Page 60 of Jax
14
Jax
I’ve studied trauma patterns,survival instinct, and the subtle physics of surrender, but nothing prepared me for the way Stella looked at me like I might be the sharp edge she needed to press into in order to feel real again.
She hovered just outside the rope room’s threshold, hair damp, shoulders bare beneath a long-sleeved shirt that hung wide on her collarbones. The cotton clung in some places, softened in others, chosen more for feel than fashion. Her gaze never left mine. Not nervous. Not certain. Just there. Like she was letting herself live inside the choice before fear could catch up.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just let the silence stretch between us to see if she’d cross it along with the threshold.
She did.
“I need to feel like my body is mine,” she said. Her voice was steady. “Will you tie me?”
I exhaled slowly. Not in surprise. I wasn’t. I’d seen it coming for days. In the way she flinched from stillness. Dodged comfort. Pretended not to watch the rope move between my fingers when I practiced in the Den. This wasn’t impulse. It was earned.
I gave a single nod. “Yes.”
Stella stood taller, but it had a delicate quality to it, like a sapling reaching for light after too much rain. Not weak. Just new. Willful, even in her hesitation.
“You’re not here to submit,” I said, voice low. “You’re here to reclaim.”
“Yes.”
“This won’t be a scene in the traditional sense. No dominance. No discipline. No edge play, unless you ask for it.” I stepped back, offering space. “Just control. Breath. Rope. You’re in charge. If you say stop, we stop. If you say shift, we shift.”
Her brow furrowed, but she moved past me anyway, each step calculated, like a soldier surveying new terrain.
“We’ll use standard safewords, like we discussed the other day.” I continued, calm and even. “Green means go. Yellow for pause or slow. Red for stop completely. Can you repeat those back?”
“Green, yellow, red.”
“Perfect.” I crossed to the rack and let her watch as I chose a coil of soft jute, running it through my fingers to check for fray, for weight. “Nothing happenstoyou here. Every choice is yours.”
Her eyes followed the rope. She swallowed.
“And what if I don’t know what I want until it’s happening?”
There it was. Real. Honest.
“Then you say yellow, and we breathe through it together. I adjust. You explore. But we don’t go past what your body is ready for.” I paused to let it land. “Your nervous system gets the final say.”
She nodded, small but sure.
I held her gaze. “Do you consent to being tied?”
“Yes.”
“Do you consent to touch, non-sexual, over clothing unless otherwise agreed?”
She hesitated, not out of fear, but awareness. She knew what she was asking. And maybe, for the first time in too long, she was letting herself want without shame.
“Yes.”
“And do you give me permission to guide your body? To adjust the rope? To place you gently as needed?”
“Yes,” she said again. Firmer now. Louder. Like the word came from deeper.
I approached slowly, the rope looped around my wrist.
