Chapter 19 begins with Rhys just breathing on Merry. Seriously, he’s just blowing on her. Merry raises her hips as an invitation for Rhys to do more and he laughs at her.

He laughed that laugh of his that was masculine pleasure and his own amusement.

I can imagine this fucking laugh and it makes me want to strangle Rhys.

He laid his weight on top of me ,resting the hard, long length of himself between the cheeks of my ass. The feel of it made me cry out.

What.

“If I truly  loved you,” he whispered, “I would do what Kitto has done. I would refuse to have intercourse with you. I would take myself out of the race for king. Kitto did it because he knows that neither court would ever let a half goblin sit as your king. They’d kill you both first.”
He settled himself more firmly against me, pushing his hips just a little. It made me writhe as much as the weight of him would allow, but the seriousness in his voice didn’t match what his body was doing.
Rhys continued to whisper against my hair. “I know you love Doyle and Frost. Hell, you even love Galen more than you love me, even now when you’ve both realized what a political liability he would be as king.”

This jackass speech continues a little later.

“If I truly loved you, I would take myself out of the running for king. I would help you get your heart’s desire, which is Doyle and Frost. But I am too selfish, Merry. I cannot give you up without a fight.”
I spoke in the voice that his grip allowed me, breathy. “It isn’t a fight.”
“Yes,” he whispered fiercely. “Yes, it is. Not of strength of arms, maybe, but it is a battle. For some of us, the prize is to be king. But for most of us, Merry, we would want you as our prize even if there was no throne.”
He shoved his body against mind hard and fierce until I cried out for him. Then he squeezed me even tighter until I thought I would have to ask him to stop so I could breathe. His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss against my ear, so fierce, so full of emotion. “I want to win, Merry. I want you even if it breaks your heart. I am a selfish bastard, Merry. I won’t give you up, not even to see you happy.”

What sort of cockhead asshole prickisnness is this nonsense??? Merry wanted Rhys to make love to her so that they could comfort each other, and then Rhys admits he would rather have Merry to himself than let her be happy with Doyle or Frost. What a fucking asshole! If I were Merry, I would kick his ass out this very instant. Except I am not Merry. I have self-awareness and intelligence and self-control and I do not put up with male bullshit.

So Merry does’t do anything, as she is wont to do. Merry just lays there and puts up with Rhys being a complete fucking jackhole. He tells her how much he hates the thought of her fucking the two goblins that night, especially because it means the two goblins have a chance of getting Merry with child.

“I hate the thought of them with you tonight, Merry. I hate more than you are excited by the thought of them tying you up and fucking you. God, I hate that maybe most of all.” His arms tightened around me once more. “See, I don’t love you, not really. If I loved you, truly loved you, I’d want you to be happy. I’d want you to have the sex you enjoy, not just the sex I think you should have. But that’s not what I want for you. I want you to be gentler than you are. I want you to want sex the way I make it. The way I like it. I hate that you want things that I think are pain and not pleasure. I hate knowing that though you enjoy sex with me, it’s not everything you need, or want.” He dug his fingers into my breasts again until I cried out again, and my body bucked under his.
He let go of me abruptly, pushing himself above my body so that his arms framed me on either side, but his hips were tight against me. 
“Because I hate the thought of the goblins with you tonight, because I want you with me more than I want you happy, because I am a selfish bastard, I am going to fill your body with my seed, and I am going to pray while I do it. I’m going to call power while I do it. I want you pregnant with my child, consort help me, but I do. Goddess help me, but I do. Not so we will all live. Not so Cel won’t sit at the throne, and divide us in civil war. No, nothing so noble, Merry. I want it, because I want you, even knowing you don’t want me.”
“I do want you,” I said…

WHY ARE YOU LETTING HIM SAY AND DO THIS TO YOU, MERRY???

I felt the head of him pushing against me, but I was still too tight for the angle.
I said, “You’ll need to use a finger to start. I’m too tight with no foreplay for this position.”
He kept pushing at my body, harder, fiercer.
“You’ll hurt yourself, Rhys,” I said from where my face was almost buried against the pillows.
“I want it to hurt,” he said. Then I felt him break the surface of me, find the barest part of himself inside me, and I stopped protesting. He forced himself inside me, fighting the tightness and the lack of wetness of my body. If I had been wired differently, it would have hurt. It wasn’t that I couldn’t be hurt, I could. Even intercourse for me could be done so it was only pain, but you had to work at it, you had to be bad at it. Bad in a way that Rhys was not.
I started screaming for him. My body orgasming simply from the feel of him forcing his way inside me. Not just one orgasm, but waves of them rolling over and over my body, making me writhe and push myself against the force and strength of him. The pleasure of it spilled out of my mouth in one ragged scream after another. I screamed, “Yes” and “God” and “Goddess” and finally at the end I screamed his name, over and over and over.

Are these even entertaining sex scenes? Merry seems to constantly start orgasming the second the dude enters her – how is that in any way fun to read? I don’t read a lot of romance or smut or books with many sex scenes, honestly, so I don’t even know. Is this good? I’d think it’d be boring as fuck and make me not want to read any further. Aren’t sex scenes about the imagery and feelings they can convey? People read them as a way to put themselves into the scene, feel what the characters are feeling, right? Isn’t it all about the build-up? Why fucking rush immediately into waves and waves of orgasms?

The dim room filled with the light of our bodies, glowing like twin moons of rising powers. He made my skin run with light. He dug his hand into the shining garnet of my hair and jerked my throat backward as he rode me. The roughness of it made me scream again, but he let go of my hair as his body began to fight him for rhythm. His breathing changed and I knew he was close, close, and fighting to last that little bit longer, so that I would scream underneath him for just a little bit longer.
I was down on all fours where his grip had moved me. My breasts hung down, slapping together from the fury of his sex. I screamed my pleasure. I filled the room with his name like a prayer to some angry god. Then his body made one last tremendous thrust so deep inside me that I knew it should have hurt, but there was too much pleasure for real pain.

There’s just no feeling in these scenes. It’s all so robotic and cold. People actually read these scenes and enjoy them? How?

Apparently, all is forgiven after the sex ends, and the next few pages are pretty much just Merry telling Rhys how amazing he was, and Rhys telling Merry how good she is. I’m serious. Look at this shit:

“You were amazing,” I whispered, my own voice a little rough from the screaming.
He smiled at me. “You really don’t have any idea how good you are at this, do you?”
I’m good, or so I’m told.”
He shook his head. “No, Merry, no joke, you are amazing in bed, and on the floor, and on a sturdy table.”

Then a little later:

“You were magnificent,” I said.

So Rhys excuses himself to go shower, and Kitto enters the room again, and they cuddle up together so that Merry can get a little bit of sleep.

Since I get all of these books as Kindle e-books from the library, my copies have digital highlights, to show if other people think something in the book is important or has merit. It’s telling me that the following paragraph has 129 highlights. Look at what people seem to think is some poignant point LKH is trying to make:

The constitution of our country says that all men are created equal, but it’s a lie. I’ll never be able to make a jump shot like Magic Johnson, or drive a car like Mario Andretti, or paint like Picasso. We are not created equal in talent. But the place where we are least equal is the heart. You can work at a talent, take lessons, but love, love either works or it doesn’t. You love someone or you don’t. You can’t change it. You can’t undo it.

Then why the fuck are SO MANY STORIES based on people who at one point hated one another and felt absolutely no love at all towards the other but end up falling in love? You either love someone or you don’t? You can’t change it? Bull fucking shit. If any of that were even remotely true, romance as a genre would fail completely.

Fuck this book, I hate it so much.