On today’s episode of I Read a Bad Book on Purpose, the very first line of this chapter is a howler. I’ll explain why in a second.
After stowing her car a few blocks away in an area unnoticed by most, Gaby started walking and found herself in front of Luther’s house.
Wesley lives in a suburb of a medium-sized city with some dangerous sections. Some years ago, I went to visit the parents of a friend who lived in a suburb of Chicago. Before we even started on the trip, his parents told us that we needed to give them a description of the vehicle we would be in (make and model and color) along with the license plate number and the dates and approximate times we would arrive and depart. They had to give this information to the Home Owners’ Association so we could park on their street. If the HOA didn’t have this information, they’d have our car towed away. Just thinking that you can hand-wave parking a strange car randomly in the suburbs is pretty funny to me, let alone one as junky as Azrael goes on to describe it.
Significantly, she’s afraid of how Wesley’s going to react because she wasn’t home when he wanted her to be, in addition to her probable murders of the Pit Bull Guys. Again, this isn’t a sign of a healthy relationship. So she dithers on in her mind for about a page while standing in the front yard until Wesley comes outside shirtless and with the top button on his jeans unfastened. I would see that as a threat and take off running.
Indeed, she’s able to read his mood (not sure if that’s an expansion of her superpower of being able to “read the intentions” of the mentally ill, the evil, and demons). Hey, does that make Wesley a demon? Suddenly everything makes sense!
Anyway, his mood is relief, rage, and lust—nothing out of the ordinary for him except for the relief. They look at each other for a while, neither wants to go to the other, and—surprise surprise—Azrael’s the one who gives in because she’s a “frail female.” Then she gets all mad because she thinks he was being a tease earlier and now he’s going to come through if she has anything to say about it. Well, she doesn’t, but that won’t keep her from losing that flower. She does some breast-beating about being “forced to kill two beautiful animals—” fuck you, you dog-killing bitch, you just get off on death, go to hell five minutes ago—and then has a telling moment that she doesn’t want Wesley “chastising” her, like a naughty child (ick), and she once again underlines that she intends to get that penis.
We switch to Wesley’s POV because we’re about to have a sex scene and the writing, from just before the section break and continuing here, goes all out into panting melodrama. I just want this to be over. It isn’t that long a chapter, so maybe Wesley’s a two-pump chump. We can only hope.
So he’s just standing there and she tells him, “I came home,” with the implication that this is her home now although that isn’t underlined. He nods at her because he’s having trouble managing his oxygen supply and then she grabs him by the cock, bites him in the throat, and gives him a bunch of overwrought dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place in a soap opera. Subtlety, thy name is Azrael.
I guess the throat-biting is an unsubtle clue that Fabian is her father. Whatever. Let’s power through this mess.
He knows there’s something wrong and realizes he should question her, but she’s coming on strong enough to cause the blood to leave his brain on a southbound journey and he behaves as he usually does, by avoiding anything that might be related to work and hopping aboard the sex train. He wants to be gentle, she isn’t having any of that, and there is almost nothing in the way of foreplay on his part.
It’s official–Wesley is a lousy lay. Seriously, he kisses her twice, rubs her breasts once, undresses her, parts her legs, and then Cherry-Poppin’ Daddy jams it in. They’re standing up against the door at the time, but surprisingly on the inside, given Wesley’s fondness for public lewdness. Of course the author forces Azrael to show signs of pleasure and have an orgasm eventually because she just remembered this book is fantasy.
Dude, this is a virgin and you know it. The author does make sure to note that Azrael’s wet, and I might be able to believe this if she weren’t a virgin because apparently maiming drug dealers and murdering dogs is Spanish fly to this girl. Wesley describes his movements as “hammering” and “battering” and putting this off on her because all her coming on to him destroyed his self-control.
Gaby demanded a hard fuck, and that worked just fine for him.
Funny, he only loses control of himself when he benefits from it. At any other time, if she “demanded” anything, he’d dig in his heels and refuse whatever she wanted because he’s the alpha male until he’d regained control of the situation and she’d caved in and obeyed his wishes. I can think of two reasons why he’s down with this particular demand. Remember when I said that the writer was taking pains to set Morty up as an incel in the first book but Wesley actually seemed more like it, and he got really defensive about her asking if he was a virgin? The first theory is that Wesley is either a virgin or very inexperienced sexually and doesn’t know he ought to slow things down so as to make her more comfortable and lessen any possible pain. I mean, I’ve read romance novels with the heroine coming on strong and the hero slowing things down with foreplay because she’s a virgin. It’s not like that never happens. Number two, we know he gets furious when she doesn’t do as she’s told, so the “hard fuck” is about punishing her for disobedience and getting his rocks off at the same time. I feel like it’s one of these.
Anyway, there’s nothing even vaguely relating to the “vampire” plot in this chapter, just the romance having its toxic consummation, so I’ll try to just summarize, as it’s also pretty boring.
We get a switch to Azrael’s POV where she compares herself to a “needy woman” because she likes leaning on him and then has a fear response about what she’ll be if she changes for him. Sweetie, the ship already sailed on that one, as soon as you forgot you don’t like music when he gave you the digital audio player and you loved music after that. I think she’s realizing, on a subconscious level, that since she’s fucked him, he’ll never allow her to have autonomy again as that’s not suitable for WESLEY’S PROPERTY. Remember, you can’t spell property without proper!
Then he apologizes for raw-dogging her. I can’t believe I managed to miss that he didn’t use protection, but that’s pretty common in romance novels. Since he knows she’s a virgin, he couldn’t assume she was using birth control, and if I were of a suspicious mindset, which I am, I might just think he did this deliberately to try to get her pregnant and trap her. Then again, thinking has never been Wesley’s strong suit. And, from her reaction, Azrael doesn’t even understand what a condom is. One would think there should have been plenty of used ones lying around the street outside Morty’s, as that was the main hooker drag in town.
For storyline purposes, her bullet graze has started bleeding enough to leak through the bandage. It seems like it wasn’t that serious, but now that it’s plotline-convenient it’s a gusher. She later says that the “tussle” with the Pit Bull Guys “left behind a few bruises,” and I don’t know how since nobody managed to land a hit, but plotline-convenient, I guess.
Azrael tells him he needs better locks for no reason and he tells her he’ll get an alarm tomorrow, which isn’t soon enough to suit her. I don’t know why she’s panicking about this, since she was happy to live in an apartment in the slums for three years where the main door was never locked, but whatever. And why hasn’t she gotten herself another gun since she lost her original one in the abandoned hospital massacre? She used to sleep with it in her hand with her finger on the trigger. That sounds like she’d get a replacement ASAP if she’s insecure enough to take a chance on shooting herself in the face while she’s asleep.
Then she wants a shower and he redirects to a bath as a move to see whether she’ll bow to his will now that she’s had sex with him. Wesley wants to know what happened to her arm, she’s stupid enough to tell him it’s a bullet graze, and he defaults to his usual furious mode. Wow, that afterglow hit the road like it didn’t have the money to pay the restaurant bill.
Gripping her shoulders in an iron hold, Luther took deep breaths that flared his nostrils and brought a flush to his face.
Azrael tells him it isn’t that bad and lets him in on her plan to get a tattoo over it and then says some nonsensical stuff that escapes me.
“…I plan to get a tattoo around it to hide any scar that might be left behind. I was told that normally a person has to wait at least a year for that, but I’ll convince the tattoo artist otherwise, no problem there.”
This just does not make sense. I know you have to wait a year after you get a tattoo to donate blood, but I can’t find any circumstance in a Google search where you have to wait a year to get tattooed. If anybody knows what she’s talking about, please let me know in the comments.
He has a characteristic response to her telling him what she intends to do.
He smashed a finger to her mouth.
Change that to fist and I’d believe it. That’s the only reason I can think of that the author keeps using such violent verbs for him preventing her from speaking. He wants to beat the shit out of her but the writer can’t admit it because this is an escapist romance and the readers don’t want to be reminded of domestic abuse.
For once, she knocks his hand away and decides to dig her own heels in about the shower and now he’s determined to get control and have his own way. This is a Netflix true crime series in the making. Of course she gives in after he tells her they’ll both be taking a bath because no woman can resist sexual pleasure.
And—chapter! This was such a chore I stopped in the middle to read the first five chapters of Jim Butcher’s Blood Rites. I have a few problems with the series, but Butcher knows how to create rounded, interesting characters and keep the plot moving. And I forgot this book was the one where they introduced the foo dog as a “little notch-eared puppy” who wanted to fight vampires. Hey, Harry Dresden, if this bitch ever comes to Chicago, kill her at once before she murders your dog.
Because this was a pretty short post, I wandered over to Amazon to see how popular this series is. As of today, Awakening is 2,005,768 in Books, 11,879 in Action and Adventure Romance, 13,939 in Vampire Romance (they must have been disappointed as there are no vampires in this book), and 26,941 in Military Romance (WTF?!? Somebody’s algorithm must have vomited).
Acceptance is 1,596,461 in Books, 12,242 in Vampire Romance (again, readers must have been disappointed as there are only garden-variety serial killers here), 20,159 in Short Story Anthologies (for a second time, WTF?!? This is a novel, not a short story anthology), and 24,009 in Military Romance (the algorithm vomited a second time, or maybe a third if it thinks this is a book of short stories).
Kindred is 2,548,638 in Books, 2,454 in Werewolf and Shifter Thrillers (I have no words, except that there are no werewolves or shifters in this book and no thrills either), 2,693 in Vampire Thrillers (fake vampires and no thrills so far), and 5,260 in Ghost Thrillers (no ghost and no thrills yet). I don’t know why the last book got slotted into the Thriller algorithm, unless that’s because they decided it would sell better as a thriller, which it apparently does, despite the fact that readers should be pissed off at the false advertising.
Next time, chapter 7, where Azrael and Wesley take a bath, he absolves her of dog murder (and fuck you too, Wesley, you hideous sex golem), and they fuck some more. Don’t worry–nothing plot-related to see here.
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