Page 60 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

The list sat on the table like a relic, creased, smudged, thrumming with the kind of tension that demanded distance.

I hadn’t touched it since she handed it over, not out of doubt, but reverence.

I believed every word in her rushed, spiky hand, each scrape of ink, every smear of fury.

But some truths don’t ask to be read. They wait.

For stillness. For silence. Like whispered prayers in a war zone.

So I didn’t read. I turned to ritual. Rope.

Five-millimeter jute, dry from storage, stiff at the bend.

I worked by feel, softening the fibers, folding, drawing tension into the coil the way I had a hundred times before.

The familiar scent rose: earth, weight, order.

Rope never panicked. Never lied or manipulated.

It obeyed. And tonight, I needed something that obeyed physics instead of the fractured logic of grief.

Her knock came late.

The door eased open, her silhouette carved in low light and velocity. Not urgency - momentum. Like her body had already crossed the threshold before her mind could catch up. She didn’t wait for permission. Just entered. Boots scuffed. Breath unsteady.

“She’s still out there,” she said, pacing. “And we’re here. Just here.”

She didn’t look at me. Just kept moving, palms twitching, eyes raking corners like they might reveal something hidden. “Every minute we wait, every second, is a chance they’re moving her. Or hurting her. Or…”

The word caught in her throat. Died there. Didn’t need to land.

I didn’t rise. Didn’t reach for calm I hadn’t earned. Stella’s panic wasn’t chaos. It was the logical product of weeks of worrying about something you had exactly zero control over.

“You’re vibrating,” I said. “Can I help you calm down?”

She stilled. Not from fear, but from the gravity of my voice. Her breath snagged. Shoulders curled like she was bracing for something she didn’t want but already expected.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I think I need that.”

I nodded.

“This is grounding,” I said gently. “Not restraint. You’ll be clothed, aware, in control. I’ll narrate every move. You can stop at any time. You’re free to shift. I just want to help your brain find your body again.”

She didn’t nod, didn’t speak. But after a pause, she took a breath that wasn’t shaped like panic. That was enough.

I climbed onto the bed behind her, ropes draped over my arm. My knees sank into the mattress, slow, even, measured. Like pulling tension from the air and giving it shape.

“I’m going to start with your arms,” I said. “Crossed over your chest. Like an embrace, only made of jute. You’ll be able to move, but the contact creates sensory pressure. That helps the vagus nerve send safety signals to your brain. We call it proprioceptive input.”

She let out a faint breath of something like laughter. “Of course we do.”

“Brains like yours, ones that have been through intense trauma, especially new trauma, respond better to feedback loops than comfort,” I said as I guided her arms into place. “I could tell you that you’re safe. But that’s not the language your body speaks. This is.”

I passed the first loop over her forearms, gently crossing them above her ribs, the strands snug but forgiving. Then I wrapped the line across her back and under her biceps, framing her shoulders. Her breath hitched as the contact settled.

“This isn’t about stillness,” I said. “It’s about knowing you exist. Knowing your shape. Trauma makes people forget where they stop and the world starts.”

She didn’t reply, but her spine eased a degree closer to rest. To trust.

The rope moved between us like a language, each knot a sentence, each pass a breath. I drew it across her collarbones, anchoring broad bands around her chest and ribs. Not for pressure. For clarity.

“You’re doing well,” I murmured. “Your pulse has slowed. Your cortisol’s resetting. That’s your brain learning it doesn’t have to run.”

Her fingers twitched beneath the rope.

Then, quieter, “You’re not failing her by surviving.”

Her head dropped forward, hair falling to veil her face. She didn’t cry. She just breathed. And that was everything.

I brought the rope down in mirrored patterns, looping under her sternum, around her waist in figure-eights. Her body adjusted to meet it, small shifts, quiet acquiescence. Her back brushed my chest. Her head hovered near my shoulder.

“This is a pattern,” I said, letting the words land. “Not a trap. There’s no punishment here. Only design. And design,” I added, lowering my voice, “is just the architecture of choice.”

She didn’t answer at first. The silence wasn’t heavy, just full, like her body was recalibrating around the shape of truth.

Then, barely a breath, “I feel… like I’m in my body again.”

I smiled, soft and certain. “That’s because you are.”

I let my hands rest at her hips, not claiming, just anchoring. Like a frame around a painting, not to contain it, but to elevate it.

“Your fear isn’t irrational,” I said gently. “But it is unsustainable. If we’re going to out-think the people who took her, we have to outlast their chaos. That starts here. With regulation. With clarity. With knowing what’s real.”

“Jax?” she asked, voice rough and frayed.

“Yes?”

“I’m scared she’s not alive.”

My jaw flexed. I closed my eyes. “Fear doesn’t need to be disproven to be survived,” I said. “It just needs to be witnessed, and then out-planned, methodically, until it can’t win.”

Her breathing stayed shallow, but the panic had dulled to something quieter, like an alarm still blinking after the danger had passed. Not calm. Not resolution. But motion. And that was enough.

“I don’t need you calm,” I said as I tucked the knot beside her hip, low and deliberate. “I just need you regulated. That’s not the same. Calm is silence. Regulation is a signal. You’re still scared. But now your body knows it can feel that without drowning.”

She made a sound then, rough, warm, not quite a sob, but something cracked open. Like a dam yielding on purpose. When her eyes opened, they dropped to the pattern across her chest; the softness holding her arms. Her lips parted on an exhale, and her head tilted, not from confusion. From reverence.

“This is the first time I’ve felt… here,” she whispered, voice rasped with truth. “Not trying to disappear. Not trying to be somewhere else.”

I stayed still, letting her words settle into the air, into the rope, into me.

“Then I’ll keep going,” I said, reaching for the next coil. “Not because you need more restraint. But sometimes the body understands what the mind is still learning to believe.”

Her voice didn’t tremble when she said it.

“Yes, please.”

So I continued, not as her Dominant, not as her partner, but as the man who saw every frayed wire in her circuitry and chose to trace each one with reverence.

Diamond patterns first, broad, deliberate, layered over her sternum and down her sides like armor made from breath.

A softened variation of takate kote . Less martial.

More sacred. I wove slowly, letting the rope hug her ribcage in mirrored X’s that kissed each inhale, leaving space in all the right places.

Art made from absence. Safety in suggestion.

“Most people think rope is about control. And it can be. But here, now, it’s about clarity. The body has a language. It speaks in pulses and pressure, in stress signals and relief. Rope just listens more closely than hands can. It traces what you’re too tired to say.”

She was still again. Not stiff, just settled. Her spine eased, shoulders softening like maybe, for the first time in hours, she wasn’t preparing to run.

“This tie,” I said, hands moving with quiet precision, “doesn’t just rest on your body. It syncs with it. Mirrors tension. Offers balance. Like a counterweight, so you don’t have to carry it alone.”

Her breath hitched, sharp and unguarded. I didn’t rush. Just paused long enough for the silence to register, then threaded the rope again, down her side, crosshatched and slow.

At the final pass, I eased back, fingertips tracing the outer edge of the harness, checking tension, space, breath. Her body shifted. Her eyes followed the lines across her chest, then downward, slowly tracking the form the rope gave her.

She didn’t speak at first. Just breathed, shallow, steady. Then, softer than sound, her voice slid between us.

“It’s beautiful.”

I closed the space between us, fingers resting beside her ribs, fabric only. No pressure. Just presence. Just proof.

“You are beautiful,” I said, not as comfort, but fact. “This only shows you what I already see.”

She exhaled, the sound breaking through like breath finally allowed. Not panic. Not performance. Just release. Like something in her had waited for permission to be witnessed. And finally was.

“After everything that happened, I just wanted to disappear,” she said, eyes still lowered. “I wanted to take up less space. Be less loud. Less noticeable. Safer.”

I nodded, the rope creaking softly as I adjusted it across her collarbones. “That’s what hypervigilance teaches you. That survival means shrinking.”

She swallowed. “But this... this feels like claiming space.”

“It is,” I said. “Structure that says, Here I am. Still here. Still whole.”

The final rope framed her sternum in a clean inverted triangle. I tucked the end beneath her ribs, visible, intentional, a quiet signature.

Shifting behind her, I knelt close, knees bracketing her hips as the warmth of my body met hers. She leaned back without prompting, her bound form instinctively seeking the shape I made behind her. I placed my hands lightly at her waist, no pressure, just contact, and let her settle.

This wasn’t a scene. It was a ceremony. A ritual of return. And she let it hold her.