Page 53 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

I adjusted the mainline, fed it cleanly through the suspension ring, and began the lift with slow, deliberate tension.

The rope took her weight, and her head dropped, not from dread, but from awe.

Her torso tipped slightly as the harness found its rhythm across her chest and back, the futomomo rising with her right leg in a gentle arc.

Her bound arms shifted, knuckles twitching, ribcage expanding for air she could almost, but not quite, reach.

And still, she surrendered. The rope didn’t just hold her. It spoke to her.

“Let the ground go,” I said, my voice low, one hand braced against her belly.

“I’ve got the rest.” Then she was off the mat completely, suspended, bound, floating.

Her body adjusted beneath the pressure, all elegant lines and angles, the harness lifting and pressing in all the right places.

Her left leg extended long, toes pointed.

Her torso leaned forward slightly, chest straining beautifully against the rope, one strand nestled deep between her breasts.

I circled her slowly, adjusting torsion to create a subtle twist. Her hips rotated with the motion, her head rolling back as the sensation overtook her.

She moaned, soft, unfiltered, and it landed low in my spine like a blow.

Not because it was sexual, not yet, but because it was real.

The sound of armor breaking. The moment when someone stops performing and simply feels.

“You’re beautiful,” I murmured, letting the words fall across her skin like a second rope.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered, voice ragged. “I didn’t know it would feel like this.” I stepped closer, my palm still warm on her abdomen to keep her steady. Heat poured off her in waves. She was flushed from chest to cheekbone, pupils blown wide, body humming with tension.

“You’ve never been held like this before,” I said, adjusting the rig at her hip.

“That’s why it feels like being touched for the first time.

” Her eyes fluttered shut, then snapped open again.

I watched the tremble build in her thighs, the way her core clenched with every slow shift of the harness.

My hand slid up the inside of her leg, deliberate and slow, stopping just below the crease of her pelvis.

Over the leggings. Nothing forbidden. Not yet.

Just enough pressure to make her jolt midair.

Her gasp hit the air, ragged and raw, her head tipping back as the rope held her firm.

I moved around her, trailing one fingertip along the band of her waistband, then down over the curve of her ass and along the exposed side of her bound leg.

She whimpered, immediate and unrestrained, and I smiled.

“You’re soaked,” I whispered, letting my knuckles graze back up her thigh, stopping just shy of the heat I could feel pulsing through the fabric. “And you’ll stay like this. Suspended. Helpless. Gorgeous.”

She moaned again, more desperate this time, her body straining within the ropes, not in protest, but in need. She tried to shift, but the ties held. Her arms were useless behind her. Her legs couldn’t bend or push. All she had was her breath, and the maddening crush of sensation.

I let my voice drop, darker now. “You haven’t even touched yourself,” I said, stepping between her legs, my hand grazing the seam of her leggings, higher this time. “Look at you. Already wrecked.” Her hips rocked forward in a small, helpless thrust, instinctive and utterly out of her control.

“Jax…” Her voice was fractured, stripped of sarcasm and control, raw with want. She was trying to hold herself together, but there was nothing left to grip.

I let my hand drift beneath her waistband, just a tease at first, nothing more than the promise of contact. The second my fingers met bare skin, she flinched, a gasp tearing from her throat as her body twisted in the air, ropes creaking in protest.

I froze, hand suspended just inside the fabric, heat bleeding into her skin. “Do you want more?” My voice dipped lower, careful, coaxing, because consent didn’t vanish when control did.

She nodded, frantic, her breath catching on the edge of a moan.

“Say it.” I didn’t move. Didn’t push. Just waited.

“Yes.” The word was breathless, shaky, nearly swallowed by the tension coiling through her frame. Then softer, “Please.”

My gaze never left her face. “Please what?”

Her lips parted. She swallowed. “Please touch me.” The words landed somewhere between surrender and prayer.

I slid my hand fully inside, dipping between her thighs, groaning low the second I felt her, soaked, slippery, pulsing like her entire body had narrowed to that one desperate point of contact. Her breath hitched. Her thighs jerked against the restraints.

“I can’t, I didn’t know…” she stammered, the sentence dissolving into a moan as I found her clit and circled it slowly with two fingers.

“Shhh,” I murmured, reverent and dark. “Don’t think. Just feel.” She let out a sound that might’ve been a sob. Her hips rocked forward, grinding against my hand with no leverage, no control, but her body fought for more all the same.

“That’s it,” I said, matching the rhythm she carved from tension.

“Grind on me. Let me feel how wrecked you are.” Her cry cracked the air wide open; raw, wild, and so unfiltered it stole my breath.

I looked up and watched her head fall back, lips parted, body quaking, suspended, restrained, unraveling beneath every inch she’d given me.

And I knew I could undo her completely. Not with force or pain, but with precision.

With patience. With the ache she’d begged me to build. And we weren’t close to being done.

She couldn’t see herself, stripped of control, suspended in pressure and permission, rocking into my hand like nothing else mattered, but I could.

And I’d remember it until the day I stopped breathing.

Her arms were bound behind her, one leg folded high in rope, the other hanging just enough to offer motion but deny escape.

Each thrust met resistance, the rope catching her, amplifying her need.

She was soaked, panting, lips trembling, her moans stripped bare by the harness pressing into her ribs. Every roll of her body drew tighter, desperation bleeding through every sound, and still, I didn’t let go.

My thumb stayed on her clit while my middle finger grazed her entrance, a tease, not a claim, while her body shook hard enough to jolt the suspension line. I pressed one hand to her belly, grounding her. “Easy. You don’t have to fight it. You’re already mine.”

“I can’t,” she choked, head lolling forward like gravity had claimed her. “Jax, I can’t…”

“Yes,” I murmured, brushing my lips against her temple. “You can. You are.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from losing it. My cock was hard behind my fly, pulsing in time with the rhythm of her hips, but I didn’t move. This wasn’t about me. Not yet. This was her fall. Her rise. Her undoing.

I slid my hand lower and cupped her fully. She cried out like I’d lit a fuse, like no one had ever touched her this way. Reverently. Deliberately. Destructively.

“You asked me to show you,” I said, voice thick with heat and reverence. “This is it, Stella. Power and patience. Precision and ache. I build you, and I choose when you break.”

Her eyes snapped open, glassy, dark, then shut again as her body bucked in a desperate, rhythm-less thrust. She was right there.

“Please,” she gasped, breath ragged. “Please don’t stop…please, Jax…”

“I’m not stopping until you cum,” I growled, then added, “And maybe not even then.” She sobbed a moan, grinding harder, chasing it with everything she had left. Her body was all tension and need, trembling in the ropes like she wanted to shatter the air itself.

“That’s it,” I whispered, mouth brushing her jaw.

“Use me. Take it. Let go.” My fingers moved faster, firmer, two working her entrance while the heel of my hand pressed against her clit.

I couldn’t see her face; her head was too far back, but I could feel her.

Every pant, curse, and moan soaked into my skin and turned me feral.

She trembled, wrecked and suspended, strung so tight it was a miracle she hadn’t already come.

Then her breath hitched once, and her whole body locked before it shattered.

Her orgasm tore through her, hips jerking forward, then back, then forward again, like every nerve was caught between surrender and escape.

Her scream, my name, hit the air with no echo, the kind that carves itself into you.

But I didn’t stop. My fingers kept circling, relentless, reverent, as she cried out again, twitching, sobbing, undone in the crossfire of a release so deep it peeled her open down to the soul.

Her orgasm didn’t fade; it evolved, cresting again and again, drawn out by the rope, the helplessness, the exactness of my hand.

I stayed close, whispering filth and reverence against her skin, how good she was, how stunning she looked strung up and soaked, chasing sensation like it was salvation.

When her knees finally faltered and her body sagged in the harness, I caught her, steadying her against my chest. She was somewhere softer now, unguarded, undone, impossibly real, and I felt something shift in my chest as I held her.

Something that might’ve been love, raw and rising, too big to name, but impossible to ignore.

Her body hung slack, not limp, but loosened.

Unbound from resistance. Stripped of everything but breath and sensation.

Her cheek rested against the inside of her shoulder, lips parted, lashes damp.

And I watched her float in the afterglow like she was suspended by more than just rope, like she was floating in mercy.

Not the kind you beg for, but the kind you don’t believe you deserve until someone gives it to you anyway.