Narcissus in Chains--chapter 11

Let's be up front about this: This is chapter is about a terrible thing. It's awful. You might want to look away now. I do not know if I can make it entertaining. I will try.

Anita was on the phone last chapter while everyone else clears out. She hangs up, and now  she's alone in the shower with Micah, the naked wereleopard dude she woke up with. He begins saying things about how nice she is, and how he's never felt this way with another woman. Okay. He says Nimir-Ra, but the world's most overused line is still the world's most overused line. And then Anita sees the big mark she made from when Jean Claude used her to feed.

Again: that was rape. Metaphysical and mental, but she was still forced to do something she would not normally do, and the dude doing the forcing did not ask her permission, nor did he bother to stick around and make sure he had not damaged her. Which he did do. You don't huddle in the shower, whimpering, just because you got sweaty during the metaphysical orgy.

Anita apologizes for making the bite. Micah says don't worry, "It's a love bite".

No one, and I mean no one has brought up the concept of Anita wanting to have the sexy-sexy with anybody in the room. PERIOD. Micah is the  first to broach the subject. He says that he enjoyed what they did, and that they could do great things for each other's pack together. And Anita is not saying anything. Not. One. Word.

This is out of character for normal, "healthy" Anita.

Finally she says "Let's take it slow." If you have never dated before, this is girl for "I do not want to have sex with you." Most guys who are interested in having a relationship with a woman read this correctly and back off.

Micah does not.

Anita watches him soap up.

The scariest thing about this chapter is how Laurell is writing it. Laurel wants Anita and Micah to get it down, and get it down hard. In the future books they are an item. One of several. So this scene should be all sunshine and roses and porn music. Only it is not. Anita is not screaming, scratching and shooting her gun, but she is shut down emotionally. Completely. And Micah will not shut up. Anita goes to the door and Micah dangles the bait of "We'll help you when you go face down Richard", which is something Anita badly needs, so she doesn't leave.

“Anita,” he said. I stopped in the doorway, but this time I didn’t turn around.

“What?” I sounded grumpy.

“It’s alright to be attracted to me. You can’t help yourself.” 

That made me laugh, a good normal laugh. “Oh, you don’t have a high opinion of yourself, do you?” But I stayed facing away from him.

Yeah. We're still not in safe territory. See, I remember all of this. This is how it went down, exactly. Only it was a truck and not a shower, and it stopped before it went too far. Everything about this, her physical reactions, his continued talking-talking-talking, is very very very NOT OKAY.

And then this happens:

“No,” I said, my voice strangled, but I repeated it. “No.”

 He stepped into me, pressing the slick hardness of him against my lower hand and arm. He tried to uncurl my fingers from the towel, and I held on for dear life. “Touch me, Anita, cup me in your hands.” 

“No.”

This is the moment when everything should have stopped. A sane, contientious human being worth sleeping with should have shut down here. For Christ's Sake, the woman was weeping on the bathroom floor the last time they got it on. Her saying "NO" should have been all the clue he needed. Does he stop? No.

And then Laurell tries to have Anita's own body give permission when her mouth is clearly screaming NO. Problem is...

I shivered and wanted to step back, but it was like I was frozen in place. I couldn’t move.

That's not permission. That's freaking shutting down. I read somewhere (I think it was Reasoning with Vampires) that your emotions can shut down kind of like an opossum playing dead, that it's a protective mechanism within your own body to keep you alive. I do not know if it is a real thing. I do know that that passage, up there? Was exactly how I felt.

Then Anita does start to want it. She contacts Jean Claude telepathically, and he tells her that she now has his primary power, the ability to feed off of sex the way he feeds off of blood. This, too, happened without Anita's permission, but it's all okay because he didn't know it would happen to her. This power is what's making Anita want to sex up Micah. So she tells him stop. he says "I know you want me."

This happens:

“Please, Micah, I’m not on birth control.” A clear thought at last.

 He bit softly at the back of my neck. “I had myself fixed two years ago. You’re safe with me, Anita.”

Then stop trying to have sex with her. She tells him no again and he hits some erogenous zone that makes Anita whimper. See, she's experiancing pleasure. That must mean she wants it.

I'm going to leave this here. Otherwise, we'll be focusing on this part of this terrible, terrible scene all night long.


And after hitting something that made Anita feel pleasure, even though she never once said okay, Micah...yeah. I can't even write it. I'm not quoting it, either. You can't make me. The one part I will say is, soap is involved.

Anita does not respond to him at all. Even the book says this is out of character. Meanwhile, Micah is bumping her cervix. It says so in the text. 

And then her brand new power kicks in and she starts feeding off the lust...but even the text says she doesn't want sex. 

And then she starts to enjoy it and everything is okay again...until after Anita orgasms and turns back into a sobbing, whimpering mess on the bathroom floor.

Excuse me for a moment. I need to vent.















And the truly scary part? This is the sanitized version. This is the version where LKH went back and made this scene less rapey. I knew that this scene existed, but I thought it was the scene in the bedroom before Anita crashed in the shower, which was what I had to check up on a couple days ago. I read about the so-called "rape scene" and thought "Dang, I don't remember any actual penetration in the bedroom, I guess she really did tone it down"

It's sad when a female writer makes John Norman look good.