Page 24 of Jax
He blinked once. Barely. But I saw it.
“I think you want to be,” he said. Calm. Final.
It knocked the air out of my lungs more effectively than a punch. I moved past him without another word, shoulder brushing his. At the front door, I paused with my hand on the knob. Voice stripped of everything but the truth.
“Don’t wait up.”
The door shut behind me with a sound that felt louder than it should’ve.
Outside, the air bit colder. The sky was deep and starless. And none of it helped. My chest still burned, my blood still simmered, and the image of her—wild, furious, perfect in her resistance—refused to fade.
Not even rope was going to fix this. Not tonight.
But I had to trysomething.
The building didn’t looklike much from the outside, just steel and shadow and a discreet keypad tucked beneath a rusted porch light. No sign. No name. That was the point. If you didn’t know what it was, you didn’t belong.
I punched in the code and stepped back. A low click unlocked the reinforced door, followed by the quiet whir of internal systems scanning—camera, heat sensor, biometricsweep. All of it was overkill. All of it was necessary. Places like this weren’t built on trust.
The man at the front desk looked up as I entered. Mark. Ex-military, shaved head, sharp eyes. We’d served together once, for about five minutes in a desert that felt a hundred years away. He gave me a curt nod, no small talk.
“Jax.” His voice was low, even, as if acknowledging me was more habit than greeting. “Room’s prepped. Calla’s already inside.”
I handed him my ID anyway. Routine. He scanned it with one hand and reached for the waiver with the other.
“Did she sign in already?”
“She always does,” he said, sliding the clipboard back into its slot. The music behind him pulsed low, bass-heavy and slow, like a heartbeat coaxed into submission. Not for dancing. This was mood music. A moan surfaced from somewhere down the corridor, followed by a laugh, a command murmured against skin. Velvet lighting pooled through the space, shadows moving with the charged tension that defined places like this. Not a playground. A crucible.
I nodded and walked on, past the place where leather gave way to candlelight and people blurred into silhouettes. Lounges cradled quiet couples. A trio tangled on floor cushions. A Dom whispered something brutal into a kneeling man’s ear. I didn’t linger. Tonight wasn’t about watching or learning. It was about not thinking.
The rope bag knocked against my hip with every step. My boots found rhythm on the floor I’d walked a hundred times, though my head wasn’t anywhere near the building. The room I’d reserved sat at the far end. Room Eight. Private. Quiet. Thick walls. Low light. A space where control filled every corner. I knocked once, then opened the door.
She was already kneeling. Calla, still as glass, centered on a folded mat like an answer waiting to be given. Her arms rested behind her back, head bowed, hair braided and pinned high to bare her neck. Camisole. Thigh-highs. No panties. Her skin gleamed. Her readiness did too.
“Sir,” she murmured.
Instinct. Rehearsed. A role she wore like a second skin. It should’ve stirred something. It didn’t. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, the latch clicking into place with a hush that sealed the room like a breath held too long. The silence here wasn’t clean, like at the house. It had an edge. Intent.
I set the bag on the bench and uncoiled the rope. Familiar motion. Repetition in the service of control. But my body stayed tight, haunted by the shape of someone else still ghosting through my arms.
Stella.
I shoved it down. This wasn’t about her. This was about process, about converting chaos into symmetry. Structure. Precision. I looked at Calla—perfect, poised—and hated the hollowness that echoed through my chest. I crossed the room, rope loose in my grip.
“Stand.”
She rose with fluid grace, every line of her body shaped for dance. I moved behind her, starting the chest harness from memory, diamond weave, my hands tracing the pattern before thought could interfere. The first pass hugged beneath her breasts. I drew it tight, slowly and smoothly, the jute hissing against itself. Her breath deepened, her body yielding with practiced ease.
She always breathed into the knots.
She always did.
It was easy. Too easy.
I worked in silence, binding her upper arms back, framing her shoulders. Her skin warmed under the rope, every small shift of her body automatic, graceful, rehearsed. Her body moved like clockwork. Every breath offered on time, every shift precise, her muscles softening into the rope with a grace that should’ve satisfied me. But it didn’t.
There was no fight in it. No tension waiting to snap. No storm coiled under her skin. She didn’t test the boundaries. Didn’t squirm. She didn’t look at me like she might set the entire room on fire just to prove she could.
