Page 88 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)
The harness clung to me like breath, wrapped tight around my ribs, pulsing with memory, thrumming with heat.
I couldn’t tell where I ended, and the rope began, only that something inside me was unraveling, loosening with each slow pulse behind my knees, each breath that landed heavier than the one before.
Gravity whispered its demand, dragging me closer to surrender even though my feet hadn’t moved.
He stepped in, close enough to taste the charge in the air, his hand sliding to my hip like a promise.
He traced the curve of my thigh with reverent precision, the coconut fiber rope following like it already knew where I needed to burn.
But he didn’t go straight to the tie. He changed course, dragging the rope back up with deliberate cruelty, slow and scraping, letting it rasp over my thigh, my hip, the soft rise of my belly.
It caught at the hem of my shirt and didn’t stop.
He let it catch. Let it grind. Let it abrade.
When it skimmed under my breast and scraped across both nipples, the shock pulled a cry from my mouth that I didn’t have time to silence.
I jerked, raw and startled, but he didn’t ease up.
The rope snapped twice against the swollen peaks he’d just teased, sharp and deliberate, each lash fracturing my breath and coiling heat low and deep.
I arched, trying to pull away, but his grip tightened like a vice around my hip, pinning me in place.
“Don’t you fucking move,” he growled, low and terrifyingly calm. “Stay right here. Let it mark you. Let the rope teach you who you fucking belong to.”
Another flick—harder. I whimpered, caught in that unbearable middle where pain blurred into pleasure, desperate and undone.
“That’s it,” he said, voice like sin wrapped in silk. “Let it bite. Let it brand you. You’re soaked already, aren’t you? Just from the rope grazing your perfect tits. You want to be wrecked, sweetheart? Because that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
He dragged it back down slowly, torturously, trailing over skin that still sizzled from the tease. It scraped along my belly, down between my thighs, and every inch of it hurt in the sweetest way. Not because it burned, but because I needed more.
Jax never rushed. He moved like he was carving worship into skin, every touch intentional, every motion deliberate.
When he looped the rope high on my thigh, just beneath the crease of my hip, the pressure didn’t punish.
It provoked. Awakened. Dared. The rope pressed deep into flesh, and my breath hitched as sensation bloomed where nerves met purpose.
He watched for it. The moment my body yielded without fear, when instinct became invitation.
The fibers clung, rougher than jute, dragging heat in their wake. His knuckles brushed the inside of my thigh as he pulled the tension snug, and my pulse stuttered hard. The second wrap landed like hot steel, and he paused, gaze fixed on my face like it held scripture.
“Let it in,” he murmured, voice a vibration against my ribs. “Let the rope teach you what you’re holding.”
I didn’t answer. Just closed my eyes and breathed slowly.
Let the rope bite; let it become the thing that steadied me when nothing else could.
Another wrap slid lower, catching the meat of my thigh in a harness of cruel precision.
My lungs hitched. My hands twitched in my lap, aching to hold something, anything, but he hadn’t bound them yet.
That was the point. He wanted me unguarded. Exposed. Entirely open.
He moved down, his breath warm at the bend of my knee, and when his hand ghosted over the soft skin there, I jolted, not from pain, but from the gentleness.
That brief, reverent touch unspooled me faster than anything else could.
He didn’t linger. Didn’t tease. Just kept tying, looping the rope down my calf and connecting it to the line above with an elegant, practiced sweep.
He worked in silence, but it filled the room. Every movement was sacred, each knot a vow written in friction and fiber, in patience and certainty. He wasn’t just binding me. He was building something inside the space I used to keep locked.
Then he shifted behind me, and without warning, gripped my hip and tilted me.
Not violently. Just enough to take my balance, to change the pressure, to make me feel it more.
The rope bit deeper. My weight shifted. The line cinched higher, sinking into the soft crease at the top of my thigh where everything ached to be touched.
Fire bloomed under my skin, fierce and exquisite.
I whimpered. My leg buckled. The knot held.
“Oh, fuck,” I gasped, wrecked and trembling.
“That’s it,” Jax murmured, his voice dark with reverence and heat. “Let it burn. That’s your body surrendering, baby. Every quake, every shiver. That’s you falling right into my hands.”
My hands fluttered at my sides, aching for something to hold, to brace against. But there was nothing. Just him. Just the rope. Just the silence between each breath.
Then he took the next length of rope and ran it between my thighs. Not smoothly, not kindly, but slow and deliberate, like he wanted every fiber to announce itself.
It grazed my inner thighs, dragged over swollen, slick heat, then caught— right there —over my clit.
I gasped, full-bodied and broken. My hips surged forward, desperate for pressure.
“Jesus, Jax….”
He gripped my hip tighter. Pinned me.
“No,” he said, low and savage. “You don’t get to chase it. You get to take what I give you. Feel it. Right there. I want the rope to own your goddamn nerves.”
The rope moved again—sliding, grinding, claiming—and I swore I could feel every single twist of the braid imprinting heat into my cunt.
I moaned helplessly, half-rising onto my toes as he pulled it taut.
The friction was exquisite torture. My thighs trembled, and my breath stuttered into little broken gasps that had nowhere to go.
“You’re dripping,” he said, dragging the rope one more time through the mess he’d made. “Fuck, baby. You’re soaked for me, and I haven’t even touched you with my hands.”
“You have,” I whispered, dazed. “You’ve touched everything.”
His breath caught for a moment. But I felt it. Like a pulse between us. His voice, when it came again, was darker. Rougher.
“I’m gonna worship every broken inch of you when I’m done making you fly.”
Then he wrapped the rope around my second thigh—slow, taut, brutal.
The line bit into the top of my thigh and dragged lower, pinning muscle beneath its weight.
My legs were trembling so hard I could barely hold the angle.
The tie climbed down to my calf, and he adjusted the spacing with infuriating care, spreading the tension until the whole limb sang with sensation.
By the time he finished the tie, my leg was bound from hip to shin, each knot a note in a symphony meant to be played across nerve endings and breath.
I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop feeling.
The rope wasn’t just around my legs; it was under my skin, in my pulse, coiled around something deeper than muscle.
He leaned back, looking me over with eyes that saw everything.
How the rope curved over bone and swelled into skin, how my thighs trembled, how my nipples strained beneath my shirt like they could taste the air between us.
His gaze drifted from the deep line of tension high on my thigh to the sharp, reactive rise of my chest.
Then his knuckles brushed the inside of my thigh, just a glancing touch, but it lit up everything. I gasped, body tightening, breath breaking like glass.
“Good?” he asked, voice lower now. Raw. Fingers testing the tension again, tightening just enough to make me flinch.
I nodded, dazed. “It hurts.”
“Good,” he growled. “It’s supposed to.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Well, it definitely does.”
His mouth curved, not a smile, but something smaller. Something private. “You’re holding tension in your belly.”
“Can’t help it,” I whispered. “You keep touching me.”
The line of his throat moved as he exhaled, slow and warm. He didn’t laugh. But his hand came to rest just below my navel, palm flat, fingers spread. I felt the weight of it, not just pressure, but attention. Care. Knowing.
“Then let me help you hold it differently.”
His hand pressed through the cotton of my shirt, warmth bleeding through like heat from a hearth. I felt every pulse in the space between us. I ached to arch into him, to offer my whole body to the fire, but I stayed still, bound by rope and reverence.
His palm drifted lower, fingertips skimming the edge of my slit. Just a tease. Not a claim. His touch hovered there, unapologetic, asking nothing, but my lungs emptied like surrender all the same. Then he stepped away.
He checked the line again. Measuring tension, testing angles, prepping the rig with the same sacred care he’d used to prepare me. Every pass, every knot, every graze of his hands had built to this.
Suspension.
He gathered the rope like a priest fingering beads, each pull deliberate, silent, steeped in invitation.
I felt it before I moved, the faint tightening in the harness across my sternum, pressure blooming like breath held too long.
No free fall. No sudden shift. Just the slow betrayal of gravity, the exquisite moment when my body began to remember it didn’t belong entirely to the earth anymore.
The line at my chest drew upward. The rope at my waist tugged tighter, hips resisting as tension bloomed.
My breath became a negotiation, ribcage straining where restraint met surrender.
I tilted slightly, just enough to feel the thigh ties bite deeper, the knot behind my knee burn hotter, the friction along my hips blaze like holy ground.