Page 47 of Jax
She swallowed. I didn’t mention it.
“Pain has geography. You decide where it takes root. You decide what it costs you. And sometimes the greatest test of strength isn’t fighting; it’s holding still when every nerve is begging you to run.”
Silence stretched. Thick. Warm. The only sounds were our breathing and the faint creak of the jute settling.
She whispered, “It’s not just a kink.”
“No,” I murmured. “It’s physics. It’s psychology. It’s the art of consequence. And for me, it is a source of pure focus. WhenI am tying someone, I can focus on them to the exclusion of everything else for a moment. And that is… a precious gift.”
Her fingers reached out, tentative, and traced the pattern I’d finished. Not for show. Not to prove something. Just to feel it. To understand.
“It really means something to you, doesn’t it?” she said, voice softer now, not performative, not defensive. Just a quiet observation she didn’t try to dress up or take back.
“It does,” I answered, still working the line through my fingers. “It’s not just about control. It’s about permission. Whether you’ll let someone move you, hold you, reshape how you feel about your own body. Whether you’ll let someone get that close.”
She didn’t respond, but she didn’t move, either. She remained there beside me on the floor, knees pressed to the wood, fingertips brushing over the rope where it lay coiled between us. Her touch was light, searching, more curious than afraid. She didn’t know what she was asking with that contact, not yet, but her body had already started to ask it anyway. And I realized, not for the first time, that what she was giving me wasn’t submission, at least not in the traditional sense. It was rarer than that. Slower. More deliberate. She was giving me her attention, her stillness, her presence. She was giving me the kind of silence that meant she was thinking harder than she wanted to admit, that something was shifting in her, and she hadn’t decided yet whether to lean in, or run.
She didn’t know the language of dominance and submission. Not consciously. Not with words or rituals or names for what was happening between us. But instinct had already spoken on her behalf. It was there in the way she held herself, the way she kept watching, the way she hadn’t laughed it off or walked away. It was enough. For now, it was more than enough.
Because rope didn’t care about performance. It didn’t need approval or translation. It didn’t lie to make you comfortable. It only ever told the truth—about where tension lived, about where the body yielded, about what someone was willing to carry in silence.
And tonight, in that quiet space between question and surrender, so did she.
12
Stella
If I’d hadany sense, I would have left the second I saw the rope still sitting there, half-coiled, half-undone, like it hadn’t finished speaking. It looked patient in the way only dangerous things are, daring me to come closer and un-spool the question I hadn’t known how to shape. But I didn’t leave. I stayed, curled at the edge of his rug with my spine against the wall, knees pulled tight, arms looped around them like I could brace for something that was already happening beneath my ribs.
Jax hadn’t moved. He sat across from me in the same position he’d taken after finishing the last tie, posture steady, forearms resting on his thighs, back straight like it was carved that way. He didn’t speak or shift, just let the silence stretch while my whole body buzzed beneath my skin, too many thoughts knotted too close to separate.
The light had changed while we sat there. Afternoon warmth spilled across the floor, gilding the rope where it lay between us, catching in the fibers as if it meant to make them sacred. Even the air had thickened, heavy with something I couldn’t name—reverence, or warning, maybe both. My gaze dropped to the rope. Then him. Then back again.
“I don’t get it,” I said. The words fractured the stillness like a crack in glass.
He didn’t answer immediately. Just watched, quiet and still, like he was waiting for the truth I hadn’t said yet.
I gestured vaguely toward the rope, hand limp. “I mean, I think I understand what you said about why you like todothe tying, but I don’t understand why someone would allow you to do that tothem. Why would anyone want that? Being tied up. Letting someone that close. Isn’t the point to protect yourself from that?”
His expression didn’t shift, but the space between us tightened.
“It’s not actually about surrendering power,” he said, voice low. “It’s about determining where that power is directed. You give it intentionally, with structured safeguards and the option to withdraw at any moment.”
I folded my arms, not to argue, but because I didn’t know how to admit how much that made something ache.
“Still sounds like therapy with rope burns,” I muttered.
That drew a ghost of a smile, slanted and brief but real.
“I’ve heard stranger comparisons,” he said. “But it isn’t centered on pain. Or at least, not only pain. It’s about sensation, about deliberate focus. It creates a framework that encourages full embodiment. Living in your body becomes an active process.”
I looked at the rope again, my brow tightening. “And what if someone doesn’t want to live in their body?”
He tilted his head slightly, not condescending, just attentive. “Then that’s probably worth exploring further. But when it comes to rope, there isn’t much space to dissociate. You feel everything. That is the point.”
I didn’t answer right away. The silence was filled with more than hesitation. It held memory. Fear. Longing. All the ghosts I hadn’t quite exorcised.
Jax shifted slightly, not forward, not back. Just enough to deepen his presence.
