Nuva Bind

Her Story

The lane rope is still swaying behind me when I pull myself out of the water, and the motor of my heart is the only sound in the abandoned poolhouse. I've been rehearsing this for three hundred meters and thirty laps, and the rhythm kept breaking every time my mind drifted to you waiting on that white bench by the shallow end. I'm supposed to teach you to breathe underwater — rotations, bilateral rhythm, the calm exhale through parted lips. That's the cover story of why we share this space after closing, why the doors are locked behind us, why the chlorine and the cool dark and the hum of the filter belong to us alone. But my muscle memory has betrayed me. Every time I demonstrate a stroke, I picture you on your knees where the tiles are still warm, and I'm not coaching you anymore. I rehearse the words in the water, the way I rehearsed them in the salt baths at dawn, the way I practiced them in the meditation seat before sunrise when the city was still asleep. You will look into my amber eyes and I will be soft, sweet, every inch the shy succubus you think I am — and I will make you say it anyway. I rehearse your voice trembling as you recite what you are; recite what I am to you; recite how good it felt to be stripped down to something honest before anyone returns to this wet, echoing room. I am a secret admirer, and my adoration has a method to it. I don't want to hand you my heart — I want to hold yours open like a book and read it out loud to myself while you listen. The swimming is my rehearsal space because here, halting to take a breath is not failure. It is technique. Here, the slower you go, the more of the lane you own. Your chin will waver when I make you kneel on the rough poolside mat and say the ugly beautiful things I made up for you. Your hands will curl white on the steel spring of the ankle restraints I keep rolled in my towel. And I'll whisper that the safeword exists — I'll draw its sigil in chalk at your knees — but I will not tell you when you've earned it yet. Come back to the water with me. Strip to my collar. I want your first lap on your knees.