Page 87 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

Stella

Healing doesn’t arrive in a rush. It doesn’t kick down the door like triumph.

It doesn’t burn bright or scream victory into the sky.

It comes quieter than that, more patient, more precise.

It moves like breath through bruised lungs.

It curls into the corners of silence, finds you in the ache between heartbeats, the hollow right after a crisis.

It arrives in small permissions, the first laugh that doesn’t feel borrowed, the first night you sleep without flinching awake, the first hour you don’t spend bracing for news that never comes.

And now, with Violet safe. Really, truly safe, the anxiety I’d been bracing against had nowhere left to go.

For four days, I hadn’t let her drift far.

I hovered near her shadow like a heartbeat, made her tea she barely drank, held her hand until our palms fused with sweat, and sat in stillness while she slept restlessly beside me.

I didn’t count the hours. I didn’t question the weight.

I just stayed—anchored, steady, necessary.

But now she didn’t need me to stay like that anymore. She was standing again. Eating. Humming under her breath. Sleeping without reaching. Her energy had returned.

And mine had nowhere to land.

My body didn’t recognize rest. My hands trembled in the absence of urgency.

The silence wasn’t peace; it was a threat.

Heavy. Charged. It pushed against my skin like a storm with no sky to shatter, and for the first time in weeks, I felt it all.

Not just the fear or fatigue or fury, but the echo of what I’d kept buried under care.

I had been steel for her. Now I needed to soften without breaking.

I needed to fall without needing rescue. To be undone with intention. To be held.

I found Jax in the kitchen after dinner, sleeves rolled, forearms damp, drying a plate like he didn’t have a care in the world. He looked up as I stepped barefoot onto the tile, the hem of my shirt twisted in my hands. I didn’t speak at first. He stilled, watching me come into focus.

I walked toward him with measured steps, the air between us a current I trusted to hold. “I need rope,” I said, voice low and even, shaped from the edge of something sharp. “Tonight. Not for a scene. Not for show. I need to feel it. The press of something real. Something that doesn’t lie.”

He didn’t answer immediately, only watched me with a stillness that didn’t push. It waited—calm, deliberate, grounded. Then his voice came, quiet but steady, like a hand against the small of my back. “What are you asking me to hold?”

I met his eyes and let the truth rise. “The pieces. The ones I can’t carry all at once. I need to be bound tight enough to stop spinning. I need you to crack me open until I can hear myself again.”

The air shifted. Not with tension, but with reverence.

He stepped closer, his presence brushing against my skin like a hum.

“There’s a word for that,” he said softly.

“ Semenawa. It’s rope meant to hurt, but not just for the pain itself.

It’s about holding you inside the ache until it strips everything else away, until all that’s left is the truth you’ve been too loud to hear.

It gives you something to push against, so you can walk through the fire and come out the other side. ”

My breath caught at the explanation, the words burning and settling all at once. “That’s what I want. The ache. The weight. The moment before the breaking, and the one that comes after it, and every breath in between.”

His fingers found mine, grounding us both. “And you want me to take you there?”

“With you,” I whispered. “Only with you.”

“Then I will, wicked girl. Follow me.” He held my hand and led me towards the stairs into the basement, then down and through the locked door into the playroom. “Take off your leggings and underwear, then stand still in the center of the room under the hard point while I prepare a few things.”

I undressed as he had instructed, leaving my simple cotton t-shirt on but removing the rest of my clothing, then walked to the center of the room and stood, feet shoulder-width apart, back straight, head down.

I didn’t know why I picked that stance; it just felt right.

I felt more than heard him moving around the edges of the room, lighting a few candles, dimming the lights to create the perfect mood, and turning on a sensual, instrumental soundtrack that didn’t distract, but provided a foundation of sound that felt grounding and arousing at the same time.

After a few minutes, he approached and stood in front of me. His thumb stroked the back of my hand, slow and sure. When he spoke, it was quiet, but sure. “Do I have your consent to hold all of it—every breath, every tremor, everything you’re ready to set down?”

I didn’t nod. I surrendered. “Yes. Take it.”

My pulse thudded low behind my ribs, breath tight in my throat, but I didn’t look away. “I trust you,” I said, voice steady even through the ache.

He didn’t smile, didn’t rush. Just studied me like the answer lived in the space between our breaths. And when he finally spoke, it came not as a question or a command, but as a promise folded into air. “Then let us begin.”

He draped the rope across my shoulder. Featherlight.

Devastating. The fiber barely touched my skin, yet it landed like truth—no dominance, no demand.

Just permission. And suddenly, I wasn’t standing at a beginning or an end.

I was inside the sacred middle, where everything softens, opens, waits to be seen.

He moved behind me the way dusk moves across skin, and the room quieted like it knew something holy was about to begin.

His presence gathered behind me, warm and steady, and my body leaned toward him without thought.

The air around us shifted, thick with anticipation that lived somewhere between hunger and prayer.

The sound of rope sliding free echoed louder than it should have, each soft rasp pulling through the silence like breath through lungs.

It landed deep in my belly, and lower. I felt it coil in my core, heat blooming between my thighs, nipples tightening beneath my shirt in greedy response.

He hadn’t even touched me, but I was already stripped bare by the promise.

He didn’t rush. Didn’t reach. Just let the quiet stretch until my thoughts thinned, until the ache of waiting built into something fragile and exquisite. I stood there, breath suspended between reverence and need, thighs pressed tight, body arching inward toward something I couldn’t name.

And then finally, his hand moved. The rope touched my collarbone.

Just barely. Just enough.

My body answered before I could, a sharp flare of heat racing up my spine as the rope slid around my chest in a single deliberate wrap, the fibers dragging slowly across the curve of my sternum.

When he gave a subtle tug to tighten it, the sound I made was soft but guttural, cracked loose from somewhere deep.

My back arched, thighs clenching as sensation struck low and hard between my legs, not from pressure alone, but from the precision in his hands, the way patience and power tangled in his every move.

This wasn’t control for the sake of obedience. This was worship. Each wrap was a prayer, each line a confession, every shift of tension an offering of devotion made in fiber, friction, and breath.

The second pass came lower, grazing the undersides of my breasts and pushing them up beneath the thin cotton of my shirt.

Each inhale rubbed them against the rope.

Each exhale deepened the bite. I whimpered, drowning in sensation.

His fingers brushed my ribs as he adjusted the tension, and every place he touched lit up like kindling.

My blood thudded hard between my thighs, desperate for contact, for release, for him .

He stepped closer, heat bleeding into the space behind me, his presence as solid as a wall and just as inescapable.

I leaned back, greedy, aching, but still he didn’t rush.

He reached beneath my arm to pull a line through, and the brush of his wrist across the swell of my breast stole my breath.

My hips surged forward, searching for anchor.

There was none. Only rope. Only surrender.

“You feel that?” he asked, voice low, velvet-rough against the shell of my ear.

I nodded, breath caught somewhere between longing and reverence.

“Your body remembers,” he whispered. “How to ache. How to soften. How to fall.”

The sting behind my eyes wasn’t fear or shame. It was the dizzy ache of believing him.

He tightened the harness until it wrapped around me like a second heartbeat, layered across my chest, cradling my back, circling my ribs with rhythm. Each knot pulled me deeper into myself, quieting the chaos, until I was nothing but heat and pulse and breath.

Then he stepped in front of me, gaze dark and unflinching, and tied the final knot low at my sternum. His voice, when it came, held the weight of wonder.

“You are so goddamn beautiful like this.”

I trembled, not from cold, but from the unbearable intimacy of being seen like that—bound, desired, and claimed without shame.

He placed his palm at the base of my throat, not applying pressure, just grounding me with the warm, steady weight of it.

“Remember this,” he murmured, thumb stroking beneath my jaw. “How it feels to be touched where you glow. How the ache builds when you’re held just right. Every breath you surrender, every pulse you offer, I want you to carry that.”