Page 69 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

“Your heart’s racing,” I murmured, tracing the curve of her jaw, tilting her head to expose the line of her throat.

“It’s terrified,” she whispered. “And… it’s home.”

That broke something inside me.

I leaned in, mouth trailing heat along her neck, breath spilling over skin that tasted like salt and surrender. “You’re safe,” I said into the throb of her pulse. “And you’re mine to bind.”

She nodded, slow and dazed, lashes skimming flushed cheeks as she leaned into my voice like gravity itself had shifted.

The rope in my hand felt sentient. It pulsed between us—alive, waiting, reverent. I moved closer, thighs pressing to hers, the heat between us folding and compounding.

“Remember, you only get to cum when I say,” I murmured, threading the first length through my fingers, gauging its pace against her breath. “Not before. Not after. Only when I’ve carved the noise out of you and filled you with nothing but me.”

She shuddered, her head tipping back, mouth parting on a sound so raw it felt stolen. “Yes, Jax. Please.”

That sound, wrecked, reverent, filthy, was the first true chord of surrender.

I wrapped the first pass above her breasts, snug and certain, each line a conversation written in pressure and need. Heat followed, blooming beneath the tension, silent, molten, and alive.

Her next breath was thick. Slow. The kind a body takes not out of need, but memory. Recognition. As if she’d stopped bracing and finally remembered what she was made for.

I fed the rope behind her back, hands steady and reverent. My mouth hovered near her ear. “This line holds the ache,” I said, cinching her higher. “It shapes the silence.”

The second wrap came beneath her breasts, a mirror to the first, tighter this time, coaxing her breath higher until every inhale lifted her like prayer.

The symmetry was brutal in its beauty. She arched into the pressure unconsciously, chest rising.

Another sound escaped her lips, sharper this time. Cracked. Shuddering.

“You okay?” I asked, though her body had already answered. Not in resistance. In reverence.

“I think I’ve been waiting for this since before I met you,” she whispered, and God, that hit deeper than arousal. It was an ache. Ancient. Sacred. The kind that lived in bone.

I draped the verticals over her shoulders, knuckles grazing the delicate curve of her collarbone.

Her skin jumped beneath the contact, alive with anticipation.

I traced downward, connecting the strands to the bands beneath her breasts, adjusting each pull with precision.

Her chest was framed like a sculpture. Every line coaxed into form by pressure. Breath. Willing surrender.

Her rhythm shifted again, faster, shallower, tethered now to the rope rather than fear. A new pulse. A new god. One I’d carved into her skin with patience and force. “You’re beautiful like this,” I said, the words raw with awe. “A work of purpose. Pressure. Poetry.”

She laughed, soft and stunned. The sound of a girl, unraveling and becoming at the same time. “You talk like you’re building a temple.”

I stepped in, thigh brushing hers. “I am,” I said, voice low. “And you’re the altar.”

She didn’t answer, just exhaled a breath full of heat and hunger, lips parted, eyes glazed.

And still, I hadn’t really touched bare skin, only rope.

But she reacted like fire had kissed her.

When I anchored the verticals at the small of her back and tied them off, her breath caught hard, not from pain, but release.

She looked down, dazed, trying to process the frame I’d built from jute and worship, her breasts lifted, caged, the rope biting just enough to claim. She wasn’t simply held. She was shaped.

“God,” she whispered, reverent and trembling. “I didn’t know I could look like this.”

“You don’t,” I said, stepping back to see the full effect. “You look like more.”

She blinked at me, expression torn open by wonder and disbelief. “Like what?”

“Like someone who stopped pretending she was ordinary.”

I moved behind her again and pressed my palm flat against the rope over her sternum. Her heartbeat thundered beneath it, steady and strong. “Feel that? That’s not panic anymore. That’s power .”

Her knees trembled as she absorbed the weight of my words, and my hand slid to cradle the side of her breast, fingers grazing the swollen peak framed perfectly in the top line of rope. She gasped, sharp and clear. Her body arched instinctively toward the pressure.

“Too much?” I asked, voice low against her skin.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s not enough.”

My cock throbbed behind denim, every sound she made striking sparks through me, but I didn’t move to claim her. This wasn’t about my need, no matter how sharp it felt. It was about discipline. The control that came from power exchanged in reverence, not demand. Hers, offered. Mine, earned.

I dragged my thumb over her nipple through the rope, just once, just enough to send a tremor down her spine. “You’re already this responsive,” I murmured. “And I haven’t even lifted you yet.”

“Then do it,” she said, voice shaking with anticipation. “Show me what I am.”

She had no idea what that did to me. That voice. That plea. That spell she cast without meaning to. I leaned in close and gave her the truth she was aching to hear.

“You are a vision of triumph and tension. Art and aching. And I’m going to make you feel every line of it.”

She whimpered, head tipping back, lips parted. I could feel the heat rolling off her, her body alive now not with fear, but with the full weight of sensation.

I reached for the next coil and dragged it down her spine in a slow, sensual stroke. She moaned, hips tilting, chasing more.

But I didn’t give it.

“You’ll get more,” I murmured, voice dark with control. “But only if you stay exactly where I put you.”

“I’m trying,” she whispered, breath hitching. “You’re just…”

“Too much?” I asked, my voice barely more than a breath.

She met my gaze, eyes wide and lit from within. “You’re exactly what I need.”

I pressed my forehead to hers, one second, just long enough to anchor her to me, to this.

Then I moved behind her, breath shallow, chest tight.

The first leg folded under without protest, heel to ass, foot arched in offering.

That shape, elegant and defenseless, cut through me like reverence soaked in lust.

The rope moved through my palm like memory. Thick. Warm. Broken in by years of want. I wrapped her slowly, ankle to thigh, knuckles grazing overheated skin, muscles twitching beneath every pass. Each pull of tension was a poem. Each cinch, a stanza she answered in breath and body.

I added verticals, locking her knee at a precise angle. Form met function in perfect symmetry, but her reactions, that soft hitch in breath, the restless way her hips chased more, those were art. Living. Gasping. Begging art.

The second leg nearly broke my restraint. She bent it for me, exposed the soft crease behind her knee, and I bound it, not to restrain, but to remind her what she’d given me.

She moaned when the knot bit deep. Not for me. From her core. My body answered. Jaw clenched. Control fraying. Every nerve lit.

She didn’t need to speak. Her skin said everything. Slit soaked. Nipples drawn to peaks. Thighs parted. She was trembling and slick, shaped by need and steadied by surrender.

I added a crossbar down her thigh, a line that would press into her with every twitch. She shivered, breath catching, and the sound I made wasn’t human. It was hunger.

My jeans were a punishment. I was too hard to think straight. Every knot I tied was foreplay. Every length of rope, a pulse.

I dropped lower, fingers gliding along the inside of her thigh, grazing wet folds. The heat of her nearly undid me. She jerked as if I’d lit her skin on fire.

I caught the groan in my throat, fisted the next coil like it could save me. She was soaked and shivering, tethered and trusting, and every inch of her begged to be ruined with care.

She whimpered, head bowed, breath snagging on the edge of restraint. I leaned in—not touching, just close enough to let my breath ghost over her temple. The heat of it made her shiver.

“You don’t want to run,” I murmured, breath catching on the truth. “You just want to feel.”

Her head dipped in a slow, helpless nod. “Yes.”

One word. Barely voiced. But it detonated inside me.

My hand traced up her side, slow and reverent, thumb grazing just below the rope cinched around her ribs.

Her skin was slick with heat, electric with tension.

My control stayed focused, exact, but fuck, it was a miracle I wasn’t trembling.

She wasn’t just reactive. She was voltage personified.

“Good girl,” I said, darker now, and watched her melt.

It was in the trembling of her knees. In her breath.

In the quiet tilt of her head. That unspoken submission, offered without command, landed like a prayer.

My cock pulsed, sharp and savage, but I didn’t chase relief.

I finished the final wrap and slid my palm over the curve of her ass.

Not to tease. Not yet. Just to anchor. To claim.

She was art now. Legs bound. Chest open.

Pulse fluttering. Every rope was a line of praise.

She knelt in perfect stillness, and I matched her quiet, breath for breath, until the only motion between us was the hum of need.

When I reached for the next coil, my fingers shook, not with hunger, but with reverence.

I stood slowly, keeping one hand on her shoulder, grounding her as I rose. No words. No noise. She was already halfway to subspace, her breath a slow litany of surrender. And that trust steadied me. It moved through my spine like gravity, anchoring every motion in something deeper than control.