BULLET, CHAPTERS 10 & 11

[a_sporking_rat]

BULLET, CHAPTERS 10 & 11

In the first paragraph, Jean-Claude bones Anita while Richard, as promised, flogs Asher, and we get so much use of the phrase "in and out" that I feel like she's trying to evoke A Clockwork Orange:
"he knew I loved watching him go in and out of my body"
"all that pale perfection work in and out of my body"

Combined with "Jean-Claude shoved himself hard and complete inside me" and I am also really getting the impression that Jean-Claude himself, not just his perfect undead penis, is jumping in and out of Anita's vagina. I usually don't care for 'big vagina' jokes because they're usually tied up with slut-shaming, but I seriously am reading it that way just because of how she phrases it, and I would even if this was her first time ever having sex in the books. Also, she honestly can't be that tight'n'tiny if she can take Micah.

...oh, wait, she can. It gets explained how in the next chapter. I'm serious. Wait for it.

"He [his dick] was touching everything that made me orgasm from intercourse. The men in my bed were all good, but Jean-Claude could hit not just one spot, but all of them." Speaking of Micah, I think he could probably hit all those special vagina spots too just by sheer size. Although I guess touching a sweet spot is different than CROWDING AND MASHING like it must be with Micah.

We are reminded of how PETITE Anita is because she's too short for regular missionary with Jean-Claude so he has to hold himself up above her with his arms while he fucks her. We are also reminded of how dark Richard's tan is against how white Asher is. I feel the need to point out that a tan white guy is as ~dark and ethnic~ as it gets in Anita's harem. Who's not-quite-whitebread again? It's not that I think it's required that a person have X-percentage of non-white lovers or else RACIST, it's just that I think it's pretty odd how that ardeur, even at its most random and desperate, always seems to hook her up with white guys. White guys physically around her age (or creepily younger), always physically fit or delicate-looking, never overweight, never disabled, never unattractive in any significant way to her, always supernatural, never a type of supernatural she might find icky (like a werehyena or a rotting vampire), always cisgender men, and so on. Just saying, funny how that works, isn't it?

Blah blah blah they're fucking and they gaze into each other's eyes and the moment they do she orgasms and she screams and claws him "while the world exploded in white-edged pleasure and my body tried to become the fierce joy of it all" and she almost passes out to the point that SHE CAN'T SEE but once she has her sight back she takes her nails out of his arms where she's left bloody marks, which she says he enjoys not just because the pain/pleasure thing but because he likes "that he could drive me to pleasure deep enough to bleed him. Most of the men in my life took it as high praise." I'll be honest, I doubt it's all that difficult to do. Remember the hand-gasms that Micah gave her in Flirt? You can pretty much turn her on and off like a light switch, and foreplay is never needed. Which, hey, good for her, we should all be able to get off so easy, but it means that making her come is hardly a worthy accomplishment.

She gets "another smaller orgasm" just from him pulling out of her. Yes, really. See what I mean? I bet I could just poke this woman at random and she'd at least get wet!

And hot.

And tight.

And hotwettight,.

And her eyes stop being able to focus. I feel like this might be early warning signs of a medical condition. Once she can focus them again, she sees Richard looking down at her. We are reminded that his face is "almost heartrendingly handsome". His chest and stomach are also "striped with blood" from Asher. Uh, you're not going to have sex like that, are you? I know that "bloodplay" is a kink for some people (not sure if this is it, though), but I feel like this is probably really unsanitary? And even with her crazy hybrid vampire-therian-Human Servant immunities to disease and such, it just seems like if you're NOT into blood like that it'll be sticky and inconvenient and gross and distracting. Then again, she's had sex in a hot tub filled with shifter goop if I remember right, and after way too long without showering, so I don't she uncomfortable with much...and no, that is NOT compliment to her ~edginess~.

He kisses her and she can still taste her own cunt on his mouth mixed with the taste of his kiss from Asher. I feel somewhat nauseous at this information, but I think that's because just regular kissing is un-erotic at the best of times for me, and generally kind of gross and not something I enjoy, so the idea of kissing and not only having spit from the other person involved but also the spit of a third party and genital fluids on there too...ugh. But I fully admit this is just my personal prudish preferences here and that I am pretty weird about personal contact/touching in general, so for all I know this is quite possibly sexy to a lot of people.

Anyway, Anita is disappointed that he's been kissing Asher and she didn't get to see it, and hopes she gets another chance to. She then "kissed him with tongue, and lips and teeth, and he responded in kind" Ow. That just sounds painful. Teeth? Like grinding your teeth against one anothers? And I think it goes without saying that most kisses are done with lips. I think that's what MAKES it a kiss.

Again, there is mention of the height difference and how tiny Anita is so she can't get at "what I wanted to touch" when he's kissing her. Seriously, you can't reach his dick? I'm not sure if that's realistic for their height difference or not. if not, it further supports my theory that she has tiny T-rex arms and THAT'S why she can't cross her arms over her boobs.

"Then I felt that warm roll of power and it caressed things deeper in my body than bone and muscle. It caressed along that part of me that was wolf, and I felt/saw the wolf that was part of my beast open her eyes." Wait wait wait, part of her beast? I thought she had a bunch of separate beasts? Now they're all one mass and each animal is just a part of it? What? Oh and also we get told how her wolf is really pretty and cream with black markings and "she looked at a glance like a big husky dog, but once you saw her eyes like amber glass you knew it wasn't a dog." Plenty of dogs actually have amber-colored eyes. Google image-search for 'amber dog eyes' and then Google image search for 'wolf eyes' and a lot of the results are comparable or even the same color-wise.

Seriously, check these amber pooch peepers out
http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/22328809/2/stock-photo-22328809-brown-dog-with-amber-eyes-close-up.jpg
http://www.dogcentral.info/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/6.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CmKjV6-A1ho/Tsm6TF77xOI/AAAAAAAACzw/N8zYkLgI7dQ/s1600/June+2011_051.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7021/6398048521_2d307af25b_z.jpg

And compare to these amber wolf weepers!
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3269/3119172168_38b51c79b4.jpg
http://crystalmoonwolves.webs.com/Black-Wolf-black-8740388-1280-853.jpg
http://pcdn.500px.net/15228833/79cfb3284e478f8e8c46723842c9639ed8196714/3.jpg

Maybe not totally identical, but not so much difference that a set of these wolf eyes would immediately make me realize THAT'S NO DOG. I think that yellow eyes, which were much more common in my search for 'wolf eyes' than this amber-brown color, would be much more of a giveaway. But I guess 'yellow' doesn't sound as pretty. Or maybe that color just didn't come up on the calendar she was using!

And Anita sees that Richard's eyes are now "wolf amber" too and wonders if spending too much time looking into Micah's leopard eyes is why she isn't frightened of his wolf eyes now like she was last time, whenever that was.

"My wolf started to trotting up that long metaphysical pathway that seemed to be inside me, but I knew it was just the way my human mind coped with the beast. I knew in reason that it wasn't a real path, or real trees that rose above the wolf, but it was what my mind had made up to help us all stay sane."

I've said before that I can understand why a human mind would create these visuals as a way of interpreting something it was never meant to feel, of having a spiritual beast within in you, but what I don't get is why she would go insane without it. I mean, I can think of some ways I guess, but is it ever explained just what exactly would make her insane without this visualization aid? And who is "us" here? Her and her men, or her and her beasts? Which would go nuts, and why? I'd really like to know, as it has potential to NOT be stupid.

Anita: "You'll bring my wolf, Richard."
Richard: "No, I won't, I promise, but I want you to bring mine."
Anita: "What?"

Ugggh I hope he doesn't mean he wants to do it with her in wolf form. I mean, I guess it wouldn't be bestiality since he has a human mind and can consent as a wolf, so there'd be nothing morally wrong with it in my opinion, but you have to wonder just who the target audience for that sort of porn would be.

We are briefly interrupted by Asher making some noise from whatever JC is doing to him.

Then Anita's wolf starts trotting some more and "it was my body that the she-wolf would try to eat her way out of; I couldn't shapeshift, and when one of the beasts wanted out they treated my body like a trap they needed to dig their way out of."

Okay, this is a really cool idea and really neat messed-up things could be done with it and I really want to like it...but in Anita's case and the way that LKH has handled it, it's stupid. Her lioness can understand concepts like patience, her beasts all know that guns can kill through her, etc., so I think that they would all also understand that Anita's body is their body and that if something happens to her, they die too, and therefore would not try to dig/eat their way out of her, as cool as that would be. There's also the fact that this danger pretty much exists only in theory most of the time; it will only emerge when it's the most convenient route of getting her into the arms of a hot therian guy (like with Victor in Skin Trade) and she will never be permanently hurt or even permanently scarred by it, since lots of healing sex will doubtlessly follow. It will never sincerely bite her in the ass, literally or metaphorically. At least, that's my prediction. I would certainly love for Bullet to prove me wrong, of course, but based on Skin Trade and Flirt and how her other supposedly 'double-edged' powers in general seem to work, I think it's a fair assumption for me to make.

Anita tells Richard for a second time that he's bringing her wolf. Then he looks in her eyes again and she feels his power and talks about it a lot, how it's usually like a sting or electricity but this time it's like a wash of warm ocean water, and it touches Anita's wolf and she slows down "the only image my mind could form was the wolf being petted, soothed" so the wolf lays down among the imaginary trees and chills out. Richard informs her that he's been practicing at controlling Gina's beast so she can keep her babies and that "your weretigers tell me I'm a natural at it." Anita says she didn't know he was helping out with that (HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT THE ULFRIC IS UP TO SOMETHING THAT HUGE AND SIGNIFICANT, ESPECIALLY WITH ANOTHER THERIAN GROUP) and he says "If our women could have children, that would be a wonderful thing. How could I not help?"

Can I just point you all back to my rant on how this whole 'secret technique' thing should never have realistically been a secret this long? Yes, thank you. BECAUSE HAVING BABIES WOULD BE, AS RICHARD SAYS, A FREAKING HUGE DEAL.

In response to this Anita thinks "I thought of a lot of things to say, the mildest of which was that something being a good thing hadn't been enough if it meant he had to use his beast to do it" You're an asshole, Anita. Who wants to bet that the 'something' she's referring to here is herself?

All she says though is that, yes, it would be a great thing if the shifter women could have babies. Can I remind you that they're in an orgy here? I feel like, for all her screaming clawing orgasms, this honestly must be pretty boring/unsexy for them both in order for them to be having any conversation at all during it, even if she and Richard aren't actually fucking yet.

Asher makes some more noise and it gets stated as coyly as possible that Jean-Claude is doing him in the ass ("Jean-Claude's legs and hips were moving, and I knew that he was finally doing what Asher had wanted for so long.")

Richard: "Jean-Claude's ahead of us. I want to catch up." Yes, sex is a race, you can tell how good it was by how fast you finish...wait, I'm pretty sure that's not right.
Anita: "Are you asking if I'm okay with it?" She's unfamiliar with that concept, so she needs clarification to be sure, I guess.
Richard: "Yes."

Instead of just saying yes, she tells him they need a condom, he asks if they're still in the same place, she says yes, he tells her to wait right there and she does and the chapter ends. It was four pages.

I realize that 'we need a condom' is an implied yes, and most books I wouldn't seen anything off about it, but given this is Anita Blake, I feel the need to point out that the ONE damn time someone directly asks for her consent, she still can't give a straight yes even though she wants to. Good lord.

Also, it amuses me that we need a divide between the chapter where JC fucks her and the one where Richard fucks her. Nope, the scene doesn't change, just the dick. Seriously. That's why the first is four pages, and the second is two.

Chapter 11 starts with Richard in the same position with Anita as JC was earlier because of the same height issues. And just like JC "I watched his body work in and out of mine" and again I get the same visual of Richard himself going entirely in and out of Anita's cooch. "He was wide, and straight, and long, and beautiful, and the feel of him between my legs was amazing." And again his penis is personified. Similarly "Jean-Claude's body was pushing its way into Asher" oh god that sounds like some awful body horror. Also, did you know that Jean-Claude has black hair and Asher has gold hair? Don't worry if you didn't, she reminds us! Again!

Richard goes really deep in her, and she likes it, and looks pleased but a little concerned. Anita says that "Without the ardeur, that may hurt eventually." Yup, I told you that it gets explained how she can be sooo tight and yet take deep dickings from massive dongs--it's all thanks to the ardeur! Richard says that every other woman he's been with thinks it hurts. DUH, EVERY OTHER WOMAN ISN'T ANITA! SHE'S SPECIAL! Anita says "With the right prep it's okay." Rrrgh, so is it that the ardeur lets her find it nice, or is that all the other women are just too sex-ignorant to do the right prep? Either way, Anita is still Special And Better Than Them, so whatever. He compliments her for orgasming from it and returns to "work his way in and out of me again." Working his way in? That sounds like burrowing. OMG RETURN OF THE WEREMOLE!

Blah blah blah, two paragraphs of him boning her and Anita getting closer to coming. Richard's eyes "swim to wolf amber" and Anita watches Asher "struggle in the chains as his body rode the pleasure" while JC fucks him and I think JC comes and then Anita comes and she and Asher scream together, how nice. "The ardeur was just suddenly there on the three of us that carried it. We fed. We fed on the feel of our bodies buried inside each other" buried like WEREMOLES! "We fed on the release of emotion" that's not emotion, that's jizz "as we finally owned how we felt about each other." What? How? What emotions about each other are they acknowledging through this sex that they didn't acknowledge before? Especially since this is, if I may remind you again, just a political move to keep Asher and the werehyenas? And her orgasm is "as if the world were suddenly golden, and edged with white haze" and she can feel the chains on Asher's arms on her own and she can feel "the men inside us both." Wow, double-penetration via psychic link. That's, uh, something. What I want to know is how she's got a psychic link with Asher at all. She says that "I'd shared moments like this with Richard and Jean-Claude" which makes sense because of the link they have as a triumvirate "but never during sex, and never with Asher." Well, yeah, because you're not bound to Asher in any way, and neither is JC or Richard. Why and how the hell is this happening then? "It was as if all the boundaries fell down, all the shields that kept us safe from one another were just gone." NOT A GOOD ENOUGH EXPLANATION. Apparently this random psychic sex link is a ~metaphor~ for the breaking of boundaries, but that doesn't mean it can get away without an in-universe reason!

"And then we smelled flowers, flowers that weren't in the room. Roses, and jasmine, and Jean-Claude fought to get us back in control" so you were no help then, Anita? "fought to master us and himself and the pleasure, but it was too late; we were wide open, defenseless" Wait, sex actually caused something BAD to happen? No way! Of course, the solution will probably be more sex "and he and Asher knew now that it had been no accident." No, the sex wasn't an accident, you guys chose to do it to keep Asher. My best guess is that she means that JC and Asher realize that the ardeur didn't just rise on its own, because rose and jasmine are the respective signature scents of Belle Morte and Marmee Noir (I wonder if each Council member has their own signature scent? it makes me think of them as celebrities with perfume lines instead of ancient powerful undead monsters) which the reader should also know by now. The question is then, why do just JC and Asher know it was no accident? Anita knows that these are their scents too, and she's probably told Richard, and wait how does she know that they know? I mean, yes, psychic link, but she makes it sound like they alone know and she doesn't, yet she's the one telling us they know...oh wow, massive first-person protagonist voice fail there, I tell you what.

"Belle Morte, Beautiful Death's voice echoed through us. "I told you they could not resist each other forever."

...apparently Belle Morte and the MOAD have been waiting specifically for an Anita/JC/Asher/Richard four-way for some reason. That's so stupid that I can't even be excited about them showing up. I guess it's nice that the MOAD is back though, since her being 'killed' in Skin Trade was a load of bullshit, but I also knew already it wasn't the end of her so I can't even be amped about that.

At least the sex is over for now...I hope.

Comments

[duamuteffe.livejournal.com]

I think it might be a regional and/or generational thing. My grandparents on both sides nearly always say "dog" or "hound" after whatever breed name - I can hear them saying "one of them Husky dogs" without any trouble.

[wanderingworlds.livejournal.com]

I can maybe get the generational thing. But even then, Anita is young enough she shouldn't be saying that...