Turn 5 of 226

I exercise naked again, I want to push myself further. Than I eat and explore my body. This lead to me masturbating again. Pass out on the floor again without showering or cleaning again

The apartment is quiet after the clang of the donation bin, and Lena stands in the middle of her living room floor and pulls the crop top over her head. The fabric catches on her chest and she has to tug, and the small resistance — the way the shirt has to work to clear her body now — sends a thread of satisfaction through her. The shorts come next, peeled down over her hips with a wiggle that makes her flesh shake, and then she is naked on her carpet again, the evening light coming orange through the window and laying across her skin.

She starts with burpees. The first one feels like a detonation — her whole body involved, belly swinging as she drops, breasts shifting heavy when she jumps, thighs slamming together on the landing. She does fifteen before her arms tremble and her breath comes in ragged pulls, and the sweat starts to run. She can smell herself — last night's dried sweat still layered under the fresh, the salt of it sharp and animal. She does not mind. She drops into squats next, and on the third rep she catches her reflection in the dark window and stops. Her body is changing in real time now, or near enough. Her thighs are thicker than they were this morning. The soft shelf of her belly hangs lower when she bends, and when she rises the muscle underneath fires hard, stabilizing all that new weight. She is bigger and she is stronger and both things are true at once.

She moves to lunges, then to push-ups, then to a plank hold that makes her core shake so violently she can feel her belly vibrating against her arms. She pushes until her muscles give out and then she pushes one more rep, one more second, because the effort feels like feeding something. Like the warmth in her stomach is eating her exhaustion and turning it into growth. She collapses onto her back on the carpet, chest heaving, every inch of skin damp and flushed, and she lies there feeling her heartbeat in places she has never felt it before — in the soft tissue of her breasts, in the flesh of her belly, in the thick pads of her hips.

The hunger arrives while she is still on the floor. She rolls to her feet and goes to the kitchen, where the remnants of this morning's delivery sit in their containers on the counter. Cold rice, the last of the braised pork, a container of sauce. She eats standing up again, one hand on the counter and the other bringing food to her mouth, and she is not even fully present for it — just a body feeding itself, efficient and unapologetic. The food disappears and the ache in her stomach softens into fullness and the fullness softens into warmth and the warmth softens into something else.

She goes back to the living room and sits on the floor in front of the long window, her back against the wall, her legs spread. She starts with her hands on her belly — just resting them there, feeling the weight of it, the way it sits heavy and round in her lap. Her fingers trace the curve of it, the soft overhang where it meets her hips, the place where the skin is beginning to soften into something that will eventually crease. She moves her hands up to her breasts, heavier than they have ever been, and cups them, feeling the genuine weight of them in her palms. She runs her palms down her sides, over the wide flare of her hips, along the thick column of her thighs. Every inch of her is more than it was. More flesh, more presence, more warmth. Her breathing changes and her hands drift lower and the arousal that has been simmering since the workout surges up sharp and immediate.

She does not fight it. Her fingers find the heat between her thighs and she works herself with the same deliberate intensity she gave the burpees, her other hand gripping the soft flesh of her belly, pulling at it, feeling it move and jiggle under her fingers. The orgasm builds slow and deep, rooted in the weight of her body and the exhaustion of her muscles and the fullness in her stomach, and when it breaks she curls forward, her belly pressing against her thighs, and she makes a sound that is closer to a growl than a moan. She stays there, folded over herself, breathing into the carpet. Then she unfolds, lies flat on her back, and the sleep takes her before she can even think about the shower she is not going to take. The window is still dark. The empty food containers sit open on the counter. The apartment smells like her.