Chapter 2: The Swimsuit Struggle
The kiss broke, but the world didn’t right itself. Mark’s thumb was still on my lip, his expression one of amused curiosity. From beside us, my own voice—rough with panic—cut through the heavy air.
“I, uh… I gotta go check on… the grill. Yeah. The grill’s on fire.” Sabrina, in my body, was backing toward the house, my large limbs moving with a frantic, uncoordinated gait. She practically tripped over my own discarded beer bottle before shoving through the sliding glass door and disappearing into the dim interior.
We were alone.
Mark’s hand finally dropped from my face, but his other remained a warm, inescapable brand on the small of my back. “Is he okay?” he asked, nodding toward the house. “Justin seems… jumpy.”
Justin is currently having a full-system meltdown inside your girlfriend’s nervous system, I thought wildly. My mouth, her mouth, felt used and tingly. “Long day,” I managed, the higher voice still a shock in my own ears. I tried to step back, to break the contact, but his hand pressed lightly, holding me in place. The difference in our strength was absolute. He could have lifted me with one arm without straining. The realization was a cold trickle down my spine.
“Forget the grill,” Mark said, his smile returning. He leaned down, his breath stirring the fine hairs near my temple. “The water’s perfect. Came for a swim, remember?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. His hand slid from my back to grasp mine, his fingers engulfing my own completely. My pink nail polish looked absurd against his tanned skin. He led me toward the pool’s edge, and I had no choice but to follow, my new body moving with a gait that felt all hips and sway. Every step was an education in physics I’d never needed. My center of balance was in my pelvis, not my chest. The soft, heavy weight on my chest shifted and bounced with a gentle, persistent rhythm that demanded my attention. The bikini top, which had seemed so minimal, now felt like a precarious harness. The ties at my neck and back were flimsy threads holding back a tide.
The turquoise thong bottom was a revelation of a different, more intimate horror. The strip of fabric was a constant, maddening presence between my ass cheeks—a feeling so specific and alien it hijacked my thoughts. With each step, the material shifted minutely, a tiny friction against a territory that was no longer just… neutral. It was a mapped, sensitive landscape I didn’t know how to navigate.
We stopped at the water’s edge. The pool lights had flickered on, casting a wavering, blue-green glow up over our bodies. Mark released my hand and, without ceremony, dove in. He cut the water with a clean, powerful grace, surfacing a few yards out. He slicked his hair back, water sheeting off the broad planes of his shoulders. “C’mon, babe. It’s warm.”
I stood there, paralyzed. Going into the water meant removing the sandals. It meant stepping down the ladder, exposing this body, wholly, to his gaze and to the liquid embrace of the pool. The thought of the water touching every unfamiliar inch of me was somehow more violating than the air.
“Sabrina?” His voice held a hint of questioning impatience.
Right. That’s me. I bent, a clumsy motion, to slide the delicate straps off my feet. My toes, painted that same frivolous pink, curled against the cool, rough concrete. The world was so far down. I felt precariously tall on this tiny, five-foot frame, yet dwarfed by everything around me.
I turned and sat on the edge, dipping my feet in. The water was, as he said, beautifully warm. But the sensation traveled up her legs, a caress on skin that was smoother, more receptive than my own had ever been. I pushed off.
The moment of submersion was a sensory reboot. The water supported me differently—I was buoyant, light as a cork. My hair streamed out around my face like blonde seaweed. I surfaced, sputtering, pushing the heavy, wet mass back. The bikini top immediately felt less secure, the saturated fabric clinging and pulling. I could feel the water cupping the underside of my breasts, a strange, lifting pressure.
Mark was there in two easy strokes. “See?” He was close again, too close. The water concealed nothing; it only amplified the sense of slick, heated proximity. His hands found my waist, his fingers nearly meeting around the narrow span of it. He lifted me, effortlessly, so I was floating before him, our faces level. My feet couldn’t touch the bottom.
“Jesus, you feel good,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to where the water lapped at the upper curves of my breasts. One of his hands slid from my waist around to the bare skin of my lower back, pulling me flush against him.
The full, shocking contact underwater was a new kind of intimacy. There was no fabric barrier between our torsos now, just the slippery slide of skin on skin. The hard wall of his stomach against my soft one. The dense, crisp hair on his chest abrading my sensitive nipples through the thin bikini lining—a sharp, electric sensation that made me gasp. And between us, pressed insistently against my lower belly through the thin material of his speedo and my thong, was the thick, undeniable evidence of his arousal. It was a rigid, heated brand.
My mind shattered into competing fragments. One part was screaming, a raw, primal alarm. This was Mark. My friend. This was wrong. Another part was clinically noting the impressive size, the sheer physical fact of it. A third, traitorous part was the body itself, which was flushing with a heat that had nothing to do with the pool. A low, pooling warmth spread from my core, a liquid loosening that was entirely foreign and terrifyingly specific. Between my legs, in the new anatomy I refused to consciously consider, a subtle, aching throb began to pulse in time with my racing heart.
“I missed you today,” he repeated, nuzzling the side of my wet neck. His stubble scratched, a pleasant abrasion on the delicate skin. His lips followed, planting soft, open-mouthed kisses along my jawline. Each one sent a jolt through my system.
My arms were treading water, but they felt weak, insubstantial. My hands drifted of their own accord, settling on his shoulders for stability. His muscles were hard as river stone under my palms. I could feel the power in him, coiled and ready. The difference was intoxicating and horrifying. I was a doll in his hands.
One of his hands drifted lower, over the curve of my ass, his fingers tracing the line where the thong strap disappeared between the cheeks. He squeezed gently, and a bolt of sensation, shockingly direct, shot straight up my spine. A small, helpless sound escaped my throat—a feminine whimper that belonged to Sabrina, to this body, not to me.
He took it as encouragement. His other hand came up from my back, trailing over my ribs, his thumb brushing the underside of my breast. My breath hitched. The world narrowed to the points of contact: his mouth on my neck, his hand on my ass, his thumb skimming so close to my nipple, and the relentless pressure of him against my stomach.
“Mark…” I breathed, and it was a question, a plea, a protest that died in the charged, humid air.
“Shhh,” he whispered against my skin. “Just feel it.”
His thumb finally, deliberately, swept over my taut nipple through the wet fabric. The sensation was a lightning strike. It arced from my breast directly to that newly awakened heat between my legs, a connection so immediate and potent it stole my reason. My head fell back, a gesture of surrender that felt both alien and inevitable.
Emboldened, his hand on my ass tugged me tighter against him, grinding that hard length against me. The friction, even through the layers of swimwear, was maddening. My own hips gave a minute, involuntary jerk in response.
My hand, which had been resting on his shoulder, slid down of its own volition. It moved over the sculpted swell of his pectoral, down the ridged plane of his abdomen. Each defined muscle was a contour under my exploring fingertips. I wasn’t thinking. The mind of Justin Zygurski was offline, submerged in a flood of new sensory data. The body of Sabrina Parker was driving now.
My fingers descended past his navel, through the trail of hair that led down, and into the water, until my knuckles brushed against the strained fabric of his speedo. The shape underneath was formidable, thick and hard and hot even through the water and the material.
My hand stopped, hovering. My entire being was focused on that point of contact. Fear and a dark, swelling curiosity warred within me.
Mark’s breathing was ragged in my ear. “Touch me,” he growled, the command soft but absolute.
And I did.
My fingers curled, timidly at first, then with more surety, mapping the shape of him through the slick, black fabric. The sheer size was a reality that banished all abstract thought. A strangled noise, part terror, part awe, caught in my throat. He was my best friend. And I was touching him, here, like this, while wearing his girlfriend’s skin, feeling a responsive ache deep in the core of this borrowed body that mirrored his want.
His mouth crushed down on mine again, swallowing any sound I might make. The kiss was hungry, possessive. His hands were everywhere, learning the new, eager responsiveness of the body he believed was his girlfriend’s. I was lost, adrift in a sea of sensation, the line between performance and participation blurring into nothingness.
From the direction of the house, a sudden, sharp crack echoed—the sound of a shattering glass. It was like a gunshot in the intimate dusk.
We broke apart, gasping. I turned my head, my wet hair slapping my cheek.
There, in the frame of the sliding glass door, stood my own body. Sabrina, in me, was holding the remains of a whiskey tumbler, the fragments at her—my—feet. The expression on my familiar face was one of pure, unadulterated devastation. She was watching us. She had seen everything.
Her eyes, my eyes, locked with mine across the distance. In them, I saw a reflection of my own spiraling horror, my shame, and the devastating, irreversible line we had just crossed. She took one staggering step back into the darkness of the house, and was gone.
Mark chuckled, low and unconcerned, his lips returning to my shoulder. “Told you he was jumpy.”
But his voice sounded miles away. The water, once warm, now felt like a freezing current against my skin. His hands, which had felt like liberation a moment before, now felt like shackles. The thrill curdled, leaving behind a sour, metallic taste of betrayal so profound it hollowed me out.
I was still pressed against him. He was still hard in my hand.
And I had no idea how to let go.