Page 164 of Jax
His hand landed between my shoulder blades with all the command of a man who used pressure like a conductor’s baton. He pushed. And I bent. Not from submission, but from recognition. The angle shifted. My thighs strained. My waist harness bit in. And the rope pressed against me like it had a mouth, like it wanted to taste every place I’d once tried to hide.
I moaned—raw, unguarded. Then he leaned in, his breath brushing my throat like silk dragged across a bruise.
“Let it mark you,” he murmured, reverent. “Let it make you feel.”
And I did. I let the rope drag open every buried ache, let it thread pain through the places I’d kept locked. It bloomed across my limbs like a fever, no longer discomfort, but language. A raw, devotional tongue only my body could speak. It scraped across my ribs, snagged on fabric, stuttered against skin, every inch of friction a symphony. My jaw locked. My breath shattered. My eyes burned, not from tears, but from pressure,from release, from the exquisite violence of finally, finally, feeling what I’d fought to contain.
“You’re shaking,” Jax said quietly.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to hold it together anymore.”
His voice didn’t rise, didn’t push or pull. It offered a door already open.
“I’m not…” I tried to lie, but the words cracked and broke on the way out. “I’m not trying to.”
But I was. Still gripping the reins so tightly my hands had gone numb. Still guarding the grief that bloomed in my chest like a bruise I’d memorized. Rage, sorrow, bone-deep fear. They tangled under my skin like crossed wires, each spark a warning I didn’t know how to heed. It was all trapped. Pressed beneath my ribs. Waiting for the right pressure to set it free.
“Jax…” His name scraped from my throat like the last thing I had left.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re not alone. Let me take it for a while.”
He tied my wrists gently, crossing them over my stomach with care that didn’t feel like restraint; it felt like reverence. The position pulled my shoulders inward, curving my spine into something fragile and folded. It wasn’t humiliation. It was surrender, carved into flesh. I didn’t feel powerful. I felt ruined. And still, he touched me like I was worthy of worship.
“You’re doing so good, baby,” he whispered, lips brushing the corner of my temple. “So fucking good. Let it out.”
And I did. I didn’t even know the sob had formed until it was already breaking in my throat, salt and shame pouring past the walls I’d spent weeks reinforcing. The second one came harder. Louder. And when my knees gave out, he held me up, arms strong and sure, the rope still biting into my skin like a truthI couldn’t swallow. I collapsed into him, boneless and broken, held together only by the man who refused to let go.
He didn’t hush me. Didn’t offer platitudes. He just held on. Let the storm crash through me while one hand stroked my spine, and the other stayed fast on the rope that tethered me to the rig, to the moment, to something that finally felt safe enough to break inside.
“It’s too much,” I gasped, my chest heaving. “Everything’s too much….”
“I know.” His mouth was at my ear now, voice low and devastatingly calm. “I want you to feel it. Stop burying it. Give it to me, Stella. Every fucking piece.”
His fingers slid between my thighs, featherlight. Just the suggestion of touch. The first caress made me cry harder, not because it hurt, but because it didn’t. Because it was soft. And I didn’t think I could hold that kind of tenderness without shattering.
But Jax didn’t flinch.
“You think I don’t know how deep your pain runs?” he murmured, his fingers still teasing. “You think I can’t feel it, every time you look at me like I’m your last anchor?”
I whimpered, caught between breath and sob and the unbearable pressure pushing outward. He kissed my jaw, then shifted his hand and pushed my underwear aside.
“And I’m gonna take it from you,” he murmured, voice dark with hunger. “Every sharp edge. Every scream you swallowed. Every ache you buried. I’ll take it all, but I won’t do it gently.”
His fingers slid through my slick heat, and my body jolted like he’d struck a live wire. The sound that left me wasn’t a moan; it was primal. Guttural. Feral. I bit it back, teeth sinking into my lip, but the sting only grounded me for a beat before he shut it down.
“Uh uh,” he warned, voice rough, threaded with a possessive heat that made my pulse stagger. “You don’t get to muffle this. Don’t hide from me. Let me hear it.”
And then he pushed two fingers inside me—slow, deep, devastating—and I shattered. The cry ripped from my throat, raw and untamed, and he groaned against my neck like he needed the sound in his lungs. His fingers moved with purpose. Not frantic. Not punishing. Just controlled. Relentless. Each curl, each drag over that hypersensitive place inside me, rewrote my center of gravity.
“I want you to fucking break,” he growled, punctuating each word with a thrust that dragged across the swollen, aching stretch of my cunt. “I want you to scream. To sob. To beg. I want every second branded into your bones, because it’s mine.”
My hips rocked with wild desperation, grinding the rope tighter until the pain curved back into pleasure so sharp it felt sacred. Every flick of his wrist peeled me further open, stripped me bare, unraveled the last threads I’d fought to hold shut. I wasn’t just falling apart; I was being reformed, breath by broken breath, in the only hands that had ever held me this carefully while tearing me down.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, the confession catching in my throat like barbed wire. “If I let go… I don’t know if I’ll come back.”
Jax didn’t flinch. Didn’t pause. He pressed his thumb to the center of me with devastating precision, slow and unyielding, until I saw stars. His voice, when it came, was a promise wrapped in fire—steady, reverent, and so sure it made my heart ache.
