tensing

"I feel really, really sick. I'm sweating. She's crying. I'm tensing, waiting for a blast. I'm waiting for that that big heat and that pressure to hit me."

Though my back initially kept tensing at the sharper touch, it soon relaxed into the sensation, as if my body were recalling those childhood back scratches.

I point and flex my foot, stretching and tensing through my entire leg as much as I can.

A grim Donald J. Trump leaned back from the defendant’s table inside a jammed 13th-floor courtroom in Miami on Tuesday, jaw set, arms crossed, his back muscles tensing visibly under his dark suit jacket.

“I’m tensing up. There’s a lot of stuff I can do to protect myself.”