Page 44 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

My breath caught hard enough to make me sway. He moved higher, the next strip landing just beneath the hem of my shirt. His knuckles slipped under the cotton with clinical precision, but it didn’t matter. My body lit up as if he’d struck a match along every nerve.

“Still good?” he asked, and when I nodded, he didn’t move. Just waited.

“Try again, baby.”

“Yes.” My voice cracked under the weight of it. “Still good.”

He pressed a kiss to the inside of my wrist, soft and deliberate, as though sealing something invisible. “For every ring I place on you,” he murmured, heat rolling slowly off every word, “I’ll give you something back.”

Then he kissed the edge of my hip, just beside the paper, lips brushing skin like a vow. I gripped the hem of his shirt, trying to anchor myself, legs trembling beneath the gravity of him.

“Your body’s learning,” he said, mouth drifting lower. “Learning how it feels to be wanted without being used.”

The breath snagged in my chest like it belonged to someone else. “Do you always monologue during foreplay?”

That pulled a grin, wicked and warm. “Only when my partner listens better than she runs.”

I didn’t know whether I wanted to shove him or straddle him. Maybe both. He stepped back just enough for air to hit the heat he’d left behind, his gaze trailing over me like a theory he meant to study slowly. Then his voice dropped again, reverent and dark.

“You look good like this. Like a secret no one else has earned.”

“I’m half-dressed and wrapped in printer paper.”

“And still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He wasn’t talking about tape. He was talking about me, unmasked, unguarded, trembling under the full weight of being seen. He moved closer, not touching, but close enough that I could feel his breath syncing with mine.

When he lifted another strip from the nightstand, he held it like it meant something more than restraint. “Are you ready for more?”

It wasn’t about tape. It wasn’t about paper. It was about the space he’d opened, and whether I’d let him step deeper into it. I already had.

“Yes,” I whispered, because there wasn’t a reality where I didn’t want him closer.

“Good girl,” he said, voice warm enough to undo me. My knees nearly buckled.

He knelt again, fingers steady, eyes soft but unrelenting, moving not with speed but worship.

He placed the next strip high on my thigh, just beneath the curve where the ache turned hungry.

His knuckles brushed the edge of my panties, barely, but my hips jolted, instinct overriding restraint.

He didn’t react, just sealed the tape in place and leaned in until his mouth hovered where his hand had been.

Then he licked me. Slow. Decadent. Intentional. His tongue dragged across the skin beside the paper like he meant to live there, and the sound that tore from me was sharp and real. My knees dipped, hands grasping for anything solid.

Jax looked up, lips parted, eyes dark with intent. “You feel that?”

I nodded, barely breathing.

“Want me to do it again?”

“Yes.” It left my lips like a prayer—needy, reverent, wrecked.

But he didn’t. Not yet. He just exhaled, and the heat of his breath skimmed between my thighs, close enough to torment, never enough to satisfy. “You’re wet, aren’t you?” he murmured, voice thick with ruin. “And I haven’t even touched you. Just my mouth. Just breath.”

A whimper escaped before I could hide it, and he smiled like he’d just confirmed something sacred. “All that power around your wrists,” he said, “and you’re already begging, and I haven’t even moved.”

I tried to speak, tried to claw back a sliver of control with something clever, but he didn’t let me.

“You want me to wreck you slowly,” he whispered, “with nothing but want and intention. Don’t you, baby?”

He was right. I didn’t even pretend otherwise.

“Tell me what you need,” he said, his gaze locked on the tremble running through me. “Say it.”

“I… I don’t know. I want… you. I need you. Please, Jax. I need you.” My mind was beginning to get cloudy, and it was hard to put words together.

He chuckled, low and devastating. “Dealer’s choice it is, wicked girl.”

His hand skimmed my hip as he stood, dragging fire in his wake. “You sure you’re ready for what that honesty sounds like?”

“Try me.”

He leaned in again, his breath brushing my collarbone, fingers drifting slow along my thigh, hovering just above the lace.

“I want to take you apart so slowly you beg for mercy you don’t really want,” he said, each word landing heavy as heat.

“I want to kiss you until you forget every reason you were ever scared to be touched.”

It wasn’t seduction. It was scripture. Something reverent and wrecking that curled in deep and stayed. I swayed into him, already undone, but he stepped back, not punishing, just letting the ache breathe.

“This isn’t about rushing. It’s about proving you can take every slow second of being wanted.”

Then he smiled, and it was full of fire—tender, lethal, consuming. That smile faded, swallowed by the heat in his eyes as he moved, deliberate and silent, every step a study in restraint.

He didn’t speak again. Just pressed his hand between my thighs, cupping me through thin cotton with a pressure so steady, so devastatingly still, I almost buckled. There was no rhythm, no motion. Just his palm, warm and unmoving, holding me exactly where I ached the most.

My hips twitched for more, for anything, but he didn’t give it. His restraint made me feel more exposed than if he’d stripped me bare.

“If the paper breaks,” he murmured, “this ends.”

My bound wrists trembled, but I didn’t move.

“But if it doesn’t…” He leaned in, mouth brushing my temple, breath tracing heat across my cheek. “I’ll make you sob for me.”

I gasped, sharp and startled, already halfway ruined from the weight of his voice and the unbearable stillness. I tried to grind against him, shameless and wild now, but he held steady. That control wasn’t stillness. It was dominance honed to silence.

“I can feel how much you want it,” he whispered, pressing a kiss just beneath my ear. “But I want to hear it.”

Then he stepped back. Not far. Just enough to let the absence sting. His mouth drifted lower, grazing my throat, his lips finding the curve of my neck with a kiss that burned. Then came the lick—slow, deliberate—and the bite that followed made my knees collapse.

A sound tore from me, ragged and real.

One hand slipped beneath the band of my bra, his finger hooking inside—not tugging, not testing. Just there. Waiting.

His gaze held mine as if nothing else existed. “Say it. Tell me you want this.”

“I want it,” I rasped, the words scraped raw by how deeply I meant them.

His eyes flared darker.

“Tell me you want to be mine tonight, even knowing you can leave anytime.”

There was no pressure. No weight. Just a door wide open, and the promise that staying would never mean forgetting I could choose.

“I want you,” I said, louder now. “I want all of it.”

His breath hitched, barely, but it was enough. Enough to know he wasn’t unaffected. Enough to feed the fire that had been burning in my belly since the moment he first looked at me like I was a puzzle he ached to solve.

“Please,” I added, voice frayed at the edges. “Touch me. Show me .”

He didn’t answer. Not with words.

His mouth crashed into mine, all heat and hunger and ruin.

His hands slid up my sides, gripping my waist as he pulled me in like he needed to consume every breath I had.

The kiss wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t soft. It was desperate and perfect and filthy, and I kissed him back with the kind of hunger that could set a world on fire.

My hands, still bound in paper and tape, pressed to his chest, useless but burning. I didn’t want to break them. I wanted to feel every second of this exactly as he gave it. He tasted like want, like heat, like something holy wrapped in hunger.

When he pulled back, I was panting. Drenched. Floating.

“You’re fucking breathtaking when you beg,” he growled, his thumb slipping under the waistband of my panties, barely grazing skin. Then he dropped to his knees, and this time, he didn’t ask.

He didn’t tear. Didn’t rush. He moved like patience was a blade, and I was something worth carving.

His hands slid up my thighs, slow and steady, anchoring me to the moment before pausing just beneath the hem of my panties.

The air thickened. My skin vibrated with anticipation.

When he curled his fingers at my waistband and peeled the fabric down, it didn’t feel like being stripped.

It felt like being unwrapped. Reverently exposed.

His breath landed against bare skin in a hush that stole my breath in return.

Jax looked up, eyes catching the dim light like something feral but focused. “You’re soaked,” he murmured, not like a tease or a taunt, but like a discovery, a reward. “You want this more than you want to breathe.”

I couldn’t speak. My throat was locked tight, every nerve ending trained on his fingers, his mouth, the pressure building under my ribs.

He pressed a kiss just above the paper still hugging my waist. “Do you know what this does to me?” he asked against my skin, voice thick, breaking now with want. “Knowing you could stop me. Knowing you won’t .”

His mouth moved down in slow, devastating increments. Open kisses along my stomach. A drag of his teeth over my hip. A lick just beside where I needed it most. He exhaled, and my whole body shivered as his breath ghosted across my slick heat.

“You want to be wrecked, don’t you?” he murmured. “But only if it’s on your terms.”

His tongue flicked against the crease of my thigh, and my legs almost fully buckled. His hands came up to brace me—not holding me down, not restraining, just supporting , like he knew my body would betray me before my mind ever would.

“You want to fall apart,” he said, kissing my skin like it was sacred, “but you want to choose the moment. The man. The hands that break you open.”

My hands fisted in the paper at my wrists, trembling, but I didn’t tear them. Didn’t flinch. The control was mine, but he was holding the match, and I was made of gasoline.

“Tell me what you feel,” he whispered, voice brushing heat against skin. “Tell me what it means to stay.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came at first, just breath, just need, curling up from my core. Finally, I found it. “It makes me ache.”

His groan vibrated through my thighs. “Good girl.” And then finally, he moved.

His mouth slanted over my slit with devastating accuracy, each stroke purposeful and precise.

He kissed like he meant to dismantle me completely, not just with tongue and lips.

I gasped, hips jolting as he found my clit, and he moaned into me like he’d been waiting to feel that exact response.

The vibration rippled through me, sharp and indulgent.

His tongue worked in slow circles, patient and hungry, and between strokes, he murmured, “You taste like defiance. Like a woman who could destroy a kingdom and still let herself be worshipped.”

My fingers twitched. The paper at my wrists flexed.

My thighs trembled and my vision blurred, but still he didn’t stop.

His hands stayed firm on my skin, grip steady, mouth greedy with reverence.

“I could stay here for hours,” he said, voice low and strained.

“I could memorize you with my mouth and still never be done.” Pleasure built like a storm behind my ribs, and I was caught just outside it, desperate for permission.

“Say it,” he growled. “Say I can take you over.”

I whimpered, head back, body burning. “Please,” I gasped. “Jax, please.”

His tongue pressed harder. His grip closed tighter. “One more word.”

It broke loose like a cry. “Yes. Please.”

And then he wrecked me—no mercy, no pause.

Just full, devastating surrender. Orgasm hit like a steel-backed wave and ripped me open, not from force, but from being held so completely in the hands of someone who saw every part and didn’t flinch.

One of the paper rings at my thigh started to tear with a soft ripping sound as my muscles spasmed uncontrollably.

He kissed me through all of it, through every jolt, every sobbed breath, anchoring me to the sound of him claiming what I’d offered.

When the silence came, I found his fingers pressed to the torn edge, not speaking.

Just breathing. Mourning something fragile.

Not the paper, but what it had taken for me to hold it in place.

Then he rose slowly, and his hands traced my torso like he was redrawing me, mapping my skin.

His touch grounded me. And when I shifted, the ripped strip fluttered.

Jax followed my gaze, smiled, and brushed his thumb over the tear. “That one’s about to go. Want me to cut it for you and end the scene?” His eyes met mine, checking, never assuming.

“Or…” He traced the strip’s edge, then kissed the corner of my hip. “…are you strong enough to try for something more solid?”

A breathy laugh caught in my chest, tangled with a moan. My body was trembling, raw, but his question struck something deeper, the part that wanted to try. “Please,” I whispered, not even sure what I meant.

He nodded, solemn, sharp, and reached for the scissors.

One by one, he removed the rings. Not torn.

Not rushed. Cut. Intentional. Every snip landed louder than it should’ve, like punctuation.

Like benediction. He peeled them from me not in failure, but as proof I’d let myself be bare.

Each loss left a hum beneath my skin, nerves tingling where the paper had kissed me. Not absence, but permission.

When he was about to cut the last one, around my thigh, I stopped him with a hand and a small shake of the head. “Leave that one, please. Just one. To remind me.”

He nodded with a small smile and turned to the nightstand.

The rope lay in a neat coil beside the scissors, a deep rust red that already looked like heat against skin.

He ran it through his fingers once, twice—soft, steady, ritual.

Then he stepped closer, rope looped in one hand, and with the other, brushed my hair from my face. His thumb traced along my cheekbone.

“Now that I know you’ll stop me if you need to,” he said, voice steady, low enough to sink into my chest, “I can take you farther than you ever thought you’d go.”

I didn’t nod. Didn’t flinch. I just extended my hands—open, steady. And in that moment, I wasn’t surrendering. I was choosing.