Page 32 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

I’ve studied trauma patterns, survival instinct, and the subtle physics of surrender, but nothing prepared me for the way Stella looked at me like I might be the sharp edge she needed to press into in order to feel real again.

She hovered just outside the rope room’s threshold, hair damp, shoulders bare beneath a long-sleeved shirt that hung wide on her collarbones.

The cotton clung in some places, softened in others, chosen more for feel than fashion.

Her gaze never left mine. Not nervous. Not certain.

Just there. Like she was letting herself live inside the choice before fear could catch up.

I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just let the silence stretch between us to see if she’d cross it along with the threshold.

She did.

“I need to feel like my body is mine,” she said. Her voice was steady. “Will you tie me?”

I exhaled slowly. Not in surprise. I wasn’t. I’d seen it coming for days. In the way she flinched from stillness. Dodged comfort. Pretended not to watch the rope move between my fingers when I practiced in the Den. This wasn’t impulse. It was earned.

I gave a single nod. “Yes.”

Stella stood taller, but it had a delicate quality to it, like a sapling reaching for light after too much rain. Not weak. Just new. Willful, even in her hesitation.

“You’re not here to submit,” I said, voice low. “You’re here to reclaim.”

“Yes.”

“This won’t be a scene in the traditional sense. No dominance. No discipline. No edge play, unless you ask for it.” I stepped back, offering space. “Just control. Breath. Rope. You’re in charge. If you say stop, we stop. If you say shift, we shift.”

Her brow furrowed, but she moved past me anyway, each step calculated, like a soldier surveying new terrain.

“We’ll use standard safewords, like we discussed the other day.” I continued, calm and even. “Green means go. Yellow for pause or slow. Red for stop completely. Can you repeat those back?”

“Green, yellow, red.”

“Perfect.” I crossed to the rack and let her watch as I chose a coil of soft jute, running it through my fingers to check for fray, for weight. “Nothing happens to you here. Every choice is yours.”

Her eyes followed the rope. She swallowed.

“And what if I don’t know what I want until it’s happening?”

There it was. Real. Honest.

“Then you say yellow, and we breathe through it together. I adjust. You explore. But we don’t go past what your body is ready for.” I paused to let it land. “Your nervous system gets the final say.”

She nodded, small but sure.

I held her gaze. “Do you consent to being tied?”

“Yes.”

“Do you consent to touch, non-sexual, over clothing unless otherwise agreed?”

She hesitated, not out of fear, but awareness. She knew what she was asking. And maybe, for the first time in too long, she was letting herself want without shame.

“Yes.”

“And do you give me permission to guide your body? To adjust the rope? To place you gently as needed?”

“Yes,” she said again. Firmer now. Louder. Like the word came from deeper.

I approached slowly, the rope looped around my wrist.

“This isn’t about pain,” I said, voice softer now. “It’s about sensation. Focus. The edge of stillness. If you want pleasure, you’ll ask. If you want to stop, you will. And I’ll hear it. Every time.”

She inhaled, then exhaled. Then looked up at me through lashes still wet at the tips and nodded her understanding.

And I gave her the words, not as an honorific, but as something sacred.

“Good girl.”

It landed like silk. She blinked—sharp, sudden—but didn’t flinch. Her lips parted slightly, her breath hitching like her body had absorbed something her mind hadn’t yet named.

I guided her to the mat, letting her knees sink into the padding as her hands rested loosely in her lap.

She looked composed, almost, but I saw the beat too early in her breath, the tension still tucked in her jaw.

And still, she stayed. Present. Choosing this.

Choosing me, even as uncertainty hummed under the surface.

That was what made it sacred, not peace, but persistence. The choice to remain.

I circled her slowly, pulled by her like gravity. Each step deliberate. Each pass a study in control. I reached for the coil I’d set aside—soft, golden jute, conditioned until it moved like silk through flame. My hands knew its feel. Knew what it was built to carry.

I knelt behind her. When my fingers brushed the cotton stretched across her shoulders, she didn’t flinch. She exhaled. Long. Steady.

And that was all the permission I needed.

I began with the first wrap, drawing the rope over her shoulders, over her simple camisole, then around her chest in broad, framing lines that kissed just beneath her collarbones.

Her body leaned forward slightly, not resisting, not submitting, just following sensation.

The rope whispered across her skin, catching at soft friction points, each pass symmetrical and sure.

When I finally spoke, my voice was low. Measured.

“This is a takate kote . A box tie. Ancient design. Reliable. Structured. Elegant.”

Stella let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh, more like a shift. The sound of something loosening inside her chest.

I guided her arms gently behind her back. She moved with me, wrists resting in the small of her spine like they belonged there. “Chest harnesses like this work on a few levels,” I said, my voice low, more to steady than to teach. “Tactile pressure. Postural correction. Sensory containment.”

“Containment,” she repeated, distant but thoughtful.

“Only the kind you ask for.”

I wrapped her forearms into place with slow, careful tension.

Each knot carried a quiet message. When I cinched the upper chest wrap, the rope pressed firm across her sternum.

Her breath shallowed, not from panic but from inward focus.

She was slipping beneath the surface, into that calm space between memory and sensation.

“Look at you,” I murmured, close to her ear. “Held tight and still, not because anyone took your power, but because you gave it.”

She blinked, lips parting. Her shoulders shifted like she was learning the shape of herself in real time. I stepped in to adjust the rear cinch, letting my chest brush her spine. My fingers grazed the underside of her breast. An incidental touch by design, testing depth, not dominance.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t flinch. She just breathed.

I moved lower, framing her leggings-clad hips with the next length of rope. The diagonals crossed her pelvis and then dipped between her thighs in a slow, cradling draw. Not invasive. Not vulgar. Just… intimate.

Her legs shifted. Toes curled. One knee bent. Her hips tilted forward, not in pursuit of pleasure but in permission for it.

“Jax…” Her voice came like torn silk—soft, raw, unguarded.

I stepped closer, chest to shoulder, breath brushing her ear. “This rope doesn’t take anything from you,” I whispered. “It only holds what you already own.”

Her breath hitched. One second. Two. The silence between us stretched like wire drawn taut.

“You want to be kept, don’t you?”

She didn’t speak at first. But her body answered—shoulders loosening, lips parting, her head bowing just slightly in something closer to reverence than submission.

Then finally, breathy and trembling: “Yes.”

The word landed deep, blooming beneath my ribs.

I didn’t move. I let the moment breathe.

She’d trusted me with the edge, and I would take her there with care. Knot by knot. Breath by breath.

I stepped in front of her, slow and deliberate. The rope in my hands creaked softly, warm and worn, familiar but somehow changed. The 6mm strands had been conditioned to satin. I knew them. But they felt different tonight.

Or maybe it was her.

“Color?” I asked gently, though I already knew. Her eyes had that glassy, tethered look—not gone, not dissociated, but balanced in that breathless place between holding on and letting go.

She looked up, breath catching, lips parting. “Green,” she whispered. Not loud. Not bold. But real. A word that gave me more than permission. It gave me her.

I reached for her jaw, cupping it gently, thumbs brushing the curve of her cheeks while my fingers traced beneath her ear. Her pulse beat fast there. Steady. Present. Fragile in its beauty. I wanted to count it. Memorize the rhythm like a song I didn’t know the name for but already couldn’t forget.

“You feel that heat in your belly?” I asked, my voice low and reverent, shaped by the weight of what she’d given me. Not dominance. Not control. Something older. Something earned.

She gave the faintest nod, like her neck was no longer entirely her own.

“That’s yours. Every drop of it. You made this. You gave permission.” I leaned in, letting my breath coast over her mouth without touching. “I didn’t bring you here. You let me.”

Her exhale hitched. The knot at her sternum shifted with it, golden hemp flexing subtly across flushed skin where her camisole had ridden up.

She was a painting undone by pulse alone, and I was already wrecked.

I didn’t kiss her. I hovered, lips near enough to taste her breath, to make her ache for more, while the air between us thickened into something molten, weighty with the things we hadn’t spoken aloud.

“You’re doing so fucking well,” I whispered, because she needed to hear it.

“I could write sonnets with this rope. I could carve poems into skin and story into flesh. But this? You’re already the masterpiece.

” Her knees bent slightly, not from weakness but because tension had to go somewhere, and I stepped closer, catching her with the steady heat of my body.