Page 25 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Her brows lifted, but she didn’t argue. She kept watching the rope instead, like she was trying to figure out what it was doing to her before she gave it more weight by asking.

I adjusted the weave slightly and kept going, letting the silence stretch, not to create tension, but to hold her steady.

She’d followed me here. She hadn’t run. And now she was on the floor, eyes locked on a length of jute sliding through my fingers like it was speaking a language she hadn’t learned, but could still feel in her body.

That was good. It meant we were moving forward. Towards what, I wasn’t sure yet, but we were moving, nonetheless. I made a mental note to examine that feeling in greater depth later.

She didn’t speak for a while after that.

No sarcasm. No quips. She didn’t shift. Didn’t fidget.

She just stayed still, focused, every part of her alert and coiled like she knew something was about to tip, and didn’t want to miss when it happened.

I didn’t offer instruction, or fill the air with explanation.

Rope scenes didn’t begin with knots. They began with attention. And hers hadn’t drifted once.

The jute slid between my palms, soft with age, warm with memory. The rasp of fiber against skin was something I’d always trusted. Truth didn’t announce itself in words. It surfaced through motion and rhythm, through the quiet pull of resistance in every purposeful line.

When the last knot in the karada rested against my thigh, I leaned back just enough for her to see the full shape of it.

“You know what this is?” I asked.

She paused before answering. “A net?”

Not far off. “ Karada. Body rope, used in certain kinds of bondage. It can be decorative. Erotic, if you want it to be.” I turned the harness slowly in my hands. “But that’s not why I tie it.”

She leaned in slightly. The atmosphere shifted. Her sarcasm didn’t show up. But her curiosity did.

“Engaging in rope bondage, being tied like this, it isn’t about helplessness,” I said, adjusting one of the central knots with my thumb. “It’s about alignment. Tension. Intention.”

Her brow furrowed. “Intention?”

“Every knot has intention, in bondage. Pressure goes where focus is needed. You restrict movement in one place to bring attention to another. It’s not just a rope; it’s structure.”

I reached for another coil and fed it through my fingers as I continued.

“Most people think bondage is about stopping movement. But real rope, the kind that works in your head as much as your body, isn’t about stillness. It’s about rhythm and purpose. Every movement becomes deliberate.”

I let that breathe before adding, “Predicament bondage is the purest version of that.”

Her focus sharpened. I saw it—the flicker of interest, the spark of hunger.

“It’s about choice, you see.” I said. “Forcing the rope bottom to choose between two difficult options. For example, you lift your arms, and one section tightens. Lower your head, another bites deeper. Shift your hips, and something else presses harder where you didn’t expect it.

You’re not just bound. You’re inside a living equation. ”

She swallowed. I didn’t mention it.

“Pain has geography. You decide where it takes root. You decide what it costs you. And sometimes the greatest test of strength isn’t fighting; it’s holding still when every nerve is begging you to run.”

Silence stretched. Thick. Warm. The only sounds were our breathing and the faint creak of the jute settling.

She whispered, “It’s not just a kink.”

“No,” I murmured. “It’s physics. It’s psychology. It’s the art of consequence. And for me, it is a source of pure focus. When I am tying someone, I can focus on them to the exclusion of everything else for a moment. And that is… a precious gift.”

Her fingers reached out, tentative, and traced the pattern I’d finished. Not for show. Not to prove something. Just to feel it. To understand.

“It really means something to you, doesn’t it?” she said, voice softer now, not performative, not defensive. Just a quiet observation she didn’t try to dress up or take back.

“It does,” I answered, still working the line through my fingers. “It’s not just about control. It’s about permission. Whether you’ll let someone move you, hold you, reshape how you feel about your own body. Whether you’ll let someone get that close.”

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t move, either.

She remained there beside me on the floor, knees pressed to the wood, fingertips brushing over the rope where it lay coiled between us.

Her touch was light, searching, more curious than afraid.

She didn’t know what she was asking with that contact, not yet, but her body had already started to ask it anyway.

And I realized, not for the first time, that what she was giving me wasn’t submission, at least not in the traditional sense.

It was rarer than that. Slower. More deliberate.

She was giving me her attention, her stillness, her presence.

She was giving me the kind of silence that meant she was thinking harder than she wanted to admit, that something was shifting in her, and she hadn’t decided yet whether to lean in, or run.

She didn’t know the language of dominance and submission.

Not consciously. Not with words or rituals or names for what was happening between us.

But instinct had already spoken on her behalf.

It was there in the way she held herself, the way she kept watching, the way she hadn’t laughed it off or walked away.

It was enough. For now, it was more than enough.

Because rope didn’t care about performance. It didn’t need approval or translation. It didn’t lie to make you comfortable. It only ever told the truth—about where tension lived, about where the body yielded, about what someone was willing to carry in silence.

And tonight, in that quiet space between question and surrender, so did she.