In the last chapter of Bared to You, Eva finally told us and Gideon about her really sad, tragic past. I’m not going to kill the mood by repeating it here, but you can scroll down on the home page and find it. OMG SO MUCH WORK AND CLICKING AND SCROLLING!
What happened to Eva was so bad and sad that I now understand why Eva is always referring to it vaguely and like she already mentioned it a thousand times in the book. I certainly will be doing that from now on! “You know, guys, that horrible terrible thing that happened. Don’t make me repeat it!”
Chapter 13
So Matt and I were pretty impressed by Sylvia Day’s handling of a tricky subject. It can only continue to be a classy reaction between Eva and Gideon right?
Wait, the last chapter ended with Eva not seeing something in Gideon’s eyes…what is that something that’s missing?
It couldn’t possibly be lust, right? Because that would be sick. Given you’ve gone back and read what was revealed last chapter, you know how disturbing that would be, right?
Eva is all mad Gideon feels sorry for her, and he actually makes a lot of sense and is like, “Hi, I’m a human being who feels emotions and this is some sad shit.”
Eva ain’t taking that, though!
He shoved both hands through his hair. “What the hell do you want, then?”
“You! I want you.”
“You have me. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Your words don’t mean shit when you can’t back them up. From the moment we met, you’ve been hot for me. You haven’t been able to look at me without making it damn clear you want to fuck my brains out. And that’s gone, Gideon.” My eyes burned. “That look . . . it’s gone.”
If Gideon isn’t looking lustfully at Eva at ALL times, even in light of a horrific revelation, then obviously the romance is dead. There’s no questions there.
I loosened the sash of my robe and shrugged the whole garment off me. “Look at me, Gideon. Look at my body. It’s the same one you couldn’t get enough of last night. The same one you were so desperate to get into that you took me to that damn hotel room. If you don’t want this anymore . . . if you don’t get hard looking at it—”
“Is this hard enough for you?” He broke the drawstring of his pants pushing them down to expose the heavy, thickly veined length of his erection.
We both lunged at the same time, colliding. Our mouths slid over each other as he lifted me to wrap my legs around his hips. He stumbled to the couch and fell, catching our combined weight with one outstretched hand.
Oh my god. This isn’t seriously happening, is it? Okay, damn it you guys, I’m going to cave and say it! Eva just got done talking about how her step-brother raped her repeatedly for ages when they were kids and only when she had a miscarriage did her mother discover the truth and get her out of that house! And now they are fucking! Gideon just starts going down on her and fucking her. I am so disturbed by everything above.
The sex is as gross as post-traumatic-confession sex could be.
He gasped, his head thrown back into the sofa cushion, his neck corded with strain. “I feel you getting ready to come. Your cunt gets so hot and tight, so greedy.”
EVA’S CUNT WANT MORE ORGASM NOM NOM NOM!
Gideon comes a couple times, and Eva is reassured. I’d be like, “Why are you getting off on this, wait till tomorrow, ya freak.”
There is a really nice moment after where Eva says there are some triggers she’ll never get over, and Gideon reflects on his own pursuit of Eva.
“God. The way I came on to you in the beginning . . . I could’ve ruined us before we even got started. And the advocacy dinner—” He shuddered and buried his face in my neck. “Eva, don’t let me blow this. Don’t let me chase you away.”
I gotta be honest, he actually sounds like a real person right there. Thought I’d include that tiny bit of redemption for the horror we all just endured. Well, mostly me.
They agree they want to know everything about each other, and Eva tells Gideon to tell her something new about himself every day. She also identifies the fact that he’s broken in ways she doesn’t yet know about. I’m not sure if that’s future Eva telling us that, or present Eva speculating on that.
But then Gideon reveals he’s got dressers for Eva already (and they’re full of lingerie for her), and she’s like, “Doesn’t this usually take months of dating?”
Gideon’s like, “Psh, what do you know, you’ve never lived with a man aside from Cary!”
What is with these books and rushing everything so damn fast? If you wanna skip ahead to this stuff just say something like, “Months went by…” I don’t care, just stop making all this happen after a week!
Gideon asks how he can make Eva feels secure in the relationship (I like that), and Eva suggests couples therapy (for these two people it actually seems wise.)
They go out for a romantic dinner, and Gideon asks how Eva and Cary met.
“My dad’s a cop and he’d heard of this therapist who supposedly had mad skills with wild kids, which I was. Cary was seeing Dr. Travis, too.”
“Mad skills, huh?” Gideon smiled.
“Dr. Travis isn’t like any other therapist I’ve ever met…”
I like how Eva doesn’t even acknowledge that what she said sounds so out of place for her or that Gideon actually made fun of her for it.
As dinner progresses, Eva reminds us she’s never told her father what happened (I genuinely wonder if his discovery of what happened will be a plot point in the future), and then they start talking about going to the gym or something. Eva makes a joke about the trainer that Gideon got jealous of because he talked to Eva for five seconds. Eva notices that Gideon doesn’t teasingly threaten to spank her anymore, which she tells us is a trigger for her (sex/pain).
Later, after they’ve fallen asleep, Eva is woken to Gideon having another nightmare where he’s telling someone to get off of him. Then she sees Gideon furiously masturbating. She wakes him up, and tries to get him to talk about the nightmare, but he keeps saying he doesn’t remember it.
Eva gets furious because she opened up to him and feels like he won’t do the same. So she storms out again. When she gets home a woman is leaving their apartment having just fucked Cary. Okay seriously, what is this dude’s deal? I guess his sexuality is fluid? That’s fine and all, but could the book just come out and make this clear instead of telling us he was gay earlier and then doing this?
Eva tells Cary what happened and says lying about issues is a dealbreaker, but she does want things to work out. She asks about the blonde, and Cary says she meant nothing and that he’s in love with Trey. Oh my god I do not understand!
So for some reason Cary says they should celebrate the fact that he loves Trey? And that’s how the chapter ends.
Eva’s reaction could have been right if Gideon didn’t want to have sex with her like that night, or in the days after her confession. Then she could have said “Hello?! You’ve been f…ing me before you knew my past and now you don’t want to anymore?”. But how many second have passed by since she told him her past followed by the pathetic “Look at me! I am the same as before!”? Like… 15? 20?
I get she’s a bit overreactive and all… but it wasn’t the case! And Gideon… he was being so human… and then after such a revelation he’s hard as marble just because she takes her bathrobe off and says “Look at me!”… I’ll never understand what goes through the mind of such authors when they create such scenes/characters…
If their was some evidence to go along with her freak out about him not wanting her anymore I would better understand it. Like say this had happened in the past with other boyfriends and she knew the signs, something to make her reaction make sense at least in her mind so that we as the reader would go “well I could see why she had this reaction”. His reaction on the other hand was just SO wrong! There is no explaining that away! You can reassure your girlfriend that you still want her without showing her your erect penis. He could have calmed her down and given her peace of mind without banging her on the couch. A mature, respectful man would have done that. So wrong! Reading it felt wrong so I cannot imagine how someone could write it and be like “yes, that’s the stuff”. Then again, this is a Fifty Shades knock off so I don’t know why I expected maturity and reason!
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Why can’t you live with the fact that cary is bi?!
I’m sorry if it came across that way. I’m bi myself, and I found it annoying that the book told us Cary was gay but then did this rather than just owning the fact he was bi from the start.