Page 51 of Jax
I didn’t flinch. “Maybe both.”
Silence stretched again, this time warmer, slower. Heat coiled in my chest like smoke. He stepped forward once, then stopped.
“You’re not just asking what I’d do to your body,” he said, reading me in that unsettlingly accurate way once more. “You’re asking what it would mean.”
My pulse jumped. “And?”
“It would start with trust. With clearly defined boundaries and deliberate negotiation. A framework constructed from a shared language specific to us. It would start with consent.”
The words sank into me, low and deliberate, and something inside tightened. My breath caught. I didn’t look away. “Then maybe I want to learn the language.”
His jaw shifted, barely, but the rest of him changed with it. Like the weight of that admission had already found a home in him.
“Then let’s begin.”
He turned without another word and moved toward the far wall. There was nothing showy in the way he opened the drawer, but the economy of it—the control, the ease—made it hard to look away. He returned with a black notebook and a pen, sittingagain against the cedar wall with that same restrained intensity, all power and quiet restraint. The rope between us stayed coiled, but I could feel it, like it remembered me.
I settled in across from him, folding my legs, feeling the buzz of something electric thickening in the air. My arms felt too bare. My skin missed the pressure. The wrap. The possession.
He looked up, and it was clinical and carnal all at once. “We will start where one should always start in this type of situation.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound composed, and failing. “What’s that?”
“Limits first. Hard limits are off-limits. Always. Soft limits are the edges, what you’re unsure about, what needs conditions.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What, like you beating me?”
“Yes. Or other things you may not have considered before, such as degradation. Sensory deprivation. Roleplay that sinks deeper into you. These things require clarity and careful negotiation.”
I tilted my head. “What are yours?”
His pen didn’t pause. “No edge play. No blood. No scat. No permanent marks. Nothing that cuts deeper than I can clean.”
“I think I understood most of that.” I quipped. “It sounds like you have put a lot of thought into your limits.”
His smile didn’t quite form, but the shift was there. “People who play without care? They’re not Dominants. They’re just dangerous.”
The way he said it, measured, certain, with just a breath of threat, landed in my chest like a hand. Not violent. Just heavy. Claiming.
I shifted, grounding myself in the blanket, the wood beneath. “Okay. This is… a lot. But I think I’m following. Is there anything else?”
“Safe words. Think of them as shorthand for letting me know how you are doing during a scene. I use a standard traffic light model, as do many in the kink community. Green for good. Yellow for check-in. Red means it ends. Instantly. No delay. No explanation needed.”
“And if I don’t know what I need yet?” My voice dipped, but it didn’t falter.
“Then we proceed slowly,” he said, his gaze steady. “We experiment, we pause, we observe. A scene isn’t a performance. It’s an ongoing exchange, an intimate dialogue your body can learn to articulate.”
He said it with the certainty of someone who’d map every nerve if I let him.
“Consent and clarity,” he continued. “That’s the foundation. From there, intensity becomes a variable we can adjust as needed. Sometimes that could mean pain. Sometimes it’s stillness. Sometimes it’s holding you so perfectly still you forget how to breathe.”
I leaned back, a slow curl of heat blooming through my stomach. “And if I want to feel something other than fear?”
“Then we retrain the reflex. We teach your body new truths.” His voice stayed level, low, certain. But I felt every syllable echo in the place my breath had abandoned.
I exhaled slowly, controlled, eyes fixed on him. “I used to think being tied up meant handing someone all the power.”
Jax’s voice dropped just enough to graze every nerve in me. “It only means that when the wrong person is holding the rope.” A pause, then quieter but clear. “What happened to you wasn’t power exchange. It was theft. There’s no consent in survival.”
