Page 11 of Jax
Like heknew.
And he probably did. When you lived in a house that was as full of emotional wreckage, sensory overload, and unresolved power dynamics as ours was, it could be hard to hide the fact that you were starving in plain sight.
I used to crave this space. The tension. The control. The way rope could turn chaos into structure, body into language. But lately, I felt more like the dungeon’s concierge than its craftsman. Need a flogger cleaned? I’ve got you. Need six carabiners, a blindfold, and two aftercare blankets by 9 p.m.? I’m your man. Want me to tie someone? Sorry, I’m fullybooked helping other people live their best cathartic kink lives while I spiral quietly in the corner, watching like some kind of emotionally repressed dom-turned-stagehand.
Tonight wasn’t the first time I’d sat cross-legged on this floor, watching someone else break open while I stayed carefully, professionally closed. But it was the first time in a while that I felt it in my gut. That sharp little twist behind the sternum. The ache you get when your hands itch to create something beautiful, but know they won’t be asked to.
Maddy let out a soft moan, a high, breathy sound that hit low in my stomach, and Niko responded instantly. His palm slid up her thigh, deliberate, thumb pressing into the soft flesh just inside the rope’s edge. She gasped, sharp and needy, and arched like a puppet on strings, her back bowing into the suspension like she was offering herself to the firelight. My mind automatically ran a dozen simulations, calculating rope tension, stress points, and potential failures. The percentage remained within acceptable limits. No need to intervene.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful like this,” Niko murmured, voice so low it blended with the sound of rope creaking. “Tied up, needy, wide open for me.”
My jeans were too tight. Or maybe I was just too far gone. My cock had been half-hard since Niko cinched the first knot, and now it throbbed with the kind of pressure that didn’t fade with time. I ground my teeth and shifted just enough to ease the ache, grateful for the shadows and the low light.
Maddy whimpered again, soft and cracked like glass cooling too fast.
“You like that?” he whispered, mouth near her ear. “You want more? Say it.”
“I…please,” she gasped. “Niko, God…please.”
My arousal wasn’t the problem. I could handle that. Hell, I’d lived with it coiled under my skin for months now. It was theachebehindit. The tight coil in my chest that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with touch. With meaning. With building something sacred and breaking it open together.
Craving had a hierarchy, and I was so far past wanting to fuck that I barely noticed anymore. What I wanted was to build. To bind. To bruise. To bring someone down with me into the quiet, charged hum of the space I knew better than anyone. I didn’t want meaningless. I didn’t want casual.
I wanted to be held. I wanted to be trusted. I wanted… who was I fucking kidding? I wanted a submissive.
Niko’s hand fisted in Maddy’s hair, tilting her head gently to the side as he bit down on the curve of her neck, just enough to leave a mark. She moaned again, her body trembling in place, suspended and needy and goddamn luminous.
“You’re mine like this,” he growled, low and rough. “Rope-drunk and begging.”
My pulse thudded behind my teeth. I looked away, half out of respect, half for self-preservation.
Yeah, I wanted things. But lately, that part of me had been on silent mode, muted by a house full of shifting trauma, off-limits bodies, and sex so loud it rearranged the air vents.
Carrick and Bellamy were fucking everywhere. Literally everywhere. I’d had to reschedule a tactical training block last week because they were ‘testing gravity on the kitchen counter’. I hadn’t made eye contact with either of them since. Bellamy had just smirked. Carrick had looked smug. I’d almost punched him on principle.
Carrick himself hadn’t punched anything he shouldn’t have in over two weeks. Which meant Bellamy had probably said something terrifyingly honest again, and instead of imploding, he’d just… held it. Sat in it. Let it rearrange him like it was architecture, not damage.
She was healing. Slowly. But she laughed now. Out loud. The first time I heard it, I dropped a full tray of coffee mugs. Of course, I had never admitted the truth. It had been too easy to blame Sully.
They keep saying this house runs on caffeine and adrenaline.
Nah.
It runs on trauma recovery and denial.
And I was still here. Managing the rope. Adjusting the lights. Making sure nobody fell, physically or otherwise.
God, I loved them. I did. But sometimes I felt like a ghost in my own goddamn home. A phantom in the wings. The guy who held the camera, but never stepped into frame.
The thing no one ever tells you about building a safe house for broken people is that eventually, it starts to feel like the drywall’s soaked in trauma. It didn’t matter how many coats of paint we slapped on the walls, or how many security systems we installed, the air always felt just a little too heavy. Like it was carrying things it didn’t know how to let go of.
Like maybe… it was carrying us.
They called us “The Reapers,” but this place? It was a recovery ward. A halfway house. A very expensive, very well-armed emotional rehab center, disguised as a compound in the woods. And don’t get me wrong, it worked. Sort of. Just not for all of us at the same time.
Sully had started humming again, maybe a sign of peace, maybe the lead-up to a breakdown. Hard to tell. But he smiled more. Deacon joked more. Carrick and Niko almost had a real argument last week instead of solving things with grunts and death stares. So… yeah. Progress.
And Maddy? She was still here. Still standing. Not a witness. Not a flight risk. Not even a guest anymore. Shebelonged. Took up space like someone who’d had to fight for the right to exist and wasn’t about to give an inch back. The house felt differentwith her in it. Calmer. Like someone had poured honey into the floorboards.
