Page 55 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

The rope had released her. Her body had come down.

But the room still burned with the shape of her surrender, the stillness holding weight, not silence, but something denser.

An atmosphere thick with meaning. Not just a room, but memory, suspended.

A space that carried ritual in its bones, and never needed language to keep it alive.

She lay beside me, half-wrapped in the cotton blanket I kept folded near the rig.

Slack-limbed and unscripted. Not unconscious or asleep, just drifting in that post-scene recalibration where the body reboots slowly, one synapse at a time.

Her hair fanned damp against the mat, lashes fluttering with each breath.

Her limbs lacked geometry, all skewed angles and softness.

One hand curled under her cheek, the other near her waist, fingers twitching faintly as her nervous system mapped its way back online.

The ropes were already coiled beside us. I’d untied her slowly, fingers retracing each path in reverse, the slide of jute a release of intention as much as binding. But the end of the tie itself never meant the end of care.

I knelt beside her with a warm, damp cloth.

Dipped. Wrung. I applied light pressure to her shoulder, not to clean, but to reassure.

To answer. Rope had spoken. This was my reply.

She didn’t move, but exhaled louder, the sound catching on something involuntary.

A faint ridge marked where the jute had bitten down.

I traced it with the cloth, slow and steady, not to erase, but to honor.

That line had a meaning. Every mark did.

The knots had been questions. Her breath and surrender had held the answers.

I moved down her arm, dragging warmth over her bicep, the crease of her elbow, the pulse beneath flushed skin. Her scent rose with it; salt, heat, and something sweeter. Chemical. Intimate. Hers.

“You still with me, wicked girl?” My voice was low, a ripple through the quiet, a tether offered and waiting to be held. She didn’t open her eyes, but her lips moved just enough to shape the word.

“Barely.”

And, fuck me, if that didn’t make my heart stutter. I swallowed, smoothed my hand down her forearm, folded the cloth to a fresh side, and moved to her other shoulder. “That’s my girl.”

I could have said more. Could’ve narrated every inch I passed over with praise that made her squirm.

But she didn’t need words right then. She needed rhythm.

Contact. Anchoring. After suspension, the mind sometimes floated for hours, adrift in dopamine, oxytocin, with nerves misfiring or glowing.

My job wasn’t done until her brainwaves matched mine again.

I shifted lower, dragging the cloth across her sternum.

The harness marks were still visible, lines crossing beneath the edge of her bra where the chest tie had framed her.

My fingers followed the shape, not quite touching, ghosting behind the cloth.

My own breath hitched when she inhaled, sharp and shaky, ribs expanding under my hand.

She was still deep in it. But not gone.

“Every part of you is etched in my mind forever,” I murmured, more to myself than her. “I could map it by memory now.” A soft sound slipped from her throat. A lazy, exhausted exhale that might’ve been a laugh.

“Show off.”

“Not show,” I said, letting my voice ease. “Study.”

Her lips twitched. The smile never fully formed, but the ghost of it was enough.

A language all its own. I shifted the cloth lower, brushing along the arc of her ribs, the slope of her waist, down to the curve of her hip.

Her thigh brushed my knee as she adjusted, the blanket tugging tighter around her legs, the contact grounding in its simplicity.

I set the cloth aside and brought my hand to the mark on her thigh where the futomomo had compressed every inch from ankle to hip in that coiled, spiraling shape I’d built with care.

The red imprint curled into soft muscle, a signature not written in ink, but in trust. It had taken precision to tie, and restraint not to sink my teeth into the skin just above it.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t tense. Her muscles softened beneath my palm like peace had claimed her, her breath deepening as her body leaned into touch instead of pulling away.

The blanket slipped further, baring the full length of her thigh, but I kept my movements steady and reverent, intimate without urgency.

Her left hand stirred. Fingers stretched, reached, not outward, but across the space between us.

They found my wrist and rested there, brushing lightly, then curling, not a plea, not a need.

Just contact. A declaration made in silence.

I didn’t need to look. That touch said everything.

She wasn’t asking to be held or soothed.

She wasn’t seeking reassurance. She was telling me she was here.

Still unraveling. Still tethered. Still choosing this.

Choosing me. Her hand glided up my arm, slow and exploratory, trailing heat like a question she already knew the answer to.

Half-wrapped in the blanket, hair a dark halo across the mat, she shifted with purpose now.

Not drifting. Not fragile. Intentional. She rolled onto her side and tucked her face against my chest like it was where she belonged, and let her breath warm the space beneath my collarbone.

Her palm slid higher, fingers splaying over my ribs, mapping me like I was a geography worth learning by touch alone.

Then she kissed me directly over my heart.

Her mouth moved, open and slow, like she meant to leave a mark.

Not a visible mark, but deeper than that.

Something she could feel. Something I’d carry.

I didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Every muscle locked beneath the weight of it.

I had bound her, held her, and watched her fall apart in my arms. But now she touched me like I was sacred.

And I couldn’t take that kind of grace without breaking a little.

Another kiss. Then another. Lower. Slower. Each one deliberate, burning down my abdomen in a trail of heat and hunger and awe. She wasn’t teasing or performing. She was offering.

“Stella.” Her name caught in my throat. “You don’t have to…”

“I know.” Her voice was calm. Certain. “I want to.”

That was what undid me. The restraint I’d mastered, the balance I lived by, cracked under the weight of her choice.

I shifted onto my back, barely breathing as she moved.

She kissed over my hipbone, lips soft but full of intent, dragging the blanket away as she went.

My cock was already hard behind the restraining layers of my clothing, but she didn’t rush.

Didn’t provoke. She worshipped, her hands mapping the shape of me with reverence; thighs, knees, hips, each touch deliberate.

Her fingers trembled as she unzipped my pants and slid them down over my hips, but her mouth didn’t.

She parted her lips, leaned in, and when the heat of her tongue met the head of my cock, I cursed and bit down hard enough to taste blood.

“Jesus,” I breathed, head falling back, the word torn from somewhere deeper than breath.

She moaned in response, not performative, not pretty.

Just a soft, sin-drunk hum, like she was tasting something decadent and forbidden.

And maybe she was. Maybe I was hers to consume.

Her lips moved without any choreography.

Her tongue slid beneath the shaft, traced the underside, circled the head, then drew me deeper, just enough to rip a groan from my chest that didn’t belong to someone in control.

I threaded my fingers through her hair. Her mouth was on me like it meant something. Like this was a gift, not a task. And it was. Her body, her mouth, her choice. It leveled me.

“Stella,” I rasped, the name catching on the raw edges of my breath. “You don’t have to…fuck…you feel like sin.”

She smiled against my skin. I felt it, smug and slow, silk-soft and devastating. And then she took me again.

“Please,” I gasped, the word breaking in half on its way out. “Please don’t stop.”

Her fingers gripped tighter on my thighs.

Her rhythm deepened. This wasn’t teasing.

This was a claiming. And I let her. Because in all the years I’d tied and touched and taken control, no one had worshipped me like this.

No one had made me feel known beneath the skin.

Her mouth gave thanks in a dialect I hadn’t realized I’d craved, and yet I understood every word.

It didn’t take long. It couldn’t have. Not with her tongue dragging fire across every nerve, her hand wrapped at the base while I fractured one breath at a time.

My body bucked as I came, cursing through clenched teeth, undone in a way I didn’t have language for.

And she didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull back.

She swallowed me down like she knew exactly how to wreck a man like me.

When I surfaced, her cheek rested against my hip, one arm draped over my thigh like she’d dismantled me and was content to leave the wreckage intact.

Her breath was steady. Measured. Like this hadn’t broken me.

But it had. I reached for her and pulled her into my arms, my grip more desperate than I wanted to admit.

“Wicked girl,” I murmured into her hair. “You ruin me.”

She smiled against my chest, soft and quiet, and I let the shape of it stay, right over my heart.

She didn’t just curl up into me. She melted, slow and deliberate, like gravity had finally chosen a side.

Her cheek rested above my sternum, her leg tangled with mine, one arm draped across my waist in a touch that wasn’t clingy or cautious, just certain.

Her body hadn’t collapsed. It had landed.