The first Bad Books, Good Times eBook is a week old, everybody! How exciting is that? I wonder how excited everybody else is about it?
Oh no! Someone didn’t like our work? Or is writing a young adult detective fiction series? What went wrong?
Commentary from a… sexually-repressed? Hang on! Is this person suggesting I don’t get any attention from the ladies?! What the fuck, stranger on the internet?!
Well, let’s not let one negative review dampen our spirits, readers. So why don’t you just lie back in your pool of upper-middle-class diamonds and read the next chapter of Bared To You with us?
Chapter Ten
Eva leaves the hotel feeling betrayed and hurt thinking that Gideon had treated her like all of the other women he’s slept with. There’s some actual interesting self-reflection where she wonders if it’s fair to be mad at Gideon for falling into his destructive patterns when she herself just left without saying a word.
I couldn’t stop picturing him fucking the hell out of another woman on that same bed, using toys on her, driving her crazy, taking his pleasure from her body…
It was irrational and pointless to think of such things, and it made me feel petty and small and physically sick.
Fortunately, Gideon finds her before she really gets anywhere with her self-reflection or takes anything away from it that she can use towards overcoming her issues and strengthening herself.
Gideon finds Eva and apologizes, realizing that he was being an asshole, and asks her to spend the night as his apartment, where he’s never taken a girl before.
Okay, to be fair, it is a good thing that they meet up and immediately talk about the problem. That’s a good thing to do in a relationship. What I’m less crazy about is that I’m still getting no sense that Eva is actually trying to work on her issues. But that can be really hard to do during traumatic experiences, so I’m gonna give her the benefit of the doubt for now. Although it would be nice if Sylvia Day would actually fill us in on what her issues are instead of talking about them all the time like we’re supposed to be intimately familiar with them.
“I’m not even sure what to say about that.”
A speechless Cary Taylor spoke volumes.
And very conveniently means the author doesn’t have to actually write anything. Again.
Eva and Gideon cuddle and watch tv and eat caviar, which is great, because it’s just not “normal” enough where it can constitute an alluring fictional romance.
They go to sleep, but Eva wakes up when Christian Grey Gideon Cross has a nightmare in the middle of the night where he’s pleading with someone not to touch him who is hurting him. There’s a tasteful description of his physical state in the midst of a psychologically traumatic episode:
Stilling abruptly, he fell to his back, tense and expectant. His chest heaved with panting breaths. His cock was hard and lay heavily along his body.
Eva wakes him from his nightmare and calmly reassures him he’s safe.
“I want you.” I stretched out against him, aligning my bare body to his. Pressing my face into his damp throat, I sucked gently on his salty skin.
…which is one way to do it, I guess.
They have sex, go back to sleep, and then Eva wakes up to Gideon fucking her.
I woke the way I’d fallen asleep, with Gideon on top of me and inside me. […] “I hope you don’t mind,” he murmured with a wicked grin, sliding in and out. “You’re warm and soft. I can’t help but want you.”
Okay, this seems kind of weird and mildly non-consensual to me, but what do I know? I’m sexually repressed.
Gideon takes Eva back to her apartment so she can get ready for work. They try to make plans for the night, but both have previous engagements for most of the evening, so make plans to fuck sometime during work. Man, I can’t wait to graduate and have a job if this is any indication of what that’s like.
After the events of the last night, where Eva comforted Gideon out of his nightmare, Eva decides to give Gideon a gift that could help offer him that same comfort when she isn’t there.
Gideon stared down at the framed photograph in complete silence. It was a novelty frame depicting die-cut images of things relating to graduation, including a digital clock face that read 3:00 a.m. The picture was of me posing on Coronado Beach in a coral bikini with a big floppy straw hat—I was tanned, happy, and blowing a kiss
No, seriously, when the fuck did she get this gift? We literally haven’t left her side for a second since she met Gideon, and she decided to give him this after events that she has not left his side since, when did she do this? Maybe this is her own picture and she’s giving it to him because she thinks he needs it more? They’re been dating for one day. Nice thought aside, this is just a little presumptuous?
Eva gets to work and checks the news and discovers that a picture of Gideon and herself kissing is on a gossip blog!
“Oh, crap,” I breathed.
Tune in next time to see if we actually learn about Eva’s issues enough to understand why this bothers her, or whether she just tells us instead.