Page 35 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

He unhooked the clasp with one hand, fluid and unfussy, and I shrugged the straps down my arms, the fabric falling away like a secret I no longer needed to keep.

The way he looked at me, like I was art, stole my breath.

“God, Stella,” he whispered. “You’re… stunning.”

I reached for him, fingers sliding under his shirt now, eager for skin, for contact, for the grounding heat of his body against mine.

He pulled the shirt off in one slow motion, revealing a chest and shoulders carved in quiet strength, a tattoo curling just under his collarbone, something geometric and sharp. It suited him.

I ran my hands over the planes of his chest, memorizing him by touch, the way he’d done to me. And when I leaned in to kiss the hollow between his collarbones, his breath stuttered.

“You don’t have to hold back,” I murmured against his skin.

His hands framed my face again, tilting it up so he could see me. “I’m not holding back,” he said. “I’m making this last.”

Then he kissed me again. This time with less reverence, and more need. His mouth moved over mine with purpose now, like he’d tasted permission and was starving for more.

I let him push me gently onto my back, let him climb over me, his weight careful, never crushing. One of his hands slid down my side, tracing the curve of my waist, the dip of my hip, the arch of my thigh.

My breath caught again, this time from the intimacy of it. The care.

When his fingers brushed the waistband of my leggings, he paused. “Still green?”

“Still green.”

He peeled the fabric from my legs like he was unwrapping something fragile, his mouth trailing after once more—inside my knee, the curve of my thigh, the soft swell of my hip. Every kiss felt like reverence. Every breath lit something quiet and long buried.

Without ceremony, he removed the rest of his clothes, his gaze steady, his silence intact. Then he came back to me, bracing on one arm while the other swept my hair from my face, his thumb stroking my cheek like I was something sacred.

“Are you entirely certain you want this?” he asked, his voice low and worn.

“Yes,” I said, the word catching in my throat. “Please.”

That was all the permission he needed. His mouth came down onto one nipple, drawing a breathy moan from me.

He kissed his way down my body, making me writhe and twitch with each delicate touch, until his mouth found my lower lips, already slick with need.

I felt more than heard a low hum of approval as he drew his tongue along my slit.

“ Shit , yes please Jax. I need you. I need—ahh!” I gasped as his tongue plunged between my folds and found my clit.

He lapped me up like a starving man, catapulting me towards an orgasm, but just before I came, his mouth left me.

I moaned and looked down at him with dazed confusion.

He gave a small smile and climbed back up my body until his cock rested against my mound.

“Trust me, wicked girl. You will cum when I allow it. Right now, I just want you to feel .” He aligned himself at my entrance, and then gathered up both of my hands and pinned them above my head. He gazed down at me with an intensity that took my breath away.

“Feel, Stella.”

He entered me in one slow, anchoring thrust, and I broke. Not from pain, but from the unbearable gentleness of it. The sound that tore out of me wasn’t a moan. It was something rawer. Something finally seen.

He held me there, forehead pressed to mine, as if giving me one last chance to tell him no. I didn’t. I couldn’t. My legs tightened around his hips, pulling him deeper, desperate to feel all of him.

When he moved, it was with deliberate care. Slow strokes, steady and grounding, filling me in a way that felt like possession. His rhythm didn’t rush; it coaxed. It drew the ache out of me one trembling breath at a time, every roll of his hips reminding me I wasn’t bracing anymore. I was choosing.

His hands mapped me with reverence—the curve of my ribs, the arch of my thigh, the line of my jaw—like he was memorizing terrain he wanted to protect, not conquer. His lips found me in fragments: my temple, my cheek, my throat, the corner of my mouth, each kiss a vow threaded into skin.

“Jax,” I whispered, broken and certain all at once.

“I’ve got you,” he breathed, voice rough with restraint. He punctuated it with a thrust that made my body arch into his, a plea without words.

The pressure built faster than I expected, need spiraling from the steady drag of him inside me, from the way his thumb stroked over my hip in sync with every stroke. No urgency. No tearing hunger. Just the kind of inevitability that couldn’t be held back.

I came undone quietly, no scream, no wildness. Just a trembling release that shuddered through me, tears slipping down my cheeks as my body clenched around him. Because I was safe. Because for once, I could let go.

He followed me over the edge with a groan low against my neck, hips driving deep, holding me tight as his own release ripped through him. His breath broke against my skin, hot and uneven, as if he’d given me every last piece of himself.

He didn’t collapse. Didn’t roll away. He stayed, still inside me, his weight pressed to mine like he was anchoring us both to the moment. One hand threaded through my hair, the other steady on my waist.

“You’re safe,” he murmured again, softer this time, as if the words weren’t just reassurance, but a benediction.

And for the first time since I had been taken, I believed it.

The silence in the room had a shape now, not emptiness. It curved around us with breath and weight and a hum so steady it felt like home. Not a place. Not a person. Just the peace that arrived when nothing demanded your defenses.

His fingers moved slowly across my hip, steady arcs that didn’t coax or lead, only anchored.

His other arm rested beneath his head, his chest rising in rhythm with mine.

I was half-draped across him, one leg tangled with his, my cheek resting against the crook of my arm, pretending to be at rest, because sleep still felt like a kind of surrender I hadn’t earned.

But the ache in my chest didn’t carry shame. It wasn’t regret. It was gentler. The strange, beautiful ache that comes from being held like something sacred. Like I wasn’t just allowed, but wanted. And I didn’t know how to rest in that feeling without breaking it.

He traced a line along my waist, fingers brushing the dip there as if committing it to memory. As if he didn’t trust the moment to last and needed some part of it to stay with him.

I shifted slowly to look up at him, and found his eyes already on me.

He wasn’t watching like I was a puzzle or a promise.

He wasn’t searching for heat or cracks. His gaze held only reverence.

That quiet kind that doesn’t try to decide whether you’re breakable or holy. Only acknowledges that you are both.

“You’re fucking beautiful when you let go,” he said.

It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t said to earn something. Just spoken aloud the way truth sometimes insists on being heard.

I wanted to believe him. Wanted to let that sentence seep into my ribs and live there. But belief is dangerous when you’ve built your bones out of armor. When letting go doesn’t just mean release, it means risk.

So I didn’t answer. Just tucked my forehead against the base of his throat, where heat met the steady cadence of his pulse. He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t try to fill the space. Just kept his hand moving gently over my ribs while his breath stirred the strands of my hair.

The danger wasn’t in the touch. It was in its patience. Its quiet. The way it didn’t ask or claim or insist. And I was starting to want more than quiet. I was starting to want to stay.

A tight pull gathered in my belly. Not arousal. Not fear. Something that sounded like mourning, threaded with hope, and that thing whispered truths I didn’t want to face.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to want this. I wasn’t supposed to open the door. But Jax had slipped through, anyway. And worse, I’d left it unlocked.

He shifted, kissed the top of my head with a tenderness that felt like apology and understanding folded into one. “You okay?”

I nodded, even though it felt like a half-truth. Not because I wasn’t okay in this moment, but because I didn’t know if this moment could survive the morning.

His hand stilled, just slightly. I felt the hesitation, the wait, the edge of a question he didn’t voice. But I didn’t unravel. Not yet.

Instead, I whispered, “Do you ever wish things could just be simple?”

His chest rose under my cheek, then lowered. “Yeah. All the time.”

I swallowed. Hard. “Do you ever let yourself believe things might be simple?”

A breath, then, “Only when you’re in my arms. Which, admittedly, is a rather new development.”

It wasn’t just the words. It was in how he said them. Soft. Unsure. Like he knew he might not be allowed to believe it, but he did anyway. It was a truth he offered gently, like the words were sacred.

I didn’t answer. Not with language. That had always failed me. I kissed him instead—slow, aching, shaped from everything I didn’t know how to say. My mouth fit against his like it belonged, and for a heartbeat longer than comfort allowed, I believed it did.

I wasn’t built for this. Not for gentleness.

Not for wanting. I’d spent years burying myself in my art, telling myself I was happy being alone, and avoiding deep connections because they were complicated.

But I wanted to try. Just tonight. Even if dawn shattered it. Even if I didn’t know how to hold it.

Because in the hush of that moment, with his hand pressed warm to my chest and his breath brushing mine, I felt it.

Wanted. Not for what I’d survived in that warehouse.

Not for the ways I could break. But for the girl beneath it all, the one I’d buried too deep to grieve.

And for a single breath, I almost let myself believe that could be enough.

Almost.

But when he kissed my jaw, then my shoulder, and wrapped his body around mine with the kind of ease that said stay , something inside me panicked. This felt too soft. Too safe. And I’d learned safety was never free.

I must’ve drifted off in that space between his chest and the rest of the world. Still shaking from everything I hadn’t said. Still aching from what he’d made me feel. His skin was heat. His arm was a tether. And I didn’t resist the pull of it.

Morning broke too gently. Gold light bled through the curtains, warm and cautious. His arm was still around me, his breath steady at the nape of my neck, and for one fragile second, I let myself pretend it meant something. That I could keep it.

But I couldn’t. Not with a sister still lost. Not with danger still circling. Not with a man like Jax, who watched me like I was rare, and held me like he meant it.

I eased out from under his arm. Careful. Quiet. His brow twitched, but he didn’t wake.

Barefoot, I crossed the room. Found my clothes. Put them on, like covering up might erase the imprint of the last twenty-four hours. But my skin remembered. Every place he’d touched still hummed with it. Not heat. Not lust. Care. That terrifying, ruinous thing.

I dressed without looking at the mirror. I didn’t need to. I already knew what I’d see. The lines of hope, barely visible, were already starting to fray at the edges. Hope was a liability. Just like feelings. Just like men who stayed when you asked them to. Just like Jax.

I reached the door without waking him, but something in me hesitated. Just for a breath, I turned. He looked younger in sleep, less guarded, like the world hadn’t asked him to carry so much.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, closing the door behind me without looking back. I swallowed hard, unsure who I was apologizing to—him, the bed, the night, or the version of me who hadn’t wanted to leave. Maybe all of them. Maybe none.

I walked the hallway like nothing had changed. Like last night didn’t still echo beneath my skin. Like I wasn’t carrying the aftershock of being touched like I was sacred. But with every step, the weight grew heavier, my body already admitting what my heart refused to say.

When I reached my room and clicked the door shut, the silence folded in around me, thick as fog. And then I felt it. Not regret. Something colder. Quieter. The kind of truth that slips past your defenses and nestles deep in the place where softness used to live.

I couldn’t afford to love Jax. Not because of the danger. That, I could survive.

It was the tenderness that scared me. The way he saw me without asking me to earn it. The way he stayed.

And after everything I’d already survived, I couldn’t let that be the thing that broke me.