Page 47 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

I stayed outside that door longer than I meant to, after the water stilled and her breathing softened. It wasn’t about watching her. She didn’t need guarding. But the air still held the essence of her, and I wasn’t ready to let go of that. She made me want to stay. That was the difference.

When I finally helped her back to my room, the air was quiet and warm, pulsing with something slower than urgency but heavier than calm. My footsteps didn’t echo. They just landed, like I did, barefoot, bare-chested, stripped of all edge. No armor. No performance. Just me.

Now, she lay on her side under the covers, cheek to the pillow, damp hair tangled at her temple.

Lamplight cut soft lines across her shoulder and waist, highlighting the faint twitch of her toes beneath the blanket.

She looked like someone who’d made it through a storm but hadn’t stopped listening for thunder. But most of all, she was still here.

That hit harder than I expected. She hadn’t left. Not because she owed me. Not because I’d asked. But because she chose to stay.

I sat at the edge of the bed, slow, deliberate.

The cotton of my pants pulled tight across my thighs, but I barely felt it.

My focus stayed on her breath—unsteady, but learning.

I set my hand on her back, splaying my fingers gently.

Just contact. Just warmth. Her skin radiated it.

Her ribs rose and fell beneath my palm. Her muscles held tension she hadn’t fully released.

I breathed with her, syncing slowly. A quiet recalibration.

A metronome she could borrow from until her own rhythm came back.

My thumb moved in lazy circles along her spine—instinct, not decision.

A grounding loop. For her. For me. For the space between us, stripped of titles, free from performance.

Just breath and skin and silence after something seismic.

She shifted. Slight at first. Then more. Her thigh brushed mine, warm and damp beneath the blanket, and not by accident. She didn’t freeze. Didn’t pull back. Just touched. Just stayed. And I didn’t move.

That contact didn’t ask. Didn’t apologize. It just said, I’m here, and I’m not afraid of this anymore.

The moment stretched, and in the stretch was something sacred. I looked down at her and let my voice speak soft and low. “Still with me?”

A pause. Not hesitation, just her making sure. Then her voice, hoarse and unguarded. “Still with you.” A breath later, quieter, “I didn’t run.”

My throat tightened. I didn’t speak. Didn’t say how much that meant. I kept my hand steady, tracing slow arcs along skin that had only just learned I could be trusted.

She turned toward me with careful control, like her bones remembered caution, even if her heart didn’t.

The blanket slipped, revealing one flushed breast, her shoulder, the curve of her collarbone still kissed with heat.

Her eyes found mine, not wide, not panicked, but narrowed.

Testing. Like someone looking through a door they hadn’t yet walked through.

Her hand slid beneath the covers and found my thigh. She rested it there—palm down, fingers easy. Not possessive. Not pleading. Just contact. A moment that didn’t ask for more, but wasn’t finished yet. I didn’t flinch. Didn’t tense. Just let it land.

“I’m happy you didn’t run.” I replied finally.

“It felt like a win,” she murmured. “But it still scared the hell out of me.”

Her voice was sandpaper-soft. Worn but not broken. I reached up and smoothed her damp hair behind her ear, fingers dragging along the shell of it, then along her jaw. “It scared you,” I said, “because it mattered.”

She blinked, slow. Like she wasn’t sure whether to absorb that or dodge it. “You didn’t shut down either,” she said eventually. “You stayed too.”

“That’s the whole damn point.” And it was. The point of all of it. Not rope or rituals or rules. Not yet. Just the act of staying. Of being the man she could break next to without fearing I’d scatter the pieces, or walk away.

Her exhale came sharp, nostrils flaring, fingers flexing gently on my thigh.

It wasn’t conscious, but I felt it like heat under skin.

My hand slid from her jaw to her collarbone, palm settling over the warm center of her chest without dipping lower.

Just resting there. Heat to heat. Contact without demand.

Then, under the blanket, her nipple peaked against the fabric. A reaction to nearness. To safety. To being seen and not flinching under it. She noticed. I noticed. Neither of us spoke.

“Still aroused?” I asked.

Her throat bobbed before she nodded. “A little.”

“Good.” I let my voice drop. “That’s your body remembering what safety feels like. Let it.”

She didn’t respond immediately. Didn’t have to.

Her eyes softened, something old exhaling inside her.

Then her fingers shifted again, higher on my thigh now, brushing near the bend of my hip.

It wasn’t sexual. Not exactly. But not devoid of sexuality, either.

She was letting her body speak where her voice couldn’t yet, and I stayed grounded, unmoving, giving her the freedom to find her pace.

That was the point. Be the lighthouse. Let her be the tide.

She didn’t need to prove anything. She just needed space to exist. My hand stayed steady on her chest, keeping us both grounded in something that felt sacred.

She didn’t retreat. Didn’t freeze. She breathed into it, let herself be in it, and that more than anything was what undid me.

The permission she gave herself to soften in a moment that could have made her close off.

I’d seen that recoil before, how even gentleness could frighten someone conditioned to brace for pain.

But not her. Not now. Stella let herself feel me.

Let me hold a sliver of her, and even if it was small, it was real.

“What we did tonight… I liked it,” she whispered, the words nearly lost in the hush. “Even the parts that scared me.”

Her voice wasn’t just soft. It was cautious. I didn’t rush to soothe it. I let her sit under the weight of her own words. Then I met them gently. “Especially those parts. Because the fear means it was important. And you didn’t run.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It breathed. Thick and living, stretching between us not to be filled, but honored. Her hand moved again, brushing my chest in slow, steady passes that didn’t seek attention.

“It felt like…” She paused, eyes searching. “Like giving myself permission to feel again. And not feel guilty for it.”

My throat tightened.

She wasn’t talking about tonight. Not really. She was talking about everything that came before it—the kidnapping, being brought here to a house full of strangers, trying to figure out how to retain her sense of self when everything about her life had been upended.

And now she was here, beneath my hands, lit from within by something incandescent and whole. Choosing to feel anyway.

“Exactly,” I murmured, letting my thumb move again, just a small stroke across the smooth plane of her side. “You didn’t fail when you froze before. You protected yourself. That’s survival. But tonight?” I looked into her eyes, steady and certain. “You stayed. You chose .”

A flicker of something passed through her. Hope, maybe. Or grief. They lived side by side, didn’t they? Especially in people who carried too much.

Her hand shifted slightly on my chest, sliding up toward my collarbone, fingers skimming the base of my throat. She didn’t pull me closer. Didn’t initiate anything. Just… felt me there. Her touch was like a statement: you are real, and I am real, and this moment counts.

“I still don’t know what this is,” she said softly, her voice brushing against vulnerability. “Between us.”

I could feel her breath on my jaw, warm and uncertain, and for a moment I imagined what lesser men might do here. How easy it would be to soothe her with platitudes, wrap this up in romance and promises and pretty words she hadn’t asked for.

But that wasn’t what she needed.

She needed space to define her experience, not to be swept into mine.

“We don’t have to define it tonight,” I said, careful not to tip the balance of the quiet between us. “Not if that feels too big.”

But her mouth quirked at the corner, a shadow of a smile. “I want to define something .”

Not everything. Not even us .

Just… something.

My breath caught at that. It wasn’t a declaration. It was a dare. One that came with trembling grace and raw, honest hope.

And suddenly, it felt less like she was trying to label this… and more like she was offering to build a place where it could live.

She was already halfway curled toward me, bare skin brushing against mine in a hundred quiet declarations. Her breathing had slowed from the ragged edge it rode earlier, but tension still hummed under the surface—quiet, coiled, waiting.

So I adjusted slowly, slipping under the comforter and turning onto my side until we were fully face-to-face beneath the warmth of the blankets.

My hand moved instinctively to her hip. She didn’t flinch.

She didn’t move. She just stayed, her gaze fixed on mine like I might hold the answer to a question.

“Then perhaps we can begin to define what a dynamic might look like between us.” I said softly, “One of the great things about kink is that a dynamic can look like whatever it needs to, based on the people involved. For example, to me, dynamic isn’t about control. It’s about structure.”

Her brows pulled together. “Structure?”

I nodded once. “Think of it like scaffolding. A framework that holds steady when everything else in your world shakes loose.”

Her eyes searched mine, unblinking, a little wary, but open. “So… no rules?”