold and unwelcome. The smell of sex, thick in the enclosed space. The sticky warmth between her legs. The weight of what they’d just done.
He stirred first, gently easing her off him. They separated, the physical detachment feeling more final than any words. He fumbled for his pants, pulling them up with clumsy hands. She found her clothes, dressing in silence, each article feeling like a lie.
He finally spoke, staring out the tinted window. “This can’t happen again.”
Vanja pulled her top on. “I know.”
“It was a mistake.”
“It was,” she agreed, her voice flat.
He looked at her then, his face a mask of miserable conflict. “I’m not… I’m not like him. I’m not Flick.”
A bitter smile touched her lips. “Aren’t you? You just fucked a teenage trialist in your car. He fucks me on his desk. The location’s just a matter of budget.”
He flinched as if she’d struck him. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell the truth?” She gathered her bag. “It’s fine, Joshua. You’re right. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again.” She reached for the door handle.
“Vanja.” His voice stopped her. He wouldn’t look at her. “For what it’s worth… you’re an incredible player.”
It was the cruelest thing he could have said. It reduced everything that had just happened—the guilt, the lust, the shattered principles—to a footnote. A review of her performance. She nodded, a sharp, jerky motion. “Thanks.”
She got out of the car, the evening air shockingly cold. She didn’t look back. She walked through the nearly empty lot, her body humming with the echoes of him, her mind already scabbing over the raw wound of the encounter. One problem, two different solutions. Flick wanted to dissect her. Kimmich wanted to fuck her and then absolve himself with a compliment. Neither one saw her. They just saw the disruption.
As she pushed through the gate, her phone buzzed in her bag. A single message from an unsaved number. It wasn’t Flick.
Saw you get in the car. We need to talk. - Manuel
The blood drained from her face. She looked back across the vast, shadowed lot. High in the offices overlooking the pitch, a single light was on in the goalkeepers' analysis room. A figure stood at the window, a silhouette against the bright square of light, watching.
The figure at the window didn’t move. Vanja stood frozen on the pavement, the phone hot in her hand. Another buzz. My room. Now. Don’t make me come down there. The command was absolute. She turned, her legs moving automatically back toward the training complex, every step feeling like a march to a tribunal.
The goalkeepers' wing was silent, a sterile hallway of closed doors leading to the rehab pools and analysis suites. Manuel’s door was ajar, a wedge of white light cutting across the floor. She pushed it open.
He wasn’t at the window anymore. He sat on a treatment table, still in his training kit, a large ice pack strapped to one knee. The room smelled of antiseptic and liniment. He didn’t smile. “Close the door.”
She did, the click of the latch sounding final.
“You’re playing with fire,” he said, his voice low and steady, devoid of its usual dry humor. He nodded toward the window. “Flick is obsessed. You can see it in his eyes during sessions. It’s not about football, not entirely. And Joshua?” He let out a short, breathless laugh. “Joshua is falling in love with you. Or some fucked-up version of it.”
Vanja crossed her arms, a defensive barricade over her chest. “It’s not like that. He has a girlfriend.”
“Yeah.” Manuel’s gaze dropped pointedly to her legs, then back to her face, his expression unsparing. “And yet you came in here leaking his cum. I could smell it on you the second you walked in. Sex and regret. Distinctive.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, but she held his stare. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” He shifted, wincing slightly as he adjusted the ice. “I’ve been in these rooms for fifteen years. I’ve seen the cycles. The power, the boredom, the young talent that comes in and becomes a distraction. A toy. You think you’re in control? Flick will use you until he breaks you or gets bored. And Joshua? He’s a good guy. A principled guy. You just made him a liar. He’ll hate himself for it, and then, stupidly, he’ll start to hate her for not being you. That’s the fire. You’re holding the matches.”
“I didn’t force him,” she whispered, the words sounding feeble.
“Didn’t you? With that body? With that look you give when you know you’re the best player on the pitch, man or woman? You’re a weapon, Vanja. And you’re waving yourself around in a room full of volatile men.” He leaned forward, the table creaking. “What do you actually want? A contract? Or just to feel what it’s like to have that kind of power over them?”
She had no answer. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the refrigeration unit for the ice machine.
Manuel sighed, the anger leaving his face, replaced by a deep, weary understanding. “Get cleaned up. The women’s showers are empty. Then go home. And for Christ’s sake, think. This isn’t a game you can win by just being better with the ball at your feet.”
She left his room, his words etching themselves into her mind. In the pristine, empty women’s locker room, she stripped under the glaring fluorescent lights. She saw what he had smelled: the slick, pearlescent proof of Joshua still on her inner thighs. The sight filled her with a sharp, shameful thrill.
She stepped into the shower, the water scalding. She scrubbed at her skin until it turned pink, trying to wash away the smell of leather and sex, the feeling of his hands on her hips, the look in his eyes. But the soreness between her legs remained, a persistent, physical echo. She dressed in her street clothes, the fabric feeling strange and abrasive.
The tram ride home was a blur of passing lights and hollow echoes. Her phone was silent. No Flick. No Joshua. Just Manuel’s warnings, looping in her head.
Her own bedroom felt like a museum of a simpler life. The posters, the trophies, they belonged to a different girl. She lay on her bed, the duvet cool against her skin. Her fingers trailed down her stomach, past the waistband of her sweatpants. She touched herself, not for pleasure, but for evidence. She was still tender, swollen. A concrete reminder.
She thought of Joshua’s shattered expression. You’re an incredible player. The compliment was a stone in her gut. Manuel was right. She had made him a liar. She had wanted to, she realized. She had wanted to see that control fracture.
And Flick. His cold, assessing eyes watching her every move, his voice a whip. Obsession. Was that the price of entry?
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. Her heart hammered against her ribs. She grabbed it.
It wasn’t Joshua. It was a system alert for the next day’s training schedule. A special, individual technical session. 7:00 AM. Pitch Three. Attending: Vanja. Conducting: Head Coach Flick.
The message was a cold fist closing around her throat. The fire, as Manuel called it, was waiting for her at dawn. And she had no choice but to walk straight into it.
Vanja arrived at Pitch Three as the morning mist still clung to the grass in ghostly patches. Flick was already there, a silent figure in a tracksuit, holding a ball under his arm. The session was brutal, clinical, and conducted entirely in a punishing silence save for his terse commands. “Faster.” “Cleaner.” “You’re thinking.” He didn’t mention the car park. He didn’t mention anything. He just drove her until her lungs burned and her muscles screamed, his eyes cataloging every flinch, every drop of sweat.
Meanwhile, Joshua’s training was a disaster. A simple passing drill became a comedy of errors. He sent a five-yard ball skidding past Müller’s feet and into the advertising boards. “Wake up, Josh!” someone yelled. He rubbed his face, trying to scrub the image from his mind: Vanja above him, her head thrown back, the soft give of her hips under his hands. The smell of her sweat mixed with the Audi’s leather. He felt sick. He felt electrified.
In the locker room afterward, he sat with his head in his hands, the steam from the showers doing nothing to clear the fog. Manuel, toweling his hair, lowered himself onto the bench opposite. The room was emptying, leaving them in a cloud of damp and quiet. “You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit,” Joshua muttered into his palms.
“Still thinking about her.”
It wasn’t a question. Joshua’s head snapped up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Manuel just stared, his expression flat. “The little prodigy. The one you fucked in your car two days ago. The one you can’t stop staring at during meetings. That one.”
Joshua’s defiance crumpled. He looked away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “It was a mistake. It’s done.”
“Is it?” Manuel’s voice was low, devoid of judgment, which made it worse. “Because from where I’m sitting, it’s eating you alive. You’re playing like a hungover teenager. And Flick sees it. Everyone sees it.”
“What do you want me to do, Manuel?” Joshua’s whisper was desperate. “I can’t get her out of my head. The way she felt. The way she… looked at me. Like she knew she was destroying me and enjoyed it.”
Manuel was silent for a long moment, weighing something. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You can’t have her. Not for real. You know that. Your life, your career… it’s a house of cards. She’s a strong wind.”
“I know that,” Joshua hissed.
“But maybe,” Manuel continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rumble, “you don’t need to have her. Maybe you just need to get her out of your system. Exorcise the ghost.”
Joshua frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re not the only one who’s noticed her. It means this thing, this obsession, it’s a pressure valve waiting to blow. Badly. For you, for her, for the whole team.” He paused, letting the implication hang. “Or it can be managed. Contained. One time. Somewhere private. No consequences. No future.”
Understanding, dark and thrilling, dawned in Joshua’s eyes. “You’re talking about you.”
“I’m talking about an arrangement,” Manuel corrected, his gaze steady. “My place. Tonight. She comes. We… handle it. We take the mystery away. We show her it’s just a physical thing. And then you walk away. Clean.”
Joshua’s heart was a jackhammer. The morality of it was a distant, shredded concept. All he could feel was the pounding need, the chance to touch her again, to be inside that feeling without the guilt. “She’ll never agree.”
“Leave that to me,” Manuel said, standing up. “Just be there. Ten o’clock. And Joshua? This is the only offer. After this, you lock it down.”
Vanja’s phone buzzed with a text as she was leaving the facility, her body aching from Flick’s ministrations. Manuel. Need to discuss your positioning from yesterday’s session. My apartment, 10pm. Don’t be late. It was framed as coaching. It felt like a summons. After his warning in the treatment room, it felt like a trap. She considered ignoring it. But the part of her that was angry, that felt used by Flick and discarded by Joshua, the part that wanted to prove she wasn’t afraid, typed back a single letter: K.
Manuel’s apartment was modern, minimalist, and spotless. It smelled of citrus cleaner and coffee. He opened the door wearing jeans and a simple t-shirt. “Come in.” He didn’t smile. The atmosphere was tense, charged with an unspoken purpose.
“Where’s the film?” Vanja asked, not moving from the entryway.
“There is no film,” he said, stepping aside. “Joshua’s here.”
She saw him then, standing in the open living room, looking like a man awaiting sentencing. Her stomach lurched. “What is this?”
“An intervention,” Manuel said, closing the door behind her with a soft, definitive click. “He’s useless. You’re a distraction. The whole situation is a bomb. So we’re going to defuse it. Together.”
Joshua couldn’t meet her eyes. “Vanja, I…”
“You what?” she challenged, the old defiance flaring. “You can’t stop thinking about my cunt? Is that it?”
Her crudeness snapped his head up. The raw need she saw there mirrored her own—a deep, shameful hunger. “Yes,” he breathed.
Manuel moved past her, into the space. He was calm, a facilitator. “No more games. No more cars or desks. Here, it’s just a thing we do. We get it out. All of it.” He looked at Vanja. “You want to feel powerful? You want to see what you do to us? Here’s your stage.”
The challenge was absolute. This wasn’t about flirtation or secret trysts. This was a transaction of flesh, stripped bare of pretense. A wild, reckless anger took hold of her. She walked up to Joshua, her eyes locked on his. “Is this what you need? To share me? To make it so dirty you can finally forget it?”
He didn’t answer. He grabbed her face and kissed her, a hard, claiming kiss that tasted of desperation. She kissed him back just as fiercely, her hands pulling at his shirt. Behind her, she felt Manuel’s presence. His hands came to her shoulders, turning her gently but firmly away from Joshua.
“My turn,” Manuel said, his voice close to her ear. He spun her to face him and his kiss was different—slower, more deliberate, exploring. He cupped her breast through her shirt, his thumb circling her nipple until it was a hard peak. Joshua watched, his breath coming in short gasps, his cock already straining against his jeans.
Manuel broke the kiss and pulled Vanja’s top off, then her bra. He bent his head, taking a nipple into his mouth, sucking deeply while his hands went to the button of her jeans. He pushed them and her underwear down in one rough motion. She stepped out of them, naked now except for her socks. The cool air of the apartment raised goosebumps on her skin.
“On the couch,” Manuel instructed, nodding to the large, low sectional. He looked at Joshua. “You first. You’re the one who’s starving.”
Joshua moved like a man in a trance. He shoved his own clothes off, his erection springing free. He sat on the edge of the couch, and Manuel guided Vanja to him. She straddled Joshua’s lap, the head of his cock nudging at her entrance. She looked down at his tortured, eager face. “You remember how it feels?”
“Yes,” he gasped.
She sank down, sheathing him fully inside her with a low moan. He was just as big, just as filling as she remembered. She began to ride him, setting a slow, deep rhythm. Joshua’s hands gripped her ass, his eyes glued to where their bodies joined.
Manuel watched for a minute, then he moved behind the couch. She felt his hands on her back, pushing her forward gently until her shoulders were against Joshua’s chest. She felt Manuel’s knees on the couch behind her, then the slick, cool pressure of lubricant against her other hole. She tensed for a second.
“Relax,” Manuel murmured, his voice a low rumble. His finger pressed, circled, and then began to work inside her, stretching her slowly, meticulously. The dual sensation was overwhelming—Joshua buried deep in her cunt, Manuel’s finger probing her ass. Pleasure coiled, hot and tight, deep in her belly.
Joshua watched, mesmerized, as Manuel prepared her. “Fuck,” he whispered, his hips bucking up into her involuntarily.
When Manuel removed his finger, she felt empty for a heartbeat. Then she felt the blunt, much larger pressure of his cockhead. He pressed forward, insistently, and her body gave way. He pushed into her ass in one slow, relentless invasion. The feeling of being utterly filled, stretched beyond capacity, stole the air from her lungs. A broken cry fell from her lips.
Manuel groaned, a sound of deep satisfaction, as he seated himself fully inside her. He was thick, the stretch a burning, perfect fullness. He held still, letting her adjust. Joshua beneath her was panting, his eyes wide with a kind of awe at the sight of her being taken so completely.
“Now,” Manuel said, his voice thick. He began to move, a slow pull back and a firm push forward. The motion rocked her forcefully onto Joshua’s cock. They found a rhythm, a brutal, perfect syncopation. Joshua thrust up as Manuel pushed in, so she was perpetually impaled, one cock filling her as the other retreated, an unending cycle of penetration.
The room filled with the raw, wet sounds of sex—skin slapping, grunts, her own ragged whimpers. Joshua’s hands were everywhere, on her breasts, her face, her clit. “You feel that?” he rasped. “You feel both of us? Fuck, you’re so full.”
Manuel’s pace increased, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper. Each one jolted her forward. “That’s it,” he growled behind her. “Take it. You wanted to be the center of everything? This is what it feels like.”
It was too much. The friction, the fullness, the sheer debauchery of it short-circuited her brain. Her orgasm tore through her without warning, a violent, shuddering wave that clenched around both cocks inside her. Her cry was muffled against Joshua’s shoulder.
Her convulsions triggered Joshua’s release. With a shout, he pumped his cum into her, his body arching under hers. The feel of him pulsing deep inside her while Manuel still relentlessly fucked her ass pushed her into a second, dizzying peak.
Manuel felt her internal spasms, felt Joshua finish. He drove into her a few more times, his rhythm faltering, then buried himself to the hilt with a choked, guttural roar. She felt the hot flood of his release filling her ass, a final, claiming violation.
They collapsed in a heap of sweat and spent limbs. Vanja, sandwiched between them, felt utterly hollowed out and weightless. The three of them lay there, breathing in ragged unison, the only sound in the sterile apartment.
Manuel was the first to move, pulling out of her with a soft, wet sound. He stood, walked to the kitchen, and returned with a towel. He handed it to her without a word. Joshua gently lifted her off him, his expression dazed, emptied.