Page 34 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Stella

Some kinds of silence aren’t empty. They’re aftermath.

The sound the soul makes when it finally exhales.

That was the silence I sat in now, arms wrapped tight around my knees, forehead pressed there like it could anchor me to the present.

The rope was gone, but its echo remained, traced in heat and memory.

Not pain. Not regret. Just the quiet memory of when strangers had used rope as a threat, and how that had overwhelmed the peace that Jax had offered.

The mat was colder without the jute, but the world wasn’t. Not with him beside me. Jax didn’t speak at first. His voice, when it came, was low and reverent, threaded with something more sacred than comfort. “Do you want touch?”

I hesitated. The word itself—touch—had lived so long in a drawer labeled dangerous, it felt strange to pull it out and hold it again. But I didn’t want to be alone in this quiet, untouched by him, untouched by safety.

“A little, maybe. Yeah. Just... slow,” I said, my voice splintering down the middle.

He didn’t rush. Didn’t fold the space between us like a hero eager to rescue. He simply stood in that hush, steady and silent, letting me make the choice. It started with the blanket he draped across my shoulders with something that felt almost like worship.

Then came his hand, offered palm-up. No pressure. When I gave him mine, he didn’t squeeze. He held it gently, thumb tracing slow, thoughtful arcs over my knuckles, like a quiet anchoring meant to keep me tethered to now. No urgency. No expectation. Just the rhythm of safety asking me to stay.

We sat like that in silence, his hand a steady pulse in mine. And after a while, I nodded—small, tentative, but real. A quiet agreement between two people who understood what could not yet be said.

Eventually, the ache found me again, the crash that always followed adrenaline. Muscles trained for tension now struggled to understand rest. I shifted, exhaled, and whispered, “Can we go somewhere softer?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes, of course. Come on.”

He didn’t lift me. Didn’t lead. Just offered his hand like a thread through the dark.

I took it. And something in the simplicity of that undid me.

He rose first, unhurried, intentional. Then, he helped me to my feet carefully.

His palm rested lightly at the center of my back once more, not a push or a guide, just grounding me.

I followed him across the hall into a room I hadn’t entered before. His room. It felt like him—understated, calm, unassuming. A lamp cast a low amber wash over neutral sheets and folded clothes. A glass of water sat waiting on the nightstand, untouched but expectant.

He paused, letting me step in first, then hovered near the threshold, asking with posture what his voice put softly into shape. “Is this acceptable?”

I nodded, finding breath. “Yeah. It’s… good.”

He turned down the sheets without ceremony, then stood back, offering without assumption. I sat, legs unsteady but not unwilling. The room felt safe. Safer maybe than anywhere else in the house. Like a space where nothing had to be earned or explained.

He handed me the glass. Our fingers touched. I didn’t pull away. I drank, paused, and murmured, “You don’t ask a lot of questions.”

Jax tilted his head, thoughtful and precise. “I don’t need answers to give care.”

My heart twisted at that. “But don’t you want them?”

His voice was soft, but steady. “Trust me, I have an entire mental binder labeled ‘questions for Stella’. But I don’t need the answers. Not unless you want to give them.”

The glass trembled slightly in my hands. I set it bacQuestionsk down.

He didn’t join me on the bed. He sat beside it, back resting against the frame, arms loose over his knees. He didn’t speak. Didn’t pry. Just breathed in the same space as me like it was enough.

And eventually it was.

“I didn’t mean to shut down like that,” I whispered, and for the first time, the words didn’t sound like failure.

“You didn’t shut down,” he said gently. “You called red. That’s not the same thing.”

I nodded. “It wasn’t the rope.”

He looked up at me, gaze steady but open. “Okay.”

I shrugged sheepishly and looked away. “Okay, it was the rope, sort of. It… I felt like I was back there again. In that room, tied to a chair. I panicked, I think. It was like, for a second, I couldn’t separate the now from the memory.”

Jax nodded, understanding. “A flashback. And a very understandable one at that. Sometimes they can be so visceral the mind is unable to parse what’s real and what only exists in the memory.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right. And those memories are…” I let out a long sigh, feeling emotion stinging my eyes. “It’s really heavy, Jax. Like a weight on my shoulders I can’t put down, no matter how much I want to.”

His jaw flexed briefly, then eased again. “You’ve been carrying that weight for a long time.”

My breath caught, then slipped out unevenly. “Sometimes I forget how heavy it is. Until something makes me feel it.”

“I know the feeling. Trust me on that.” His voice carried a sincerity that left no room for argument. He really did understand.

“Can you… stay with me, for a little while at least? I don’t want to be alone right now.” I hated how needy my voice sounded, but I couldn’t help it. I needed him right then.

He moved as if gravity had called him—without questions, without fanfare, just a quiet shift toward me. His boots came off with that same quiet purpose, no performance in the act, no searching my face for permission. He just stepped out of his shoes and let his stillness do the speaking.

When he climbed in beside me, he didn’t undress. Didn’t fold the moment into something it wasn’t meant to be. Staying clothed wasn’t a boundary. It was a message. That presence didn’t require demand. That restraint could be an intimacy all its own.

I turned toward him without calculation, my head settling against his chest as if it had always belonged there. His arm wrapped around me, light and steady. Not pulling me in, not locking me down, just there. Anchoring.

I didn’t cry. But something close to crying lived just beneath the surface, brittle and aching. The kind of pressure that lives in the chest when grief has no name. Still, I felt safe. That alone felt like a miracle.

His thumb brushed the skin of my upper arm in slow, thoughtful arcs that gave my breath something to follow. I let it guide me, inhaling as he did, matching the quiet beat of his breath.

“I think I forgot what this felt like,” I said into his shirt.

His voice came low against my hair. “What?”

“Being held without consequence.”

He kissed my forehead. The touch was brief, barely a press of lips to skin, but it lit something inside me, anyway. “There’s no consequence here,” he murmured. “Only choice.”

And it cracked me open. Not all at once, not in a collapse, but with the soft edges of permission.

For one night, just tonight, I could give him this version of me.

Not the older sister, who could never manage to be the responsible one.

Not the scared, shattered girl who’d been kidnapped then set loose with a secret mission of betrayal.

Just this. The part that needed softness. The part that wanted to be held.

“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”

He exhaled like I’d offered him something sacred. “I’ll stay,” he said. “As long as you need.”

And I did. I needed. I stayed pressed against him, not fully asleep, but resting in a way that felt new.

The silence between us grew thicker, not with absence, but with something calmer, a quiet that asked nothing of me.

His hand never left my ribs. Just slow circles, like a pulse refusing to rush me.

Eventually, I moved. First a twitch, then a slide. My fingers glided across his chest, then down. I wasn’t searching for heat or escalation. Just contact. Just something certain.

He didn’t stop me. He didn’t encourage it either. Only tensed slightly as my hand brushed the waistband of his jeans.

“Stella…” he breathed, voice low and rough, not quite a warning, not quite a plea.

Just a name, given back to me like a question.

I brushed my lips close to his jaw, voice trembling. “You held me when I was undone. Now I want you to have me when I feel whole. I want you, Jax.”

His breath caught, jaw tight with restraint.

But his gaze—tender, steady, almost undone—held me in place.

Then, he kissed me. Gently. Reverently. Like he was still asking.

And I answered. I kissed him back, deepening it, pressing closer as my hand slipped beneath his shirt.

Skin met skin, warm and real, and the ache in my chest softened.

His mouth moved over mine, slow and sure, every pass of his lips saying things words couldn’t. And when he pulled back just far enough to murmur, “Color?” the word barely reached the air, but I felt it. The pause. The care. The choice.

“Green,” I whispered, without hesitation.

What broke loose in him wasn’t hunger. It was reverence threaded with need.

He moved slowly, like even with consent, he didn’t want to rush a second.

His hands slid beneath my shirt with the same care he used on rope, warming my ribs, cradling me like I might bruise.

Inch by inch, he lifted the hem. I let him, bare beneath his hands, his mouth following in the wake—my shoulder, my sternum, the hollow of my throat. Not claiming. Not branding. Just being.

My skin burned where his lips touched, not from shame or fear, but from a need that felt deeper than anything I’d let myself admit.

He didn’t reach for my bra right away. His gaze moved slowly across my chest, reverent, drinking me in like I was sacred.

Then finally he kissed the center of my breastbone and whispered, “Still okay?”

My voice caught, but I found it. “More than okay.”

That was the last bit of permission we both needed.