Page 122 of Jax
“Was that your way of saying you missed me?” I cocked an eyebrow.
He didn’t blink. “That was my way of saying I came to see what you’re making.”
I stepped aside, gesturing toward the twisted metal. “Started as a rose. Now it’s... I don’t know. A warning.”
He didn’t smile, but his eyes flickered. “It’s certainly not soft.”
“No. It didn’t want to be.”
He came closer, bending to look at the curve of one of the outer petals. His fingers didn’t touch—of course they didn’t—but his focus was razor sharp. The kind that made you feel stripped. Not sexually. Structurally. Like he could see what you were built from.
“You see this line?” I said, pointing to one of the deeper welds. “It’s fighting itself. Pulled in opposite directions. The tension is what holds it together.”
He straightened, nodding. “That’s what rope is.”
I tilted my head. “Rope?”
He looked at me like the answer was obvious. “Most people think it’s about restraint. Or pain. Or sex. But it’s not. It’s about tension. It only works when the force pulling one way is matched by something pulling back.”
I stood there, breathing heavier than I should’ve been. The steel buzzed behind me. My skin was hot, but not from the metalworking. My muscles had gone tight.
“So what you’re saying,” I said, voice lower now, “is the only reason it doesn’t snap... is because the pain’s in balance.”
He didn’t move. “Exactly.”
I looked down at my fingers. They were trembling. Not from effort. From want. That restless edge had stalked me for days, crawling in under the seams, making it impossible to be still. I’d tried to weld it out. Burn it down. Sweat it into silence. It hadn’t helped.
“I want it again,” I said before I could stop myself.
He didn’t ask what.
I stepped into his space and lifted my chin, holding his gaze. “Not what we’ve already done. I don’t want comfort. I want pressure. Strain. I want to feel what happens when you don’t hold back.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth. His jaw shifted once.
“No limits?” he asked.
“One,” I said. “I want to see it. While I’m in it. I want to watch myself become something else.”
His eyes darkened, not with lust, but with decision.
“Then come with me.” He turned without flourish or pause, and I followed, heart pounding like a war drum, body aching, heat rising like breath through flame.
The sculpture could wait. I had my own tension to shape into meaning.
The air shifted the moment we stepped inside his cabin. It always did, but tonight, it was different. It felt thick. Saturated. My skin registered it first, like even the light had been recalibrated to some humming frequency only desire could hear. Nothing had touched me yet. Not his hands. Not even his voice. But my body already knew.
This wasn’t play. It was diving into surrender headfirst.
The rig waited in the center of the room as it always did, solemn beneath the amber lamplight. Ropes lay coiled on the dresser, each loop as precise as a prayer. The space was too quiet, too clean, and too reverent to be a coincidence. He’d been ready. Maybe not just tonight. Maybe longer. Maybe he’d always known I’d shatter, and ask to be pieced back together this way.
I lingered just inside the door, breath rising too fast, not from fear, but recognition. My heartbeat stuttered beneath my ribs. This was where women turned back. Where they said not tonight, not like this, not me. Still, I stayed, anchored by the ache, by the bone-deep truth that leaving was never an option.
Jax stepped forward, still silent, still not looking. He peeled off his shirt with the same ease with which he moved through rooms; unapologetic, deliberate, elemental. The flex of his shoulders, the ripple of taut muscle, the square line of his jaw; none of it was casual. It was an invocation, and it hit me low and sharp, lighting every nerve.
A pulse fired in my belly, thighs tightening as my breath caught and held. The silence stretched, thick and deliberate, until he turned—calm, controlled, devastating—and said, “Clothes off. Slowly.”
The command didn’t shock me. It settled deep, blooming heat where I already ached, like my body had waited for those exact words.
