Page 65 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

“You okay?” he asked, voice so low it barely survived the air. Gone was the dark, cruel man who had fucked me into oblivion, replaced by the caring man who had held me each time he’d broken me.

I nodded, cheek pressed to the pillow, breath catching against the cotton. My voice didn’t follow. It was still tangled in the rope he hadn’t removed, still woven into the silence he was holding for me.

He didn’t press. Just reached for the blanket, pulled it over us, and settled behind me, one arm under my head, the other draped low at my waist. He didn’t pull me in. He let me stay, bound, raw, safe.

His hand moved slowly over my skin, every touch deliberate, like he was reading something written there. He traced the compression on my chest, the bite along my thigh, the tender place at my wrist where I’d fought and begged. He didn’t avoid the marks. He honored them.

Then he kissed each one. His mouth dragged over every bruise like he was sealing something in, like the aftermath deserved reverence. And it burned. Not from pain, but from the raw, unflinching truth of being held like I was holy.

I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. This wasn’t him undoing me. This was Jax translating the damage into scripture, turning every ache into something sacred.

“You were made for this,” he murmured, voice scraped raw. “Not just the rope. The way you give. The way you break open. The way you burn.”

Tears slipped free and soaked the pillow.

Quiet. Unforced. Not grief or shame, just release.

I hadn’t realized how much tension still lived in my body, how tightly I was braced.

But here, wrapped in rope and reverence, I felt it break.

I didn’t belong to fear anymore. I belonged to this stillness.

To these hands. To the calm that came after the storm.

His lips brushed the crown of my head. He didn’t speak again. He didn’t have to. His hands said everything in silence. In reverence. In the way he mapped the ghosts of each knot like they mattered. He didn’t call me beautiful. He showed me I already was.

My voice clawed its way to the surface, faint but certain. “No,” I whispered. “I wasn’t made for this…”

His breath hitched subtly, but enough. A shift in pressure. A pre-storm stillness. I turned my face to his, eyes raw, heart open, everything I was laid bare.

“I was made for you.”

The words didn’t shock him. They landed like a truth already known. His body shifted, not from surprise, but from recognition. His arm curled tighter around my waist. Not to soothe. Not to hold. But in answer. Yes, you’re mine. Yes, I see you. Yes, I know.

He didn’t speak. He just wrapped himself around me, quiet and steady. Rope still curled against my skin. His presence was a balm that didn’t ask or take. It simply stayed. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was surviving. I felt held.

I hadn’t planned to sleep. I wanted to memorize the shape of safety, the rhythm of his breath, the press of his hands.

I meant to stay inside the stillness we’d made.

But somewhere in the quiet, I let go, not because I was tired, but because trust had become part of me.

And sleep, at last, felt like belonging.

The rope left soft impressions across my chest. Loose now, but present. My thigh pulsed with the memory of the dragon-back tie. My skin still hummed with the echo of his mouth, the rhythm of his voice, the way he’d undone me with hands that gave more than they took.

And then something shifted.

Three soft knocks. Calm, but surgical. A blade through thread.

Jax moved like always, deliberate and sure.

The bed dipped as he stood, his warmth replaced by something colder.

His absence arrived before the door even opened.

He dressed in a single motion, energy pulled tight like wire.

I didn’t open my eyes. Didn’t speak. I just let the tension thread itself through my breath and hold.

The door creaked open. Cold air spilled in, sharp, quiet, the edge of something coming.

“Everything okay?” he asked, voice low, edges frayed.

A pause, then Niko answered, calm and clipped. “Quinn just called. He’s coming in the morning. Says it’s something big.”

“Did he say what?”

“No. Just that we need to be ready.”

The door closed with a quiet that meant more than noise ever could.

I didn’t move. The rope still pressed into my skin, each impression a reminder of how close I’d come to breaking, and how far I was willing to go.

My limbs ached, not from restraint, but from what remained unspoken.

Whatever Quinn had stirred into motion, it wasn’t small. The air felt braced. Expectant.

Jax returned like gravity. The bed dipped, his body curled behind mine, his heat steady against my spine. When his hand slid across my hip, slow, certain, I exhaled for the first time in minutes. He didn’t speak. That touch said everything. Whatever came next, we’d face it side by side.

Then, quiet and tight like a promise pulled from his chest, he said, “You can sleep, for now.”

And I did. He removed the last coils of rope from my body and helped me get comfortable, and I slipped into peaceful sleep.

Because the war hadn’t started yet. Because sleep was still sacred.

Because I was still marked, still humming, still something new beneath the bruises.

Not fragile. Not afraid. Just forged. And when morning came, I would be fire.