Chapter seven begins with Roane driving Merry away from the police station. She remarks that she knew it would have been smarter for her to drive herself straight to the airport, as she had all the stuff for a new identity in her own car, and she could have escaped right away, but she instead let Roane take her back to his apartment. Since she was still covered in the magical sex oil, her only focus was on taking a shower and cleaning as much of it off of her as possible.
She immediately began running the shower once they get back to Roane’s place. As she is removing her clothes, her mind starts wandering and now she’s again thinking about how much she misses sex with another sidhe. When she still lived in Faerie, she had been engaged to a sidhe man named Griffin. They were engaged for seven years, but he eventually left her because she was not sidhe-enough for him, being half mortal. She was just a pale imitation of the sidhe women he could be with.
Roane enters the bathroom and Merry, stuck in her dress, asks him to unzip it for her. She warns him that she’s covered in the oil still, but he’s wearing medical gloves which would protect his hands from the oil, so he helps her out of her dress. As she’s stepping out of the dress, she stumbles in her heels and places her hand on Roane’s shoulder to steady herself.
Whoops.
The slight bit of oil still on Merry’s hand immediately affects Roane, and he grabs Merry’s dress from the floor, wringing the oil out of it so it runs down his bare chest. He takes the oil in his hand and then rubs it all over his dick, which sends him into basically a sex frenzy. They begin kissing and make it to the bed, and then there’s a pretty rough sex scene. Not just rough to read, but just rough.
Remember, Merry was just raped and then had her rapist ripped apart by spiders and glass while she hid under the bed. She just spent four hours being interrogated by a cop who didn’t believe she had been raped because she appeared to be mostly into it. None of that matters anymore, I guess, because magical sex oil?
After they both finish, of course at the same time, and then begins the customary LKH after-sex chats.
LET ME TALK ABOUT THE SEX IN LAURELL K HAMILTON NOVELS
My chief complaint about all the sex in her novels isn’t that there is so much sex. It isn’t that there’s so much weird sex I’m not at all into, or that I’m uncomfortable with the sex they’re having. Oh no, that’s all fine and dandy. It’s that her characters FUCKING AIR ALL THEIR GRIEVANCES AND PROBLEMS AND EMOTIONAL HANGUPS AND TALK SO GODDAMN MUCH. A sex scene in her novels could and typically do span CHAPTERS because at some point someone hurts someone else’s feelings and HOLY SHIT THEM’S THE BREAKS and they have to talk all about it, smooth everything over, before the sex can start again.
This happens in nearly EVERY SINGLE SEX SCENE in EVERY SINGLE NOVEL. WHO HAS SEX LIKE THAT? I don’t want to go into my own personal bedroom habits, but I’ve never once had to stop to talk about how “that look you gave me that I happened to notice you give when you were looking away from me” or whatever bothered me. First off, I don’t let myself get bothered by such inane shit. Secondly, I let it ride until everyone’s had their fun, because WHY NOT. Why ruin the moment? Why? How can that even be remotely enjoyable? It definitely cannot be a sign of a healthy sex life.
Anyway, at least this post-sex talky times occurs after they’ve already both thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Roane notices that he’s able to see all of Merry’s scars on her body and asks her about them. She tells him all about the faerie duels she’s been in over the years. The first scar that Roane points out, a big brown raised scar on her ribs just under her left breast. In that dual, the sidhe she was dueling called their “Hand of Power”, which is a magical ability that only that sidhe possesses. This sidhe’s hand of power was able to lay their hand upon Merry and crush her ribs, tear through muscle, in order to crush her heart, all without breaking the skin. Luckily for Merry, though she lost the duel, she did not die.
In another duel, a sidhe tried to force Merry to shape-shift in the middle of their fight. Most sidhe cannot willingly change shape. In this duel, Merry was able to kill the sidhe she battled, which made the sidhe realize that by taking a blood oath with Merry, as all sidhe do prior to a duel, they inherit her mortality for the duration of the dual. Merry was able to easily kill the sidhe she dueled when he was distracted trying to force her to shape-shift.
Merry admits that she never developed any hands of power, despite the fact that all sidhe had one. The fact that Merry lacked this was another reason most sidhe looked down on her and denied her her birthright as princess. Despite not having a hand of power, however, Merry is descended from five fertility deities, and she’s able to use her hand to bring Roane back to strength so soon after their sex. She can bring anyone back to full sexual strength, over and over, as quickly and as often as she wants.
OH HOW CONVENIENT.
This time, she allows Roane to be dominant, as Merry didn’t trust that in all her sidhe-ness she wouldn’t hurt him. The sex is so fantastic that as they are both climaxing, a metaphysical ocean fills the room, and to Merry it feels as if they are being held in this invisible ocean, caught among the pulsing of the waves.
As they finish, Roane rolls off of her and onto the floor. Merry moves to look after him and he throws a hand over his face as a reddish fur began to cover his body. He shape-shifts into a large red seal. It clumsily hobbles across the room, and then its back unzips and Roane steps out of the body, holding the seal skin to his chest. Merry was able to fuck the seal back into Roane.
Oh boy!
I bet that’s a sentence that was never typed before.
The chapter ends as they fall asleep, because, you know, Merry doesn’t need to desperately fucking escape LA or anything.
Characters Introduced:
Arzhul, Rozenwyn, Bleddyn – three sidhe who had challenged Merry to duels in the past. Both Arzhul and Bleddyn were killed by Merry. Rozenwyn still lives.
Themes Introduced:
Hands of power – all sidhe possess them, except for Merry.
Sexiness Rating: 2/10. Eh, there’s some sex. You might like it.
Trailer Park of Emotion 