Page 33 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

The next coil came low across her hips. I looped it through my fingers before laying it against her, slow and deliberate.

It shimmered where the light touched, threading between her thighs in a wide cradle that gently urged her open.

My fingertips adjusted the cinch with precise care, brushing over the rope nestled between her legs, and her breath caught, her lips parting around a prayer she hadn’t fully formed.

“Still with me?” I asked, voice barely a hum against her ear.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “God, yeah.”

“You’re holding tension in your thighs,” I murmured, moving behind her once more, letting my knuckles trace the inner seam of her leg. “Breathe into the rope. Let it take some of the weight.”

She did. I felt the tremble first, then the slow, gorgeous exhale that followed as her muscles released into the pressure.

The rope shifted with her, not restricting, but supporting.

Not a trap, but an embrace. I adjusted the hip harness, fingers resting momentarily beneath the twist that pressed against her pelvis, and let my palm linger longer than was strictly necessary.

“You feel that?” I asked.

“Yes.” The sound cracked through her—half-gasp, half-moan—as her head bowed and her hair slipped forward like a curtain across her cheek. I reached up gently and pushed it back, knuckles brushing the vulnerable stretch of her nape.

“This rope doesn’t take,” I said, the words quiet, but grounded. “It holds. It carries. It speaks what you don’t always have to.”

I circled to face her again, my fingers trailing over the cinches along her ribs, then following the lines that shaped her torso.

“You asked for this,” I whispered, drawing one fingertip down the dip of her navel where a decorative knot nestled between curves of tension. “And you’re fucking radiant.”

Her breath hitched again. Her back arched, only slightly, but enough to tell me that praise had landed. That being seen and spoken into opened something tender beneath the surface.

“You like being held,” I murmured, lowering my mouth until it hovered near her ear. “Don’t you?”

She didn’t answer at first. But her breath staggered. Her fingers flexed behind her back.

“You want to be kept,” I said, gentler now. “You want to belong in this.”

Her voice came raw, velvet shredded at the edges. “Yes.”

I skimmed the backs of my fingers along the seam of rope between her thighs, not pushing, just letting her feel the shape of intention. She shuddered beneath the contact, body humming like a live wire.

“Color?” I asked, my breath brushing her cheek, heat threaded through every syllable.

“Green,” she whispered without looking at me, her voice already slipping downward. It sounded like surrender laced with survival, like saying it cost her something, and saying it anyway meant more. The rope in my hands no longer felt like a tool. It felt like a vow.

Her breath shifted before I touched the next knot.

Not overtly. Not audibly. But the current between us changed as her expression shifted from surrender to worry for a moment, brows drawing together above her closed eyes.

What had been smooth and steady fractured at the edges.

I had been guiding the line around her waist, slow and intentional, shaping a clean cinch across her abdomen, and I continued for the moment, watching her closely.

Each pass was deliberate, a quiet echo of the trust she had given me without hesitation. That had always been the point.

But when my knuckles brushed just below her navel, where rope met hip, her entire body stilled.

Not with the promise of release, but the kind of stillness that hits like ice.

Her muscles locked fast, tension erupting from nowhere.

Her breath halted mid-draw, sharp and stuttering.

The surrender drained from her posture. The heat recoiled.

I eased back, giving space without breaking connection.

Her eyes stayed shut. Her mouth opened slightly, like she meant to speak, but hadn’t found the words.

Her hands behind her back had gone pale at the knuckles.

Her calves were rigid, not from any tension I’d given, but from something buried, something old.

I let my voice drop, barely enough to brush the air between us. “Color.”

She didn’t move. Didn’t answer. The silence stretched too long, strained and vibrating. And then, like it hurt to say—like it scraped its way up from somewhere raw—she said, “Red.”

The word didn’t wound. It detonated. Not from the sound, but from what it carried. She trusted me enough to speak it. Her body had remembered before her voice could, and she listened. She believed I would stop, and I did.

My hands lifted. My body stilled. I said nothing. I just let her feel me stay without taking up more space than she wanted. I needed her to know I was there, but not over her. That everything from this point forward belonged to her.

Her lashes lifted. Her eyes shimmered, wide and damp, not panicked. Grieving. For the rupture. For the betrayal of her own body. For the trust that had tasted so close, only to get lost to something that didn’t belong to me or this moment.

I didn’t reach for her. I let my hands lower in offering, a silent promise I’d shift if she needed.

“I hear you,” I said. “Everything stops, just like we agreed.”

She blinked, lips trembling before going still.

I reached for the rope, not to bind, but to release.

Each movement became reverent, quiet and unhurried.

I started low, working upward, the hemp rasping faintly as it loosened.

Its scent lingered on her skin, sun-dried and spiced, clinging like a memory she hadn’t decided to keep.

When I reached the wrap beneath her breasts, I paused. Not for me. For her.

She met my gaze and gave a small nod.

I finished unwrapping her, the last coil slipping away. Her breath shifted. No longer controlled or measured, just human.

She didn’t run. She folded in on herself slowly, as if testing whether her body was still hers. I knelt nearby, rope in my lap, palms open on my thighs in an unconscious posture of openness and submission. Not retreating. Not reaching. Just staying. The silence between us trembled, but held.

God, I wanted to offer her poetry, something beautiful enough to match what I felt crack open in her wake. But all I had was the truth.

“You did it,” I said. “You called your safeword and took your power back, just like I said you could.”

Her head lifted sharply, eyes searching mine like she needed to be sure I wasn’t just saying what she needed to hear. I held her gaze, steady.

“That wasn’t weakness,” I said. “That was power. You knew where the line was, and you held it. You didn’t let anyone, especially not me, take you past it.”

She didn’t smile, but her lips parted with a breath. In that moment, I saw her. Not the defenses. Not the sarcasm or hesitation. Just her. Raw and real. Still trembling. Still guarded. But here.

I didn’t move. Still kneeling, I stayed where I was. No pressure. No expectation. Just presence.

When she finally spoke again, her voice was softer, but steadier.

“I didn’t expect it to feel so good… right up until it didn’t.”

I exhaled. Not in frustration—in understanding.

“That’s how the body works. It doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t care if it was good five seconds ago. If something inside says stop, that’s the signal.”

She swallowed.

“I thought I was ready.”

“You were,” I said. “You were ready to try. That’s all anyone can be.” I tilted my head slightly, watching her arms wrap slowly around her knees as she looked down. “And you did more than try. You let someone touch something that had been taken from you. You let yourself feel it.”

Her voice was barely a whisper. “And then I fell apart.”

“No,” I said, steadier now. “You didn’t. You caught yourself. You saw it coming and stopped it before it could cause harm. That’s not falling apart. That’s owning it.”

Her eyes drifted shut, but a flicker of something softer—maybe peace, maybe relief—touched her mouth. A ghost of a smile that didn’t reach joy, but hinted at it.

I didn’t know if she’d ever ask for this again. Didn’t know if the rope would be something she welcomed or left behind. It didn’t matter. This wasn’t about what came next. This was about honesty, and we’d found it, stripped and vulnerable and real.

The rope coiled through my hands on instinct, each loop smoothing into the next as I moved through the rhythm I knew.

But my thoughts were fixed on the moment her body changed.

Not because of the rope. Because of where I’d touched her.

Near the place old pain still lived. I hadn’t meant to find it.

But I had. And it didn’t matter whether I’d known.

What mattered was that she’d trusted me, and I’d brushed a buried scar, anyway.

Time blurred. A minute. Maybe more.

When she glanced over, her eyes were wet, guarded, her body still drawn in tight. I didn’t reach. Didn’t ask. Just stayed, bearing witness. Then, quietly, I shifted and extended one hand, palm up, resting on the floor near her. Not a request. Not a plea. Just there.

She didn’t take it. But she didn’t move away either.

I would’ve waited as long as it took.

We sat that way for a while. I didn’t fill the silence. I stayed kneeling, spine straight, hand still, my breath even. An anchor, not an answer. She’d learned to treat gentleness like a trick. So I didn’t push. I just waited.

The rope lay coiled beside us in full view. No threat. No shame. Just rope.

“You were perfect,” I said, voice low. “Not because of what we built. Because you honored your line.”

Her eyes stayed down. “It didn’t feel perfect.”

“That’s because you’re used to thinking power means pushing through.” I kept my voice level, low. “But real power is in the stop. In saying: no more.”

“Then why do I feel like I failed?” Her voice broke again, and this time, she didn’t try to hide it.

“Because the part of you that survived is still bracing for the next hit.”

She looked at me then—blue eyes fierce and fractured—and I let her. Let her see the steadiness I hadn’t spoken aloud.

“That voice telling you that you shouldn’t have needed to stop? That’s not your voice. That’s a memory. Someone else’s damage trying to write your story.”

She stared, like I’d peeled back something fragile, then shifted—slowly, cautiously—until she sat cross-legged beside me, posture still protective, but her shoulder touched mine. I didn’t move or speak. Just let the quiet stretch like a held breath.

Then she whispered, “What if I never get back to who I was before?”

“You won’t,” I said, voice even.

Her jaw tightened. I reached for her hand carefully, open, and wrapped my fingers around hers.

“You’ll be someone new. Stronger. Someone who knows stop isn’t the opposite of power. It is power.”

She stared at our hands like they were foreign, then said, “Why does it feel like I broke something that was finally starting to work?”

“You didn’t break it. You protected it.”

A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away, so I did, gently, one knuckle brushing skin still warm from the rope.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but this is what matters. Not the build-up, or the bindings. This. The moment when you spoke, and I listened. That’s the foundation. Not the scene. Not the knots. This.”

She breathed in, then out. Slower this time. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that before,” she said. “Stopped something when I needed to. I used to just let it happen, and pretend I could handle it.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me. Not ever.”

We sat shoulder to shoulder, breathing the same air, and I knew in my bones that this was the moment that counted. Because Stella hadn’t just safeworded. She’d reclaimed her voice.

And I’d heard it.

The silence stretched, and I let it. This wasn’t something to fix. It wasn’t a failure. It was reclamation.

Then, barely audible, she whispered, “I just wanted to feel like it was mine again.”

No armor in her voice, just truth, raw and frayed at the edge. I swallowed hard and gave a single nod.

“You did,” I said. “You took it back the moment you said red.”

We stayed like that in a silence deeper than comfort. Not empty, not cold. Just sacred. And in that hush, something unspoken found root. A fragile thread of trust, not tied by contact, but nurtured in the absence of it. A permission given not through words, but through the restraint of silence.

Because some wounds don’t want fixing. Some just need to be seen. And some truths, when finally witnessed, only ask for one thing. That when they show themselves, they’re not left alone.