A Relaxing Bath

She feels the first real wave of fear as he’s tying her hands behind her back. She’s in the bath in the bathroom of her own tiny apartment. A familiar space. She’s naked, thigh-deep in warm water. The mirror in which she would normally be able to see her own reflection is foggy with condensation. The fear is quick. It rises inside her chest like a bubble, constricting and sickly, filling her as utterly as a curse.

She’s used to nervousness, but this is something else. More foundational. A pit-of-the-brain kind of feeling that she hasn’t really experienced before. As he finishes tying her hands behind her back she looks up at him, already reaching for words: wait a minute or I’m scared or are you sure about this.

He stands over her, naked also, looking down at her, attentive and calm. That familiar body. That familiar face. The fear goes. The nerves remain, but the fear dissipates like steam, leaving her uncertain, in the aftermath, that it was even really there.

“You’re ready?” he asks.

She takes a moment to breathe. To consult her body. Is she ready? The fear is gone. He’s there. It’s not coming back. Not fully, anyway. She tugs at the bindings on her wrists. They’re firm. He’s there.

“Ready,” she says.

He kneels down beside the bath, takes a fistful of her hair in one hand, pinches closed her nose with the other and pushes her head underwater. She just has time to suck in some air with her mouth before she’s submerged. She holds it, lips pressed together tighter than they need to be. An echoey, underwater roar fills her ears.

Oh god.

She counts to ten in her head… but only gets to eight before he hauls her back up above the surface. Releases her nose. She breathes deep, surprised.

“I’m okay,” she says.

“I know.”

She can’t stop herself saying it again. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

He allows her three full breaths and then pushes her under again. His grip is tight, heavy on the back of her head. She pushes up against it experimentally, and it doesn’t give. She stops pushing. It gives her a dark, squirmy feeling in the pit of her stomach to try and rise from the water and find herself unable. Half of it is claustrophobia. The other half is that she doesn’t want to fight him. Where his firm grip places her, that’s where she should be. She doesn’t want to breathe until he lets her, even if her lungs are bursting.

She counts to fifteen. Surprising how calm she is. The fear is still at bay, peripheral. It’s there, but lurking. It’s under control. He lets her up. Water runs down her face and he kisses her. A breathless, brief kiss. The taste of warm water on their lips and tongues. She tugs at the bonds on her wrists again, wanting to touch him. The restraints don’t give an inch.

He pushes her under again. Longer this time – a count of twenty. Long enough that she hears her pulse in her ears. A stream of bubbles escapes her mouth, tickling her face on their way to the surface. Long enough that her chest hurts. And then up again, gasping. Sweet, lovely, full breaths. He climbs into the bath behind her, kneeling with his hips against her naked arse.

“I’m okay,” she says. She needs to tell him this. She’s not sure why.

“You’re okay,” he says. Then he fits himself inside her. Cock into cunt. Her bound hands pinned between the small of her back and his chest. She’s wet and he slips in easily, but it still hurts – a pain a little like the ache in her lungs, but down deep in her groin, the two pains intertwined, extended. But still, she wriggles back against him, wanting him as deep as she can have him. He’s going to put her back under the water in a moment, she knows, and she wants to feel him while she’s under there.

He puts her back under the water. She feels him all over her body. His hand on her face, pinching shut her nose. His other hand in her hair. His cock inside her. He fucks her while she’s under, and this – the desperate mix of pain and fear and pleasure and pressure – throws her off from counting. How long has it been? Ten seconds? Twenty? Her lungs hurt and he’s rough with her cunt, and she can concentrate only on that, only on enduring. There’s nowhere to go – no way to escape these sensations, this hold.

When he next lets her up she finds that the world has shrunk. There is the bath full of water. His body, her body. The foggy mirror. That there is anything beyond these things seems impossible – the bathroom is a miniscule space capsule, floating out of reality. She takes two heaving breaths.

“I’m okay.”

“You’re okay.”

Three breaths. Four. Then she’s back under and he’s fucking her again. Hard. Her arse and cunt and back and hands are all above the water, the rest plunged below. Things are slow and liquid below the water. Things are penned in and tight. Currents move against her face, making her hair float around her, soft and damp. How strange: her head and brain and breath forced down into this aquatic smothering world… while her cunt – her dumb, unseeing cunt which doesn’t even need oxygen – remains above the water to be pounded. Forcefully.

She hasn’t counted, again. She meant to count. It is comforting to count. But she hasn’t, and she can’t, and she doesn’t know how long she’s been under. Her lungs are hurting. Badly. And the fear is crowding in. He’ll need to let her up soon. He will let her up soon – that thought is the only thing she has. The hand on the back of her head is his hand. The hand on her face is his hand. He’ll let her up. Soon. Please.

He does. She splutters and gasps. Cannot help tugging at her restraints. The impulse to swipe the water from her face, to brace herself against the edges of the bath is unbearable. But she’s bound. He holds her in place as she gasps and whimpers. He holds her in place and carries on fucking her, smacking into her body in a way that makes it difficult to catch a breath even now that she can.

She exhales. Wet, murmuring sounds echo around the bathroom. She’s making those sounds. He lets her breathe for a good six or seven or eight full breaths, then seizes her and pushes her back under, and she’s back in the soundless dark, a tight little body surrounded by void, thrust into by another human she cannot see, who controls her completely. She feels bubbles slip past her lips. The ache rising in her lungs. His cock moving inside her.

This, she thinks, is all there is. She cannot think of anything else. Life has narrowed to these essential elements. Breath. Cunt. Restraints. Hands. Water, water, water.

He’s fucking her faster and rougher now. Perhaps he’ll come soon. The idea of this blurs in her head. She wants his come with the same ache she wants a breath. Needs it. He’ll have to let her up soon. He’ll have to come inside her soon. The two are momentarily indistinguishable

Up. Another few breaths. Eyes shut, still. Above the water her hair lies heavy against her skin. Droplets run down her neck and breast. The echoey roar is replaced by the sound of bodies moving in the bath, splashing and grunts and her own plaintive, spluttering moans. Her lungs burn as she inhales, but she wants to be back under. Down in the dark being fucked. His grip tightens on her hair, and he obliges, thrusting her down and holding and smacking into her again, hard and fast.

Up again. Under again. Up again. Under. And then he holds her there for longer than he has before, using her forcefully, gripping her tight, until she feels him come – feels it through his cock twitching inside her. A specific and deep and throbbing pain that makes her, in surprise and relief, exhale the rest of her air. Nothing in her lungs – just bubbles bursting out of her as he fills her and fills her.

And still, he’s holding her under.

Still.

Nothing in her lungs.

Still.

She bucks, unable to stop herself. And just when she thinks she cannot wait any longer, he hauls her dripping and gasping from the water. It has been seconds only. He’s still coming. Still thrusting, rolling against her in a series of little waves as he pulses the contents of his balls into her body.

His grip shifts. He releases her hair, leaves her face, and wraps his arms around her body, pulling her back against him. She feels weak, boneless, but he holds her in place until he’s finished.  They settle, the two of them, slipping back into the bathwater. They fall still. The ripples fall still. The sounds of splashing and gasping fall silent.

She breathes. Sweet and easy and limitless oxygen. His hands on her ribs as they expand and contract. Such freedom feels like a gift – to be able to take her time, to indulge in oxygen until her chest stops aching. To turn her head, press back against him. To drink in air through both her mouth and her nose.

Slowly, underwater, he unties her wrists. She turns, awkward in the bathtub, and lays against his chest. Her body feels like it’s floating in the water. Utterly weightless. He moves the wet hair from her face. Strokes her shoulders. In her tiny familiar bathroom, there is calm once more.