Danse Macabre--chapter 43

We get several highly disturbing paragraphs of Anita manhandling Noel. It reads like a molestation that neither party enjoys, and it walks right up to rub shoulders against cannibalism.

The thought slid my face down his body, until I rested at his sternum, the upper edge of his stomach. So close now that I could not so much see the fast rise and fall of his body as feel it under my cheek. I rolled my face over, and kissed his stomach. He jerked, as if I’d bit him, and made a wonderful whimpering sound. I buried my mouth in the soft, easy flesh of his belly. I took as much of his flesh into my mouth as I could hold, and not draw blood. I bit him, hard and deep, and it took all my willpower to rise up from that flesh, and leave it whole.

Like I said last night: Can we please start the chapter off with something resembling consensual sex? Please?

Of course, he gets dismissed as being "just food" and not enough for the ardeur. He's first accused as being "too submissive" because "Joseph shops for bottoms", but Nate decides its because Noel is "too straightlaced" to get off on being bitten.

Given that Noel is terrified out of his mind the entire time, I don't think "prude" is the right word for that mindset. Also: Being called a prude is one of the things I know guys use on unwilling girls. They don't want sex because they're too "prudish" and nasty and bad, and now they have to prove how worthy they are by giving the guy sex. Or to apply it to here: Noel's failed to capture Anita's attention because he's too much of a prude, rather than Noel being scared out of his fucking mind and being forced into a sexual situation he does not want and should not be forced to have.

 Travis, the other werelion in the running, shows up for his turn. Somehow this translates into inviting Jason in, which he teleports in to do, far as I can tell, and this in turn becomes a dominance fight between Jason and Graham supervised by Jean Claude.

I don't know. I've read it three times and I still can't figure it out.

And then Meng Die shows up. The woman who almost killed Requiem last night.

She was one of the few women who ever made me think, delicate. She was tinier than I was, so fragile looking. Maybe that was why she almost always wore black leather, very dominatrix.

The entire purpose of what happens next is just to make Anita look more desirable. She walks up to Requiem (the word "slinks" is used) and runs her hands up and down her body, insisting that Requiem would want her again. Requiem refuses her. Meng Die accuses him of refusing her because of Anita. Anita apologizes and says she didn't know Requiem was Meng's boyfriend. Jason says that Meng doesn't have boyfriends, only "people she fucks", because this is different from Anita how? So we've got slut-shaming, just like with Ronnie, to try to make Anita look wonderful and vurtuious in comparison. Meng Die then propositions every other man in the room, and they all turn her down flat because she's just too icky in comparsion for Anita.

I am not making that up. This is actively painful. 

 Then we go back to London, who states that he can feed the ardeur every two hours without suffering any ill effects. I'd say "bullshit" but London is an addict, and that's how it works. It's rather incredible to me that LKH is only accurate when it's psychologically awful and she wants to treat it like a positive. Anita just force-fed a metaphysical alcoholic psychic booze and now she gets a big benefit, while he gets to go back to being a sex-addict. And this is supposed to be just ducky.

London says that he's "addicted immediately" which is, again, pretty accurate for being an alcoholic ) and Nate sums up everything I have to say perfectly.

“You always look happy at the beginning of an addiction,” Nathaniel said. 
“What happens later?” I asked. 

“You die.”

End of chapter. The only problem I have with that? London isn't "at the start" of "an addiction" He's very late-stage, as in the "having to take quantities that would kill a normal person just to get a buzz" stage. He has an exceptional tolerance to his addiction of choice, which is a symptom of being in late stage addiction. He's also back to where he was before he tried to sober up. An addict doesn't go back to the beginning of their addiction when they relapse. It's always back to where they were when they sobered up. A relapse is a rocket train back to rock bottom. It is an INCREDIBLY shitty thing to break someone's sobriety by force.

And I'm done for the night.