Page 66 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Jax

The first thing I registered was heat, not the kind that hissed from vents or rolled off machinery, but something alive. It moved slowly, soaked in deep, and carried the shared sweat and the steady rhythm of another body breathing next to mine.

Stella was draped over me like a second skin, one leg hooked over my hip, her cheek warm against my chest. Her hand splayed across my ribs like she was holding the rhythm steady.

Her skin was still flushed from how we’d burned together, and her breath ghosted over my sternum in the quiet, peaceful cadence of hard sleep earned honestly.

The rope had left its imprint, faint but undeniable.

I traced the marks in the dark, watching the soft echoes of knots that had spoken louder than words.

One line curved along her thigh like a question.

Another circled her waist, unintentional but perfect.

She wore them like scripture, written for my eyes alone.

I should’ve been asleep. But when something this rare ends up in your arms, this wild, this temporary, sleep feels wasteful. So I stayed still, and memorized her. Every breath. Every detail. Every ounce of peace she didn’t know she gave me.

Of course, the universe couldn’t help itself.

There was a thud. Then stillness. Then a moan. Long. Loud. Unmistakable.

Stella stirred, nose wrinkling like the sound had ripped straight through her dreams. She blinked at me, groaned, and threw an arm over her eyes with the theatrics of someone personally offended by reality. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”

I grinned, voice rough. “Bellamy’s got lungs. Gotta give her that.”

Another rhythmic thump. Then Carrick’s voice, crystal clear, smug, engineered for acoustics, cut through the drywall. “You like that, don’t you, darlin’?”

I didn’t bother hiding my laughter. I stretched beneath Stella, letting the exaggerated sigh of contentment speak for itself. “They’re gonna break the damn studs,” I muttered.

“I hope they get a splinter somewhere painful,” she snapped, dragging herself upright like a cat rudely yanked from a nap.

She grabbed yesterday’s shirt off the floor, pulled it on, and skipped the rest. Which meant I was now trailing a panty-less woman with world-ending legs down the hall, while Carrick and Bellamy tested the limits of architecture.

And based on the sounds bouncing through the house, Carrick wasn’t just fucking her. He was leading a full-scale assault.

The bedsprings creaked with metronomic precision, interrupted only by Bellamy’s whimpers, low and guttural, the kind of sound that could destabilize international alliances if broadcast. Then Carrick again, his voice deep and annoyingly devastating. “Take it, baby. Don’t hold back now.”

A sharp crack snapped through the air. Bellamy sobbed his name like it was gospel. Stella groaned beside me, as if unsure whether to kill them or take notes. And Carrick, relentless as ever, kept going. “That’s it. Knew you’d be greedy for it. Let ‘em hear how good you take it.”

“Oh my God,” Stella muttered, burying her face in her hands as if sheer willpower might stop the sound from existing.

I chuckled, low and appreciative. “Honestly? Impressive stamina. Must’ve hydrated.”

Then Bellamy gasped, deep, wrecked, and obscene enough that I seriously considered repenting for something, even if I wasn’t sure what.

Stella cupped her hands and shouted down the hall, “You two done giving us a live-action porno?”

The action on the other side of the wall paused just long enough for the two of them to laugh loudly, then resumed with renewed vigor.

I shook my head and led her down to her room to grab a change of clothes, then stayed close as she showered and dressed.

At some point, the cacophony ended, and the house fell blessedly quiet.

When we finally headed down the stairs, Carrick was already at the bottom, shirtless and smug, sipping from a chipped mug like he hadn’t just rearranged Bellamy’s entire internal architecture. He didn’t even blink.

Jax called down to him. “Are you proud of yourself, brother? You must have woken up every person in this damn house, not to mention the neighbors.”

“Payback,” he said, calm as sunrise, lifting his mug like a toast. It read: I’M NOT A MORNING PERSON, DON’T TEST ME. “Ask your boy here what Niko and Maddy did to me when I got back.”

Before I could answer, Bellamy breezed in behind Carrick, draped in his flannel and nothing else, glowing like she’d swallowed a lightbulb and dared the world to dim her.

“At least we didn’t break out the glitter this time,” she said sweetly.

Stella froze mid-step. “Glitter?”

“Biodegradable. Non-toxic. Allegedly safe for internal use,” Bellamy chirped. “Allegedly.”

Carrick looked like a man who’d accepted his fate but regretted the fine print. “Do not, under any circumstances, let Maddy near the arts and crafts after dark.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You still finding that stuff in your boots?”

“Boots, beard, bed,” he muttered. “You ever woken up with glitter in your molars, Jax?”

“Can’t say I have. But suddenly, I feel very lucky.”

Bellamy leaned across him to steal a sip of his coffee. He didn’t stop her. Didn’t even try. Just gave me a look that said: you see what I’m dealing with? And yeah, I did. And honestly? I respected it.

We were half a breath into laughing when it came: a knock. Sharp. Precise. Three short. A pause. Three short. Another pause. One long.

The air in the room dropped ten degrees.

Every man in the house froze on instinct.

The kind of full-body stillness that only happens when your nervous system recognizes something threatening in the shape of a sound.

Stella stopped beside me, her fingers curling into the hem of my shirt like the fabric might anchor her.

Her mouth parted. Her breath caught. She didn’t speak.

“That’s Quinn,” I said, already moving.

The humor drained out of the morning like light through a crack, slow and irreversible. Banter was gone. In its place, a boundary drawn in sand, and whatever waited past it wasn’t friendly.

The knock echoed again. Three short. One long.

Quiet, but coded, and that made it worse.

“That’s definitely Quinn,” I repeated, rising from the couch.

The door opened before I could feel whatever I was supposed to.

That came later. I’d always logged first, sights, sounds, variables. Emotion could wait.

Quinn stood on the porch holding a beaten-up clipboard, looking like he hadn’t slept in days or cared since yesterday.

It was his eyes that did it. Bloodshot. Calculating.

They swept the room with brutal accuracy, catching every shift in weight, every breath, every glance, like he was solving for threat before anyone spoke.

“We need to talk,” he said. Flat. Even. For Quinn, it was practically shouting.

“Coffee first,” Maddy muttered, breezing past with her sleeves shoved up like armor. “Then trauma.”

Something flickered at the edge of Quinn’s mouth. Not quite a smile, but close. I counted it anyway.

The room shifted as Quinn entered, and like a broken circuit humming back to life, the team fell into place.

Niko moved to the window, arms crossed, back so rigid it made mine ache in sympathy.

Carrick dropped into the armchair with that calculated sprawl he only used when he was one inch from doing damage.

Bellamy curled into him like a match pressed to flame, her gaze fixed on Quinn expectantly.

Deacon didn’t sit. Didn’t lean. He hovered in the archway, silent and immovable, a sentinel made of stillness.

Sully settled on the floor, elbows on his knees, his usual levity stripped clean, and that, more than anything, signaled that the storm had hit.

And then there was Stella.

She moved like a pressure front, slow, certain, and dangerous in ways most people wouldn’t recognize until it was too late.

She sat beside me, outwardly still as stone, but I could sense the vibration of her soul like a tuning fork.

Her thigh touched mine, warm and steady, and I didn’t realize how much I needed that until my body exhaled.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Her hands stayed folded in her lap, unmoving, while her pulse thudded hard at the base of her throat.

I logged it without meaning to. Not fear.

She was bracing, and that was always worse.

People brace before impact. Before breaching a door.

Before bullets split Kevlar. I knew that stance.

I’d worn it. And now I saw it in her, ticking like a clock.

Quinn scanned the room, nodded once, and said, “Good. You’re all here.”

Carrick arched a brow, dry as Kansas dust. “Was there a chance we wouldn’t be?”

“I’ve stopped assuming anything,” Quinn said, voice flat enough to rub stone.

Maddy returned with a tray and handed him a mug like this was just a simple house call. He didn’t look at her, but the moment his fingers curled around the ceramic, his shoulders dropped by a degree or two. I logged that too.

He took a sip. Then another. Then looked directly at Stella. “I need to hear it,” he said. “All of it. From you.”

Stella nodded, exhaled once, and said, “Okay.” Just like that, the furniture became benches, the walls a courtroom, and she was the witness, sworn in by something older than law.

Quinn dropped the clipboard onto the coffee table. “Start from the moment you got to the station, and this time, don’t leave anything out.”

Stella didn’t flinch. Didn’t stall or shrink. She drew in a breath like she was stepping into snow, and began.