Page 83 of Jax
“We also add a visual safeword,” I continued. “Two fingers raised. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to. We make silence an option, not a trap.”
She looked at me then, sharp and searching. “And if I do speak?”
I nodded. “Even better. We make room for active voice. If you feel something rising—not panic, but pressure, discomfort, even pleasure that feelscloseto the line—you tell me. That’s not weakness. That’s intel. It’s real-time adjustment data.”
Her mouth quirked, just barely. “You reallyhavebuilt a spreadsheet in your head for this, haven’t you?”
I didn’t blink. “No,” I said. “I built three.”
That pulled a soft, stunned laugh from her, a real one. The sound cracked through the air between us like a warm front rolling in after a storm. Not because it erased the tension, but because it rewired it. Shifted the energy from defensive to collaborative.
“I swear to God,” she muttered, smiling under her breath. “You’re like a kinky NASA engineer.”
“Only with better safeword protocols,” I said dryly. “And slightly more nudity.”
She rolled her eyes, but her hands unclenched in her lap. Her breath came easier. Her mouth was still curved when she looked down.
And in that pause, in that exhale, I offered one more piece—not a rule, not a note, not a protocol. Just the truth.
“You’re worth the processing power, Stella.”
She stilled, and I read it as more than a pause. Not uncertainty. More like the way a body braces when it decides something. Her fingers twined. Her eyes stayed down.
“What if I say yes,” she whispered, “and halfway through I realize I can’t keep going? And I don’t know how to explain it.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Then you safeword again, and we stop.”
She blinked.
“No explanation required. Full stop, full care. No pressure to justify it, no disappointment from me. You don’t need a post-mortem in the moment. You need safety. Analysis comes after, only ifyouwant it.”
She blinked again. Slower this time. Letting the words sink.
“And if that keeps happening?” she asked. “If I keep freezing or doubting or….”
“Then I stay,” I said. “And I adjust. And we try again. Or we don’t. On your timeline, not mine.”
She swallowed, then looked up. “You won’t be mad?”
“Mad?” I said. “Stella, I’ll begrateful. Because it means you trusted me enough to choose yourself in the middle of something vulnerable. It means you believed me when I said this only works if you feel in control.”
She didn’t answer. Just breathed. Slower now. Deeper. And for the first time all night, her spine eased against the back of the chair, not fully, but enough to make my chest loosen. She didn’t realize it yet, but that was progress. A quiet yes, in the language we were still learning.
She stayed quiet, gaze lowered, fingers tracing idle lines into the cushion, not fidgeting, but thinking. Her body wasn’t wound tight the way it had been in those first days after her arrival, though it hadn’t settled fully into rest either. What shecarried now wasn’t fear; it was nerves, the kind that come before a choice. The silence between us wasn’t empty. It gathered in layers, thick with thought, her focus aligning behind her ribs like she was building toward words she hadn’t released yet.
And then she spoke.
“What if I do like it again?”
The words were soft; not whispered, but cautious, like she hadn’t decided if they were safe. Her eyes stayed on her hands, and the shape of her voice carried the weight of shame, like she was afraid wanting this was betrayal.
“What if it feels good, and I let myself have that for a second... and then I remember I’m not supposed to?” She exhaled through her nose, tight and sharp. “That I shouldn’t feel good. Not when it’s still in me. Not when I haven’t earned it. Not when I don’t know if it’ll ever be gone.”
I didn’t need to ask what she meant. Her trauma wasn’t a mystery. I’d been tracking it from the beginning. The word “still” said enough. Still in her. Still shaping how she responded, how she breathed, how she carried herself in every room. Still rising in her chest when joy surfaced too fast. Still pulling her under when softness got too close.
What she was asking—what she hadn’t quite said—was whether healing might betray the version of herself who had survived without it. Whether pleasure could erase pain. Whether reaching for more would mean what happened before no longer counted.
She didn’t say it. But I heard all of it.
