Page 109 of Jax
Then her hand moved, not with certainty, but with something braver. Fingers crawled toward mine in a slow,vulnerable reach. I didn’t meet her halfway. I let her find me. Let her lace our fingers together, slow and shy, and I brushed my thumb across hers, not to soothe, but to say: I see you. She didn’t thank me. She didn’t need to.
“That…” Her voice cracked the silence, raw and reverent. “That was more than I expected.” I turned just enough to look at her, flushed cheeks, glassy eyes, mascara smudged beneath one like the aftermath of a war she hadn’t yet realized she’d won. “It’s always more,” I said quietly. “That’s the point.”
She went quiet again, brow furrowing like she was chasing a sentence before it dissolved. Then she exhaled, slow and full, like she was finally letting herself feel the weight of what she’d done, of what she’d chosen. “You made me feel like…” She stopped, lips pressing together before tipping her gaze toward the ceiling like the word she needed might be scrawled up there, just out of reach. I didn’t rush her. I waited, letting the silence hold space for whatever truth she was trying to surface.
When she looked back, her eyes met mine, unguarded, unflinching, stripped of pretense. “You made me feel like I was allowed to be myself.” It cracked something open inside me. Not enough to split, but enough to let the light in.
I reached out, brushed a knuckle along her jaw, and whispered the only thing that mattered. “You. That’s all I want. To give you back to yourself. One rope at a time.”
Her eyes shimmered again, not with pain or the collapse of pleasure, but with something far more dangerous, recognition, not of me, but of herself. Stripped bare beneath all the scaffolding she’d once mistaken for safety, she didn’t reach for me like someone seeking comfort; she folded into me like a theory returning to proof, like the quiet surrender of a question that had finally found its answer.
Her skin, still marked by rope, carried the residue of meaning in pressure and pigment. Her mouth, parted in thesoftness of the aftermath, held the echo of submission not demanded, but offered. And her breath, when it broke against my chest, wasn’t just air, wasn’t just life. It was data. Intimacy. Trust, voluntary and unguarded.
I didn’t ask her to define it. Didn’t try to name something that had never needed words. Some truths are meant to be worn, not spoken, felt in the body, etched into fascia, filed under memory and something deeper than memory. Identity. She hadn’t shattered in my hands. Hadn’t splintered or scattered or ceased to be. She had aligned, finally, fully, devastatingly, every frequency of her fire synched to a design I didn’t just understand, but would spend the rest of my life mapping, protecting, and revering, like a cathedral built not of stone, but of skin and surrender.
25
Jax
The rope had released her.Her body had come down. But the room still burned with the shape of her surrender, the stillness holding weight, not silence, but something denser. An atmosphere thick with meaning. Not just a room, but memory, suspended. A space that carried ritual in its bones, and never needed language to keep it alive.
She lay beside me, half-wrapped in the cotton blanket I kept folded near the rig. Slack-limbed and unscripted. Not unconscious or asleep, just drifting in that post-scene recalibration where the body reboots slowly, one synapse at a time. Her hair fanned damp against the mat, lashes fluttering with each breath. Her limbs lacked geometry, all skewed angles and softness. One hand curled under her cheek, the other near her waist, fingers twitching faintly as her nervous system mapped its way back online.
The ropes were already coiled beside us. I’d untied her slowly, fingers retracing each path in reverse, the slide of jute a release of intention as much as binding. But the end of the tie itself never meant the end of care.
I knelt beside her with a warm, damp cloth. Dipped. Wrung. I applied light pressure to her shoulder, not to clean, but to reassure. To answer. Rope had spoken. This was my reply. She didn’t move, but exhaled louder, the sound catching on something involuntary. A faint ridge marked where the jute had bitten down. I traced it with the cloth, slow and steady, not to erase, but to honor. That line had a meaning. Every mark did. The knots had been questions. Her breath and surrender had held the answers.
I moved down her arm, dragging warmth over her bicep, the crease of her elbow, the pulse beneath flushed skin. Her scent rose with it; salt, heat, and something sweeter. Chemical. Intimate. Hers.
“You still with me, wicked girl?” My voice was low, a ripple through the quiet, a tether offered and waiting to be held. She didn’t open her eyes, but her lips moved just enough to shape the word.
“Barely.”
And, fuck me, if that didn’t make my heart stutter. I swallowed, smoothed my hand down her forearm, folded the cloth to a fresh side, and moved to her other shoulder. “That’s my girl.”
I could have said more. Could’ve narrated every inch I passed over with praise that made her squirm. But she didn’t need words right then. She needed rhythm. Contact. Anchoring. After suspension, the mind sometimes floated for hours, adrift in dopamine, oxytocin, with nerves misfiring or glowing. My job wasn’t done until her brainwaves matched mine again.
I shifted lower, dragging the cloth across her sternum. The harness marks were still visible, lines crossing beneath the edge of her bra where the chest tie had framed her. My fingers followed the shape, not quite touching, ghosting behind thecloth. My own breath hitched when she inhaled, sharp and shaky, ribs expanding under my hand.
She was still deep in it. But not gone.
“Every part of you is etched in my mind forever,” I murmured, more to myself than her. “I could map it by memory now.” A soft sound slipped from her throat. A lazy, exhausted exhale that might’ve been a laugh.
“Show off.”
“Not show,” I said, letting my voice ease. “Study.”
Her lips twitched. The smile never fully formed, but the ghost of it was enough. A language all its own. I shifted the cloth lower, brushing along the arc of her ribs, the slope of her waist, down to the curve of her hip. Her thigh brushed my knee as she adjusted, the blanket tugging tighter around her legs, the contact grounding in its simplicity.
I set the cloth aside and brought my hand to the mark on her thigh where thefutomomohad compressed every inch from ankle to hip in that coiled, spiraling shape I’d built with care. The red imprint curled into soft muscle, a signature not written in ink, but in trust. It had taken precision to tie, and restraint not to sink my teeth into the skin just above it. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t tense. Her muscles softened beneath my palm like peace had claimed her, her breath deepening as her body leaned into touch instead of pulling away.
The blanket slipped further, baring the full length of her thigh, but I kept my movements steady and reverent, intimate without urgency. Her left hand stirred. Fingers stretched, reached, not outward, but across the space between us. They found my wrist and rested there, brushing lightly, then curling, not a plea, not a need. Just contact. A declaration made in silence.
I didn’t need to look. That touch said everything. She wasn’t asking to be held or soothed. She wasn’t seeking reassurance.She was telling me she was here. Still unraveling. Still tethered. Still choosing this. Choosing me. Her hand glided up my arm, slow and exploratory, trailing heat like a question she already knew the answer to.
Half-wrapped in the blanket, hair a dark halo across the mat, she shifted with purpose now. Not drifting. Not fragile. Intentional. She rolled onto her side and tucked her face against my chest like it was where she belonged, and let her breath warm the space beneath my collarbone. Her palm slid higher, fingers splaying over my ribs, mapping me like I was a geography worth learning by touch alone.
Then she kissed me directly over my heart. Her mouth moved, open and slow, like she meant to leave a mark. Not a visible mark, but deeper than that. Something she could feel. Something I’d carry. I didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Every muscle locked beneath the weight of it. I had bound her, held her, and watched her fall apart in my arms. But now she touched me like I was sacred. And I couldn’t take that kind of grace without breaking a little.
