Welcome back to my nightmare, gentle readers! It has taken me longer than I would have expected to tackle another episode of the Sea Urchin and Buffalo Burke saga, partly because of a magnificent bout of blogger's block, and partly because other things have been eating up my free time. Including finishing my first ever large-scale fiction writing project, yay for me! But worry not, I have not abandoned the agony, and I fully intend to go through with the rest of this book recap in the next few months. So without further ado, put on the diving goggles and let's submerge ourselves in the septic tank once more!
Warning: there is another supremely creepy moment in this chapter where the hero (and I use that term more loosely than a pair of harem pants) uses physical force to establish control over the heroine. Take care, gentle readers.
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| Pictured: today's reading face, courtesy of Deadfall once more. |
Previously on Moonlit Obsession: awkwardly-named British spy Anemone Carstairs and terrifying douchebag Stephen Burke butted heads when she stole some intel he needs, so he decided to kidnap her and try to slap the information out of her. No dice on that front, since she just ended up accidentally knocking herself out instead. When she woke up the next day, he promised her he wouldn't abuse her again, and the two of them went to grab breakfast with Anemone thinking how to last through more of Burke's... hands-on approach to interrogation, even if he said he wouldn't use physical force on her today. Just what I like to see in my romance novels.
We open chapter 9 with Anemone and Buffalo Burke sitting in his cabin, sharing breakfast and inane chitchat, which he enjoys heartily while she's barely able to force down a few bites and some tea. Wow, did I not miss this epic romance. After their plates get cleared away by a crewman, she decides it's time to get down to business and tells him so. Then she says this.
"You seem to be in a much more civilized mood than last night, and I am grateful for that."
I lasted precisely a paragraph and three sentences before headdesking. Am I in Hell?
After thanking Burke for not assaulting her so far today, Anemone continues by saying that he can make amends for his behavior last night by turning the ship around and taking her back to England. Despite my skin trying to crawl off me at the notion, I have to agree with Burke when he tells her that her genius strategy of saying "pretty please" isn't enough to make him change his mind about holding her captive. Maybe she should have added "with a cherry on top". He threatens Anemone with locking her in the hold if she doesn't give him the intel he wants, and she tells him that even him doing it won't induce her to do what he wants her to. Then Burke ogles her and I get to hear about her "slender, voluptuous figure", which is right there with Burke's "midnight blue eyes" in the realm of body parts that somehow manage to be two polar opposite things at the same time. I swear, if M. C. Escher tried to write a romance novel, it'd look like this.
Burke notices that Anemone is visibly terrified of the hold despite withstanding "his verbal and physical assaults" (ARGH) somewhat more easily, and cups her cheek and calls her "little one" to reassure her. You do that, sir. I'll be over here curled up in the corner and making small sobbing sounds. Then he asks if she'd change her mind if she knew he has a purely personal interest in the ship's route rather than spy business, which she firmly says no to, pissing him off.
And then... dear God. I refuse to quote this bullshit at y'all because I love y'all, so I'll just rip the band-aid off and describe it as briefly as I can.
He tosses her on his bed, climbs on top of her and holds her down.
Yeah. I got nothin'. If I could make this guy take a bath in pepper spray and skunk juice, it still wouldn't make up for me having to read that with my poor two eyes.
During that... repulsive display, Buffalo Burke tries to tell Anemone that she'd better cooperate with him since he's the one in a position of power here – we'll come back to that when I give my final thoughts on this dreck, because all that would come out if I tried to examine that now would be screaming. There's some back-and-forth during which Anemone tries to hate him to death (right there with ya), then she throws him off track by reminding him of his promise from last chapter that he wouldn't assault her today; that actually gets him to pause and get the hell off her, well done for once, ma'am. If she hadn't used the words "disgusting, superior male strength" during her call-out I'd applaud her for it... but since she called him 'superior' even as she was being assaulted, I'm too busy using my hands to rip a tree out of the ground so I can beat something with it. She spares a moment thinking that "his barely controlled violence could erupt at any moment". I'm letting that gem speak for itself.
Eventually the two of them agree that she'll hear out the proposition he wanted to make when he decided, AGAIN, that assault was an effective bargaining tool. Burke offers her safe passage anywhere she wants in exchange for the Belvidere's route, and Anemone thinks that there's nothing left for her to do but give up the intel. I could think of roughly a dozen things she could do instead of that to turn the situation to her advantage, but hey, I'm not a spy, much less a...
SUPER MEGA SPY!
After Burke pinky promises her that he has no intention to use her intel against England, and she believes him despite him breaking another promise five fucking minutes ago when he climbed on top of her like she's a merry-go-round, Anemone says she accepts his terms. Burke kisses her hand and leers at her, she gets flustered, and thinks that she wants to "stamp down on his foot or box his ears" to make him look less smug. My ideas for achieving the same effect are slightly closer to something out of a Saw movie at this point, but whatever.
After more inane banter, Anemone finally gives Buffalo Burke the damn ship's route, ending my agony (but fear not, there are a lot more agonies in this book for me to get through for y'all's entertainment), and tells him to take her to New Orleans in exchange. He asks her why, she simpers at him and flounces, and he stops to inner monologue about how pretty she is and how he admires her backbone – interesting, I've yet to encounter the thing, but go off, my man. He thinks about how much she must know about whatever's going on in New Orleans, and that he needs to find out more too, but it was difficult enough to get the Belvidere's route out of her already.
Dude. It took you what, twelve hours? I've had bouts of food poisoning that lasted longer than Sea Urchin's resolve.
Anyway, Burke decides that if Anemone has more intel on New Orleans he's going to seduce it out of her, grins at the thought, calls her a bitch in his thoughts and I imagine him in a vat of fire ants, business as usual. He ends the chapter by chuckling to himself as he thinks about sexually and emotionally manipulating his prisoner, and I seem to have misplaced my fainting couch, so the swooning at the thought will be postponed on my part. But since this is a romance novel and I've already heard way more than I care for about Burke's Axe body spray masculine sex appeal, we all know where this is headed.
Be afraid, gentle readers. Be very afraid. See you next time.
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