Page 22 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

We both froze. The space between us pulled tight, breath caught in a silence strung like wire.

His gaze dropped, first to my mouth, then lower, to where our bodies pressed together, and when he looked at me again, something had shifted.

His eyes were darker, heavier, lined with recognition, and something that felt too close to knowing.

“You’re experiencing an enhanced state of arousal right now, aren’t you?” he asked, disbelief raw in his voice. No teasing. Just stripped and bare. Honest.

I wanted to say no. To shove him off, laugh it away, bury it deep enough that neither of us had to see it. But the truth pressed too close, too loud.

“Fuck you.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “An appropriate expletive, it would seem, under the circumstances.”

I wanted to slap him. Scream. Lie down and cry because my body didn’t know the difference between danger and desire anymore. I wanted to hate him, but my breath stuttered, and all I could think was how easy it would be to let him ruin me.

He moved without warning, arms locking as he lifted me like it was second nature. One second I was beneath him. The next, I was over his shoulder, stomach jolting against the hard line of his shoulder while the trees tilted. His boots crunched across the gravel, steady and unhurried.

I kicked, heel slamming into his thigh. He grunted, low and dismissive, already recovering. My fists landed next, harder, but they didn’t matter. He didn’t flinch or slow. Just kept walking like he’d already factored in every part of my resistance.

“You can’t just…Jax! Put me down, you control-freak bastard….”

“Keep squirming,” he said, voice steady enough to peel me open, “and I’ll tie you up faster than you can blink.

” My body went rigid. Heat flooded my face—rage, embarrassment, and something more dangerous.

The rope beneath my sweatshirt suddenly felt heavier, intimate in a way that made my skin crawl.

I bit the inside of my cheek and stayed silent, not because he’d won, but because I didn’t trust what would come out if I spoke.

He didn’t gloat. Didn’t press the moment. Just walked, steady and unbothered, like he’d done this before, dragging someone through the woods with that same cold, brutal focus. Like my fight hadn’t changed a thing because the end was already decided.

The compound appeared in pieces—faint porch lights, the shape of Sully’s truck, thick beams carved from shadow.

No doors opened. No voices called out. Whether they were asleep or pretending, I couldn’t tell, and I wasn’t sure which would’ve pissed me off more.

His boots hit the porch in a slow rhythm.

The screen door creaked once, swallowed immediately by the heavy inner door.

The house was dark and empty, like it was holding its breath.

That kind of stillness always felt like judgment.

He didn’t pause. Didn’t speak. Just climbed the stairs two at a time, me still flung over his shoulder like I weighed nothing.

My fingers caught the back of his shirt, less to fight than to brace myself.

My chest ached. My breath came shallow. I didn’t know if I was about to scream or sob or shatter, or all three at once.

Then he opened the door at the top of the stairs, and everything stopped. The fight. The noise. Even my lungs. His room. I’d never seen it—just flashes through a cracked door, hints of walls and shadows and something private. Now I was inside.

And then, I was airborne again.

He threw me onto the bed with finality, jarring my entire body and knocking the air from my lungs.

The mattress smelled like him—clean sweat, cedar, with something darker underneath.

Something inside me was wound tight and waiting.

I pushed upright fast, hair in my face, spine straight, hands braced on the bedding. I shoved the strands back and glared.

He stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, watching me not like a woman, but like a calculation.

His jaw was locked, shoulders squared, and his eyes were fixed on me in a way that made it clear he wasn’t measuring posture, so much as will.

And for the first time all night, I wasn’t the threat. I was staring at one.

The silence stretched like a breath held just long enough to hurt. Then he spoke, his voice calm, low, even. “You want to act like a brat? Fine. I told you if you ran again, there’d be consequences.”

He stepped forward with a quiet authority that stole the air from the room. “So here they are.”

I sat up straighter, trying to mask the tremor building in my chest. My jaw ached from how long I’d been clenching it. He was too calm, too composed; the still eye of the storm while I held my ground in its center, every muscle braced for impact.

“You have two options,” he said, his gaze holding mine, sharp and unreadable. “One—you’re locked in your room for a week. You eat what’s brought to you, get escorted to the bathroom, no contact with the rest of the team. You prove you can follow rules before you earn anything else.”

The words landed with weight, but they weren’t cruel. There was no edge to them, no bitterness. Just cool, impenetrable finality.

I opened my mouth, then shut it again.

“Or, option two,” he continued, moving in until his thighs brushed the bed frame and I had to lift my chin to keep looking at him, “you don’t leave my side for twenty-four hours. Not even to piss.”

My breath caught, ribs locked around it. “What….”

“You want trust? Earn it. You eat when I eat. Walk when I walk. Sleep in my room. You don’t vanish when no one’s watching. You stay by my side. No slipping. No secrets. You become my shadow.”

I stared at him, throat too dry to swallow, trying to find the shape of defiance, but nothing came. “You’re kidding.”

He didn’t blink. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Everything in me wanted to snap—wanted to scream, or throw something, or spit fire straight into that stone-cut restraint of his—but I didn’t.

Because this wasn’t bait, and he wasn’t goading me.

He wasn’t playing games or trying to break me for the thrill of it.

He was offering something, something I couldn’t yet define, something that felt like punishment and mercy tangled so tightly I couldn’t tell them apart.

I pulled in a breath and held it, trying to force myself into some kind of control.

It didn’t help. I still felt the phantom press of his thigh between mine, the heat of my own body betraying me, and the shame of how easily I’d responded.

My skin still buzzed. My throat still burned.

And beneath it all, buried but impossible to ignore, was a thought I didn’t know how to chase away.

What if I didn’t run? What if I stayed? What if I stopped hiding, and let myself be seen, and didn’t flinch?

The ache it stirred in my gut felt like fear, but I couldn’t un-think it.

I wasn’t ready to trust this man with the truth about my sister, not by a long shot.

Not with the threats that faceless voice had made as I sat there in the interrogation room.

But maybe I had more time. The voice had said that they understood it would take a while.

And if they harmed Violet, they wouldn’t have a bargaining chip anymore.

So maybe… maybe I could wait a while longer. Maybe.

He didn’t move or push or speak again. Just stood there like gravity, like the room wouldn’t hold without him. His breath came slow and steady, matching mine like he was willing me to align with it.

And that was the worst part.

He already knew what I’d choose before I did.

When I finally spoke, the words cracked as they left me. “Option two.”

His expression barely shifted. Just a flicker in his eyes, a subtle current change, rather than a genuine emotion.

Then came the nod, slow and deliberate, every inch of it intentional.

He grabbed the hem of his hoodie and peeled it off in one smooth motion, muscles flexing beneath a black T-shirt that clung to him like a second skin.

His arms were lined with veins, sculpted like they were drawn on by design.

His breathing stayed even and shallow, his control still intact even as his neck flushed.

He dropped the hoodie on the chair, the gesture efficient, and pointed to the floor beside the bed. “You sleep there,” he said, voice clean as an equation balanced on the line. “Unless you’d rather negotiate for a different outcome, and ask to join me.”

His eyes locked with mine, sharp and unmoving, and when I didn’t answer fast enough to satisfy him, his mouth curled into a slow, maddening smirk.

“Didn’t think so,” he said, like the outcome had never been in question.

Then he climbed into bed, rolled to his side, and shut off the light. Darkness followed, swift and solid.

I stayed frozen for a moment, pulse hammering against my ribs, the rope at my waist snug and unrelenting.

Eventually, I curled up on the floor with the blanket he’d kicked my way.

The mattress above stayed too quiet, and every breath I took was too loud in my chest. My thoughts spun without anchor.

I didn’t know whether I wanted to escape anymore, or just get caught again.

The blanket scratched at my skin, but I didn’t move. I lay curled in on myself, knees tight, one arm under my head, the other gripping the edge of the fabric like it could hold me together. The hardwood gave no comfort, only cold resistance and the slow ache of everything I was trying not to feel.

Above me, Jax shifted, then settled. He hadn’t spoken since the lights went out, hadn’t moved much at all, but he filled the room all the same.

I could feel him in my chest, in the lingering shape of his body against mine, in the burn beneath my skin where his thigh had pressed between mine, and in the breath still echoing in my ear.

He hadn’t gloated or even spoken when I stayed.

He just let the silence stretch between us like a challenge, the kind that dared me to name things I’d spent years refusing to acknowledge.

The rope still circled my waist, digging into my side, warm now from more than heat, heavy with memory and guilt and something rawer, something I didn’t yet have the courage to define.

The same rope I’d stolen. The one he hadn’t taken back. The one he hadn’t so much as mentioned.

And he knew. He let it stay between us, daring me to understand what that silence meant.

The quiet didn’t hurt because it was cruel.

It hurt because it wasn’t. Because it left space for the thoughts I’d spent so long outrunning.

And somehow, the worst part wasn’t the shame or the exposure.

It was that I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t even embarrassed.

I was wrecked. Hollowed out in a way that had nothing to do with defeat, and everything to do with being seen.

Because Jax had pinned me to the forest floor and looked straight through the version I performed.

He’d seen the part I thought I’d buried years ago.

The part that didn’t want rescue, that didn’t want gentleness, but craved surrender in a way that was sharp and hard and unspeakably real. And he hadn’t turned away.

I shifted slightly, fingers brushing the underside of the bed frame, solid and unyielding like him.

The mattress creaked above, just a shift in weight, a tiny rearrangement of pressure, and I knew he was still awake.

Maybe listening. Maybe watching. Maybe stuck inside his own thoughts, as quiet and circling as mine.

I wanted to ask why he’d brought me here instead of locking the door of my room and walking away.

I wanted to ask what he saw when he looked at me now.

But I didn’t. Because I already knew. He saw someone who didn’t trust herself to stay.

Someone who needed to be caught. And he wasn’t punishing me for it. He was giving me the space to admit it.

Tears pricked behind my eyes, sharp and sudden. I blinked them back. I didn’t cry, not audibly, but my throat burned, and my chest ached in that deep, buried way that had nothing to do with bruises.

I curled tighter beneath the blanket, not to disappear, but to hold myself together.

The hardwood beneath me stayed cold and unflinching, but it was the stillness in my own chest that shook me most. I’d spent so long convincing myself that distance meant safety, and solitude meant strength.

But lying just feet away from the man who’d undone me without cruelty, I couldn’t cling to those beliefs anymore.

I didn’t want to leave. Not from fear or pride or anger. I wanted to stay because, for the first time in years, someone had looked through the noise and seen me, and hadn’t flinched.

That truth settled in my bones like a reckoning. And I knew, even without his touch, that he hadn’t brought me here to punish me. He’d brought me here to let me decide—in the dark and without pressure—whether I was ready to stop running.