Written by Falconempress. Posted on May 14, 10:10 AM.

"You Slay Me" Spork - Chapter 8

Assling and co. were caught red – handed in Drake’s super – special treasure trove. One cannot help but wonder how is our air – headed protagonist going to try to get out of this one.

“Ah, Drake. Long time no see. We were … uh… in the neighborhood and thought we’d stop by and see how you were.”

Smooth.

Drake wants to know who her companions are and after she introduces Rene, Drake zaps him with his majeecks into unconsciousness. Assling freaks out, accusing Drake of killing her loyal source of transport and quirky French insults. The two have a horribly contrived argument over this and Drake explains that Rene is not dead, merely unconscious.

Jim offers to switch sides and work for Drake instead, but Drake has probably had some run – ins with annoying sidekick fodder and stares the demon down. He then proceeds to tell her he had been expecting a visit since the police were over earlier to bother such a respectable businessman (doing what, exactly?) as himself. Assling of course has another one of her “Durrrrr there is a pretty man here” moments when her brain totally shuts down and she stops percieving anything that is not somehow connected to Drake or, as the case here may be, Drake himself:

The memory of my highly detailed, erotic-beyond-my-wildest-dreams fantasy about him the night before was potent enough to make me shiver at odd moments during the day, but seeing him in the flesh took my breath away. I used a few moments to admire the hunter-green silk shirt he wore (the color matched his eyes perfectly) and the marvelous way it caressed the muscles of his arms and chest, as well as the tight fit of his black leather pants. He really was gorgeous, enough that my tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth for a moment.

“Assling really was stupid, enough that my headwound from bashing my cranium against what are now pathetic remains of my desk started itching again under all the bandages.”

Blah blah blah, she orders Jim to attack Drake to which Jim responds “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me” which gives Assling another reason to bitch about how horrible her life is and instead of trying to find a way out of the situation – ANY way out – she starts pouring her self – pity out on Jim WHILE DRAKE IS STANDING THERE THE WHOLE TIME DOING NOTHING. Seriously, how good a businessman can this guy be if he just lets people take his stuff and then does nothing to get it back? Probably not good enough to afford a fucking mansion.

Jim then snorts and in another bout of random exposition in the middle of what I guess is supposed to be an action scene nonetheless, treats us to this little gem:

Jim made a pouty face. “He’s not going to kill you— you’re his mate. Dragons mate for life; they can’t kill their mate or their own life ends.”

stares at the screen blankly

Nah, that cannot be true. Has to be some sort of a tragic, horrible typo or Jim is just babbling nonsense.

I looked at Drake. He was still smiling. “Is that true?”

Yes, Drake, tell us. And the answer best be “no”.

He looked me over carefully, his eyes lingering on my breasts.

Oh for fuck’s sake! Can’t you keep it in your pants? Just for a second? Is your restraint really so low your crotch itches even if you catch this woman trying to steal from you?

My mind went off on a little excursion remembering what it felt like to have his mouth on my flesh. I smoothed down the taupe linen tunic while I reminded myself that what had passed between us had been a dream, not real… even if the nightgown had been.

YOU – ARE – TOO – DUMB – TO – LIVE!

“You claim you aren’t my mate.”

“No, I meant that if I were—and I’m not saying I am—but if I were, is it true you can’t kill me without corking off, too?”

This woman not only lacks class, she also takes class out behind the shed, takes out a shotgun and blasts its fucking brains out.

The amusement in his eyes turned to outright laughter. “The demon does not lie.”

No. Just no. You can’t do this, MacAlister, you just can’t. You can’t take two of the worst, most clichéd, abused, overused and least – sensible tropes in fiction and write a book around them. No tone, but two. You take crappy, severely badly written, slobbering, wet-in-my-panties-sexual-fantasy paranormal romance centered around an abusive relationship between the two supremely annoying leads and spice it up with a modification of the telepathic companion, who is innately bound to the main character, in a deep and profound way and would even die if the character dies. You just don’t do that. According to the laws of physics, this thing should not be able to exist – it is way too lame.

But it is real. So very painfully real.

slumps in chair with face in her hands

There is nothing for me in the world anymore. Life has no meaning, there is no point. I cannot accept a world in which THIS is allowed to exist. I just can’t, I have to –

Chocolate?

Chocolate! Wheee!!!

ten minutes later

Nom nom nom

Where were we?

“Whew,” I said, breathing a huge sigh of relief. “That’s nice to know. Hoo! I was worried there for a minute that you were going to get a bit testy over me having my aquamanile back, but I don’t have anything to worry about if you can’t hurt me—”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t hurt you—I said I couldn’t kill my mate. As far as I’m aware, you have not agreed that you are my mate; therefore, were I to take exception to the fact that you have broken into my house with the in-tention to rob me, I could do so without any repercussions.”

Good. Because the creepiness levels were nowhere near high enough in the past chapter.

I clutched the aquamanile to my chest as I squared my shoulders and sent him as offended a glare as I could rally. “I do not like you.”

“And that’s exactly why I don’t eye – hump you every second I see you or why I don’t think about you every waking moment when I don’t.”

Blargh.

But oh wait! It’s been an entire chapter since Drake and Assling rubbed pelvises! And as every respectable romance story, this has to have as much sex in it as possible! Yaaaaaay! (heh, that’s the endorfines from all the chocolate kicking in).

He backed me up until I was against the wall, the coolness of the stone seeping through the thin linen of my tunic. “You little fool, I allowed you to enter my home. Do you really think I have learned nothing about security in all my hundreds of years of existence?”

Haha and soon there is something you will let him enter, haha, you see, it’s funny because- GUH! The tape is holding! It’s holding! What is that sound? Noooo-

riiiiip

SLAP

chair topples over

Okay, I’m done with the lame jokes, all right. And in any case, they cannot possibly be worse than what passes for humor according to Katie MacAlister.

Anyways.

We are then treated to a piece of exposition on Drake’s security systems intertwined with the absurd descriptions of what the deranged mind of Katie MacAlister considers to be “romantic”, blah blah blah, none of this really interests me, can we please move on?

His hands slid up my waist, slipping under my crossed arms to head for the no-man’s-land made up of my breasts. “Perhaps I wanted to lure you into my home. You liked my bedroom.”

No! No! Go back to the boring exposition! GO BAAAACK!!!

Why of course! Nothing says “true love” like random, inconsentual fondling and the kind of talk that will have all the police officers in a 15 mile radius screaming “FREEZE!” and bust you for being a sex offender. And let us not forget that he has her cornered, with her BACK AGAINST A WALL. There is no way for her to run, she is completely at his mercy and he is groping her. If you find any of this sexy, there is something severely wrong with you and you should seek help. Professional help, the kind that prescribes you happy pills and if those don’t work, recommends you for castration. And in case you are wondering yes, castrating sex offenders is a real practice. But only if the surgery aimed to remove the particular part of your brain affecting your sex drive fails. In this particular case, however, I only have one solution for the nauseating leads of this abomination of a book:

“It’s very… you,” I gasped as his thumbs rubbed across my breasts. The familiar fire was back in his eyes, a fire that warmed me to my toenails, a fire that set my whole body alight, but I was a woman determined. I kept a firm hold on the aquamanile as Drake pulled me tighter against him. “I thought you said you weren’t fond of me?”

THE MAN IS GROPING YOU, YOU ASSHAT! AFTER THE TWO OF YOU PARTICIPATED IN SOME HUMPING! READ THE FUCKING SIGNALS! Because I think there may be SOMETHING THERE. True, something abusive and indescribably wrong, but it’s something nonetheless! God dammit, I hate this book, I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it!

“I don’t have to like you to want you,” he murmured as he pressed his mouth against the pulse point in my throat. My knees threatened to give way under the erotic touch of his tongue against my flesh. I wanted to be offended by his statement, but in truth, I was not terribly happy with him at that moment, and yet he was stirring things deep in my soul that no one had stirred before. I was far from perfect, but I would not add hypocrite to my list of failings.

Of course he doesn’t have to like you. As long as you just lie or stand around, don’t move and let him do whatever he wills with you, the two of you shall have your perfect little piece of happily ever after. Because, after all, you cannot marry a blow – up doll.

I swear, this thing just can’t get any worse.

“Does he have his hand on your boob?” Jim asked, watching us avidly. “Is he copping a grope? ‘Cause that’s what it looks like from here.”

Oh, look, I was wrong. Because Jim is watching the whole thing! That’s… just..

I am not going to cry.

I am not going to cry.

Oh who am I kidding, I am already crying, this is so bad…

“Go away!” I frowned over Drake’s shoulder at Jim. It shot me a sour look but lay down and rested its head on its paws. “Drake, why did you really let me in?”

„Oh just to have some nice tea and cookies.“ WHY DO YOU THINK YOU STUPID TWAT?!

“Questions,” he said, nuzzling my collarbone. My spine went all boneless as the cool silk of his hair brushed against my jaw. What is it about men’s hair that makes it so sexy? “You always have questions.”

“Yes, be quiet already and let me grind against you some more. Enough of this question nonsense, woman!”

This is the dream, girls. If you find one like Drake, never let the man go. He is a keeper for sure!

So they talk while fondling each other and Assling is in utter SHOCK! After finding out that the “dream” she had about her and Drake getting all horizontal was – gasp! – not really a dream! Sadly, this does not make her think that maybe after all this, having Drake’s hand in her bra is not such a great idea.

But she still wants answers and he is not willing to give them, at least not for free.

My mind decided it didn’t want to cope with the fact that I had jumped the bones of the first handsome dragon I met a day after meeting him,

We all want to find a way to cope as well. Although for some of us, it will take years and years of therapy.

focusing instead on what Drake was doing to me now. “You mean that’s all it would take to get you to answer my questions—sex? Hot, steamy dragon sex? Hoo, you’re not going to—Are you going to—?”

Nooo, why did you have to do it? Why would you possibly want to put a word combination like „hot, steamy, dragon sex“ on a page? Whyyyyy? Why are you doing this?

“I told you that after the first time we would make love as humans do,” Drake answered, his tongue a brand on my quivering flesh.

Just… make it stop. Please. This can’t possibly get any more uncomfortable and disturbing.

“Wow!” Jim said. “Wish I had a camera.”

And again, I was wrong. So very painfully wrong. Fuck you, MacAlister, fuck you very much.

“Jim!” I squawked as Drake’s hand slipped inside my bra.

“Yo! Right here. Wow. I can’t believe he’s doing that in front of me. This is better than cable TV.”

Are there any words to descibe this? In any language? You have a dragon and a human female jumping each others bones in the presence of an unconscious French cab driver while a summoned demon in a form of a wise – cracking Newfoundland dog watches. Huh, I guess there is a word for all this:

MINDFUCK

“Can’t you make him go to sleep, too?” I asked Drake.

“He is your demon to command,” Drake murmured against the swell of my breast.

My mind kept telling me I was stupid to just stand there and let him seduce me.

Oh really? This mysterious “mind” thing is “telling” you that what you are doing is wrong? WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO IT ONCE IN A WHILE.

My body overruled my mind with a majority vote.

Of course it did. Otherwise this would not be a nightmare inducing PILE OF GARBAGE!

“Oh, yeah. I forgot that. Jim, I command you to close your eyes. And turn around. And don’t listen to us.”

“Party pooper.” Jim grumbled.

O_o

I think my soul just threw up a little.

Anyways, I am going to spare you the rest of positively vomiticious interaction between Drake and Assling and just sum up the important, and I am using the term very loosely in relation to this book, facts. We learn that for an ordinary dragon’s mate it would be enough just not to get incinerated during their first makeout session, but since Drake is the big kahoona in this dragon world, Assling also has to overcome a challenge and thus prove herself to the sept. Drake then insists that they quit the foreplay and move the party into a more horizontal position, which is when Assling realizes that he doesn’t really wuv her. Well, he does want to make love to her (if I can call the vile things that the two do to each other “making love”), but he doesn’t really like her as such. Really? I just can’t see why. Assling is such a lovable character!

MacAlister does makes a point about how sleeping around is Bad™ and how you should get into physical intimacy only with people you have a bit deeper feelings for, but after what happened in Chapter Five, the whole point just falls flat on its face and becomes little more than a laughable little hypocrisy on the author’s part. And it has apparently been a while since Drake got some (or any), because in order to hit that he starts convincing Assling that he does, in fact, care about her. At least in his own way:

His emerald gaze didn’t waver, but his eyes opened wider, the disbelief in them almost enough to make me laugh. “You do not sleep with men unless you are in love with them?”

“You don’t have to say the word like it’s something dirty.”

“What we did last night did not involve love.”

No, it most certainly didn’t. What it did involve, though, was something that I’m pretty sure was a violation of several laws concerning sexually motivated crimes.

Okay, that was not the passage, but I just wanted to put it up there just t show you. This is actually the first occurance of somewhat decent dialogue in the entirety of You Slay Me so far, so I also wanted to show you that. If this exchange didn’t happen with his tongue in her bra, it would actually provide a quite interesting view on how different their opinions on these matters are. But this is MacAlister, so this all happens with his tongue, in fact, in her bra. And I really need to get off the subject before I puke, so here is the passage I wanted to put up there:

His eyes grew dark. It was amazing how his irises grew brighter or darker with his emotions, but I didn’t have the time to ask him how he did it before he spoke.

HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE A DRAGON, DAMMIT. A while ago he BLEW SMOKE OUT OF HIS NOSTRILS and you were not curious about that, even though you were in a situation when you could ask. I… guh, what’s the point.

“You are the only woman in all of time who was born to be my mate, the one woman to whom my life is irrevocably linked, the woman whose death will bring my own, and you believe I don’t care about you?”

Heh. Funny.

What I always find interesting is that, especially in contemporary fantasy, whenever dragons are involved, they are somehow incredibly weakened and disatvantaged when it comes to their bond with a human. Take Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, for example – when the dragons rider dies, the dragon goes to inbetween and never comes out, which equates dying. They pulled the same shit in that godawful Eragon movie and now this. He is an ancient, absurdly powerful, fire – breathing, several tons weighing, clawed and fanged death machine, yet if he attaches himself to a human, he will die along with her. What is with this pussification of dragons? Sure, I kind of get it for the Pern dragons, them being genetically engineered by humans and therefore coming out with a disadvantage for the humans’ convenience, but it is absolutely unwarranted here. Why should he die when she does? How stupid and cheap is that? Oh, I know, It is there to justify the whole “you are my life now” nonsense and co – dependency issues, isn’t it? But I am thinking too much on this just by thinking on this at all, so let’s just move on.

Assling is upset because Drake wants to bone her – AGAIN – even though he does not wuv her, and that to her is a major turn – off, so she decides its time to lift the anchor and get out. It is more than obvious, however, that Drake is not just going to let her go (how does “crushed velvet” sound, anyways?). He even says so – she is not going anywhere with the statue. But the statue happens to be what she came for and is determined to not go anywhere without it. However is she going to deal with the whole Drake situation, though?

I’d like to point out that I had no choice. I really didn’t. I’m not a violent person normally,

Me neither but this book is somehow making me want to RIP THINGS TO SHREDS!

but I knew without a doubt that if I didn’t disable Drake, he’d simply take the aquamanile from me. If I had the aquamanile, he’d be pissed at me, but he’d agree to anything I asked in order to get it back. So I knocked him out.

Actually, I think I just stunned him. He wasn’t expecting that I would take his move toward me as a classical situation of attack from the front, but one of the things Uncle Damian had insisted that I do was take a course on self-defense. So I kneed Drake in the noogies, stabbed at his eyes with the fingers of my left hand, and brought my right hand—and the heavy aquamanile—down on his head. He hit the floor with an astonished look on his face.

Aaaand she knows martial arts. Hey, self defense counts! Which again adds to the never ending array of surprisingly convenient set of skills Assling has. Count with me:

- Demonology – Locksmithing/lockpicking – Martial arts – Looking absolutely stunning in that cocktail dress

This girl is a veritable reneissance woman! Or is it just a result of having a hack writer for a creator? You decide!

With Drake knocked out they rush out, with Jim carrying Rene on his back – however that works, I have been around dogs a lot in my day and Newfies are not that big. And of course the bloody dog has annoying wannabe funny comments the whole way but only when he is not busy feeling sorry for himself and complaining about everything.

“I’m not a beast of burden,” Jim snapped. “I think my spleen just imploded.”

I don’t think the word “implode” means what you think it means.

Since Drake decided to deal with Assling and co. alone and sent his henchmen away (yes, she actually uses the word “henchmen”), nobody stops them on their way out, which is yet another cheap cop – out this book uses, especially given how much noise they make, which is something even Assling acknowledges. This is just plain ridiculous. How do you think the session between MacAlister and her editor went?

Editor: “Um, Katie, how are we going to deal with the security staff in Drake’s mansion?”

MacAlister: „Oh, he just decided he could take Aisling and her friends by himself and sent them away.“

E: “Away where?”

MA: “You know, to that one place where henchmen go when they are not needed at the moment.”

E: “But they all make a lot of noise”

MA: shrugs “The henchmen are probably watching the Murder Channel on a TV or playing cards and smoking and drinking like all henchmen do and don’t hear anything.”

E: “OMG that makes so much sense! Now I think we should talk more about Drake’s abs here, he is so dreamy.”

MA: “You think so too? That’s what I thought but then I figured that I mentioned them before and maybe it would be too much, especially since his deep, smoldering emerald green eyes need so much more space.!

E: “You know you are totally right! We can stuff the abs elsewhere.”
giggles

Because you see, what disturbs me about this the most is that, okay, this is some sad, disturbed woman’s sick little fantasy. You know, like Twilight. And very much like Twilight, she wrote it down. But then somebody else, somebody who is in publishing business, a professional, a stranger, read this thing. And came to a conclusion that this should be released for the whole world to enjoy. And those of us, who have shreds of sanity left, to fear. How could this happen? Why does this book even exist? One possible answer is right up there. The second is that she didn’t have an editor at all and her book got published because of the dartboard and cocaine thing I mentioned in one of the previous sporkings. There is no way a decent editor went through this and okayed it for publication. No way.

But back to the plot or at least to what passes for plot around here. As they make their escape, Assling runs into a bunch of brooms and since all the henchmen are too busy playing with themselves, the brooms are the only problem they encounter on their way out. Rene is still unconscious so Assling goes to get the cab while Jim watches. While she is getting there, the cab driver regains his consciousness and asks what happened, so Assling lies to him and says there was another man behind him that took him out by doing a “karate chop thingy” (she uses these exact words) so that’s why he doesn’t have a bump. Not only it sounds retarded, but it’s also just a step away from “you tell everybody you fell down some stairs, if they ask about all the bruises”.

They drive away happily but their sense of victory is very short lived when Assling discovers the golden dragon statue is gone. Because it must have fallen out of her purse while she was tripping over all the brooms.

bangs head against a wall

Really, MacAlister? That’s what you’re going to go with? It slips out of her purse when she is stumbling over a bunch of brooms? Do you really expect us to buy this shit? Are you really going to blame this on her klutziness and bad luck?

HOW FUCKING LAZY ARE YOU?!

This thing has no right to exist.

So Assling realizes she cannot go back since Drake is by now surely conscious and already in possession of the artifact – did you bother to check, genius? You have a demon at your command you could send in to scout and grab it real quick. See? There. I just patched up that ridiculous plot hole and ENDED THIS WHOLE THING. IT’S OVER. WE CAN ALL GO HOME. THANKS FOR PLAYING. GOODBYE.

Of course the reality is much less merciful than that and I cannot quit just yet, just like Assling cannot quit trying to find a way to get the golden dragon back or else her ass is in a heap of trouble. Only in my case it’s because I hate myself. So she decides to go back to Amelie the creepy store owner to find out more on how to deal with dragons. I now absolutely loathe everything in the world, so I will stop here, where this chapter ends and go kick a puppy or something. See you until next time.

Thank you for reading,

falconempress

Tagged as Falconempress, Paranormal Romance, Spork, You Slay Me.

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