Page 163 of Jax
“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.
I wasn’t flying, but I hovered within myself, trembling on the edge of something vast. My muscles shook from the effort of holding posture, from the weight of every inch I’d offered. My calves sang. My back burned. I wanted to collapse and rise at the same time, to scream and weep and whisperthank you. Every cell lit up with sensation, but none of it was panic. It wasclarity. Recognition. The rope didn’t just bind me. It revealed me. Translated restraint into memory, pressure into prayer, and pain into pleasure.
And somewhere beneath the sweat, the strain, the trembling edge of surrender—grief stirred. Not as a scream. As a tide. It rolled through the hollow spaces, slow and ancient, pressing into the corners where I’d tucked it away. It didn’t ask for attention. It waited for permission, and the rope gave it that. The gradual tension, the off-balance pull, the aching stretch—all of it worked like a key in a rusted lock. And with every subtle shift, a new ache surfaced. A place I hadn’t known I was clenching. Every breath asked:Can you let this go, too?
And slowly, silently, I began to say yes.
Another knot settled against my skin with the weight of something sacred, like a ritual older than us both, performed not for show, but for transformation. Jax worked in silence, hands sure and steady, threading rope like a sermon. He wasn’t just building a pattern. He was charting a way in. Or maybe a way out.
Then, without a word, he caught the collar line near my shoulder and drew it up. Slow. Unforgiving. The rope pulled across my clavicle and lifted my chin, tilting my head back until my throat was bare. My breath caught. My pulse stammered. I didn’t resist. Couldn’t. The act was silent, but it changed everything. I went from reactive to offered. From braced to bared. My lips parted. My chest lifted. The rope kissed my neck, not choking, just holding. Like a hand. Like a vow.
He didn’t pause. He moved lower, reached for the line at my hip, and stepped on the trailing rope near my inner thigh. The tail yanked tight, biting into tender flesh still singing from before. I shuddered. The pain was sudden and searing. Perfect. A spike of sensation that rooted me. Anchored me. Split me open just enough to let more in.
His hands never hesitated. Above the burn, he kept working, shaping the next line with reverence. And then—he pulled. Just inches. Just enough to change everything. The rope around my calf cinched hard, a flare of pressure that lit up my nerves like dry kindling. My balance slipped. My leg, already shaking, bore weight it couldn’t hold. Fire rose through bone and muscle. I gasped, high and sharp—not just in pain. Memory. Meaning. Being claimed from the inside out.
Still silent, he shifted again, dragged the next coil upward, not down. Not gentle. Not sparing. He hauled it against gravity, across flesh already blistered with sensation. It scraped my ass, my spine, the ghosts of old marks and new nerves, and didn’t ask permission. No comfort, only clarity. No apology, only truth. My body arched, flinched, reached—and found nowhere to go. Only the rope. Only the fire. Only the exquisite accuracy of being unraveled by someone who saw me.
