Caught in the Act

by Ainslie Paton

June 19, 2017 · Carina Press

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I really, really wanted to like this anthology. Jewel heists? Oh, yes, please. Any kind of heist, really, but jewel heists have additional romance-friendly elements like wealth and potential world travel built in, coupled with a rather low risk for entrails, sexual assault, or crime elements that would preclude me from reading them.

Alas, while one of the three stories was fun and another was sort of meh, there was the one that gave me complete and utter rage to the point that I was highlighting sentences and texting in ALL CAPS and then venting out loud about it.

Let’s start with the fun and the meh.

Hoodwinked Hearts by Ainslie Paton

This story is a second-chance romance of sorts. Cleve Jones’ mentor was a professor who hid a secret life as a thief, and he groomed Cleve to be his successor. Said professor also had a daughter, Aria Harp, with whom he did not get along (and that feeling was mutual). Said professor told Cleve his daughter was off limits, which of course only heightened their attraction, and when Said Professor kicked the bucket, Cleve and Aria (who had been hooking up in secret, obviously) discovered that he’d left everything to Cleve and nothing to Aria. Aria noped out, and the story begins 10 years later.

Cleve is monitoring a secret camera set up over a very famous diamond he’s prepared to steal. The hand model being photographed seems dumb and giggly, and he’s sort of impressed by how entertaining she is, but he’s overseeing the theft of that diamond. After he swipes the diamond, he discovers it’s a fake and identifies the model as the thief – and then recognizes her as Aria.

Part of the story negotiates the reconciliation between Aria and Cleve, and part reconciles who is going to take the actual diamond and sell it to whomever wants to own a massive stolen rock (there are a few people, all of them dangerous).

The story didn’t work too well for me for two key reasons, both of them based on inconsistency.

First, as soon as Aria and Cleve are together, Cleve is overjoyed because he’s been looking for Aria for years. But holy smoke, is she terrible at assumed names. She learned from her dad how to create fake identities, and despite Cleve being Among the Best at Devious Things, he couldn’t find her. But her pseudonyms? All musical terms:

Melody Solo, Archie Peggio, Beat Cornet. The one thing Donald Harp had allowed his daughter to learn…was identity forgery. That’s why [Cleve] hadn’t been able to find Aria. She didn’t want to be found.

Two other names she uses while escaping with the diamond? Belle Canto and Allegro Bass.

Both of them are just terrible at this. I was baffled why she’d be so dumb and obvious, and not at all impressed with Cleve’s sleuthing skills. But ok, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, since he’d have to be looking for all the musical names in every direction. It was a lot easier to spot her and her Super Obvious aliases once he knew where she had been.

The other thing that bothered me was that once they get together, Cleve insists on taking over, and remains the one with all the information, all the options, and all the power. He knows best, he knows what to do to fence the diamond, he knows how to outwit Aria – she remains at a disadvantage after the first few scenes where she brilliantly gets away with stealing it in the first place. I also found Cleve’s refusal to listen to Aria’s repeated requests for him to leave very annoying. She asks him to leave, he refuses and looks like an entitled fuckstick, lather, rinse, repeat.

The heist part in the beginning was successful in part because Aria knew the people in the room with her would assume she was a dumb model and acted the part accordingly. But she wasn’t in control of much of anything after she got away with the diamond, and hadn’t really thought through the rest of the heist. She underestimated the person to whom she planned to fence the diamond, and of course Cleve Knows Best. Her inexperience and his entitlement were annoying, as were the rather strange plot holes. I’d give this one a C.

Strange Tango by Michelle Dayton

This was the third of the stories in this anthology, and the one I liked the best, though now that it’s been a week and I’m sitting down to review it, I can’t remember all that much about it. I remember being entertained while I read it, but I’m struggling to remember the plot.

Ah! Ok. Jessica Hughes was framed and fired from her tech job at a university, but has been using her technology skills to figure out who set her up, and why. Adam Henry is a professional thief and has his eyes on a big ol’ bag o’ diamonds about to change hands – conveniently between a mafia boss and the university administrator whom Jess suspects had set her up to cover his own actions.

Adam sees Jess in disguise at a university event, and recognizes the wig she’s wearing, which leads to him to wondering why a woman wearing an Armani dress would wear a cheap wig. He’s there to monitor his target, and realizes that this wig-wearing person is trying to steal a room key while dancing with a handsy predatory drunk man. So, being a standup kind of dude, he helps her out with a momentary distraction. Then he goes to find her after the evening of room key shenanigans, and realizes she’s not a professional thief but an amateur at best, and a semi-professional hacker, and that she has put herself in a considerable amount of danger.

They agree to work together, though Jessica sometimes decides to act when she thinks it best to do so, even when the methods she chooses increase the risk of her real identity being discovered by people who could very easily do away with her.

I ended up reading the final showdown scene twice because I wasn’t sure what had happened, or how they got out of the room without being arrested. I did like the resolution of the story, though, and the choices they made together for their future relationship (yes, vague on purpose, sorry). I also really liked that despite a few screw-ups, Jessica had a skill set that was formidable, and one that Adam did not share, so there was mutual admiration that was justified. There wasn’t as much of an imbalance of power between them.

Overall I’d give this story a B-. Fun, with well-written moments of adrenaline, danger, and suspense, though not altogether memorable.

And then there’s Rough Edges by Emma Sinclair.

This story made me SO ANGRY, y’all.

EXTREME ANGER.

Trigger warnings: for fat shaming, and what I considered to be very dubious consent issues.

Anastasia Staffordshire is at a party to celebrate the imminent sale of a diamond that she should have inherited but that ended up in the possession of her “corrupt cousin Leonard.” He’s gonna sell it, and that’s just terrible.

Jake Hoffman is a bodyguard for Leonard, and his family has been the security detail for the Staffordshire’s for at least two generations. He’s watching Leonard, whom he hates, because Leonard is rude and offensive, but Jake has no choice.

Let me stop here to address the part about Leonard, because his description was completely beyond the pale and offensive. How do you know Leonard is the villain in this story? Partly because he’s rude, and partly because he’s greedy, but most of the time, his poor character is closely aligned to the part where he’s fat.

He was in his early thirties, but looked a decade older. His expensive suits couldn’t disguise his expanding belly, and nothing could help his receding hair line.

So not only is he rather awful, but he’s also fat and unattractive! (And everyone on the “heroic” side of this story is slim, or appropriately muscular, and attractive. Of course.)

Now, I’m used to this kind of villain building, though I dislike it. But my blood pressure spiked later when Jake was trying to figure out where Leonard hid the jewel, and ruminates on Leonard’s reasoning:

It wouldn’t be in the desk safe. “But I would want to see it sometimes. And because it’s so hard for me to bend down over my pot belly, I probably wouldn’t put it in the floor safe.”

What the entire actual fuck? To quote TVTropes (who has a whole set of pages dedicated to the fat-guy-is-evil cliche):

Chances are, being fat in fiction means you’re a disgusting slob who leaves food crumbs everywhere, kicks your feet up on the table and treat the place like a low-budget buffet, talk while eating, and have food flying out of your (greasy) clothing.

I hate when reading a romance makes me feel bad about myself. And I hate cliched characterization like this. It’s cruel and hurtful and it pissed me the fuck off.

But I kept going.

I know, Lucy. I know.

So while we’re on the WTF Train, let’s look at Jake for a moment, specifically his job.

Somehow, the world of this story requires that he serve as security guard to the Staffordshire family because of…reasons. What reasons? NO IDEA.

…it’d been drilled into him from a young age that his job was to make sure the Staffordshires were safe. He took that responsibility very seriously.

Jake’s character has three jobs: despise Leonard, lust after Ana, and protect the Staffordshires. Why? Seriously, I do not know.

That said, Ana doesn’t have all that much to do either. She’s noble and good, the beautiful opposite of Leonard, deserving of the Staffordshire diamond because of her noble, good, not-Leonard-ness. At one point, Jake muses that

…something about Ana had stood out. She always seemed so much more than many of these people.

Aw, yeah, she’s not like other girls rich people.

Ana is, surprise, surprise, also the object of Jake’s sexual desires — desires which Jake isn’t supposed to act on because of the guard-job thing.

The weird thing about this story is that the heist part is extremely minor. There is a diamond, and there’s some cursory pursuit of it, but Jake’s real quest isn’t the rock.

Nope.

It’s Ana’s ass.

Really.

All this guy focuses on is sex, specifically anal sex, with Ana. Which, ok, fine, that’s a suitable heist, except that as soon as Jake and Ana hook up, he establishes a very dominant role without any conversation regarding consent to the way he talks to her, nor regarding the way he’s decided her ass is his for the heisting.

The story skips over any and all variations of an “I’ve been harboring massive hornyfeels for you, so are you down for backdoor action and some mild humiliating language play?” conversation, and heads right for a fantasyland marked by a lack of consent and established safe boundaries.

First, Jake knows best, and he knows what Ana wants, regardless of what she says out loud with her words:

“I want you naked, wearing nothing but the necklace, wrapped around my cock, nothing between us.”

“You’re being awfully presumptions [sic] aren’t you? You really think I’d spread my legs for you just because you’re allowing me to wear a diamond that has been in my family for generations?”

For the briefest moment, he thought he’d miscalculated. That was how well she played the haughty society girl. Then he saw the darkening of her eyes, the increased pulse rate pounding in her neck, and heard her slight intake of breath. He smiled and inhaled the flowery smell that was just pure Ana.

“Princess, it has nothing to do with the diamond…. I think you’d spread for me if I gave you the toy from a Cracker Jack box.”

I’m thinking all those signs, from the pulse to the gasp, could be indications of anger or fear, not just lust or arousal, but hey, what do I know?

There was still no conversation about role play, though Ana does say in her own initial inner monologue that she would, in fact, “lose the entire ensemble” of her clothing if he asked. She doesn’t say that to him though.

Maybe it’s my job? Maybe I’m supposed to bridge the consent here, because I as the reader know she’s got some hornyfeels. But because I was not entirely convinced, their dialogue was very frustrating.

So they go somewhere and Ana takes off her dress, and the fixation on Ana’s ass begins.

A thin strip of ribbon bisected the luscious globes of her ass. Her skin tone was perfect. It’d redden beautifully under his hand as he fucked her. Nothing marred the smooth skin of her back.

For the record, they haven’t had a conversation about spanking, either.

Then he tells her to go down on him, which she does without argument, and he ruminates that he’s “kept tabs on her dating life and he knew there wasn’t much of it. Ana was too good for most men…. But she had an innate sexuality about her she’d never been able to hide.”

Ok, dude, that’s just creepy. Hornyfeels and lifetime dedication as a security guard don’t qualify him for the level of overbearing behavior he has confessed to already.

And can I say again how much I dislike the, “I can tell you’re super into sexxytimes with my magical all-knowingness” trope? If I never again see the words “innate sexuality” about a heroine from a hero’s point of view, I’ll be very happy.

So of course he tells her to stop blowing him, and Ana wonders if she’s bad at blowjobs while he orders her to lie down and take off her panties. When she doesn’t remove them quickly enough – because she’s worried about her oral skills enough to ask him out loud if she wasn’t very good – he reassures her then rips her panties off.

She gasped. “Hey! I liked those, they were new, and expensive.”

He dropped the now ruined lace to the floor. “I’m pretty sure you can afford a new pair. Now, on the chaise.”

She may be okay with all this. I am decidedly not. I didn’t see consent except by silent obedience which is not the same thing. Ana’s POV descriptions didn’t really underscore her consent for me, either.

So of course Jake takes his shirt off and he’s “like a poster child for a fitness model,” which I’m not sure what that means, but he’s not fat like Leonard. (Grrrrr.)

Her “pussy is beautiful. All plump and weeping for me,” which, no.

Please. No weeping. No innate sexuality, and no weeping.

Then, “His finger was surprisingly thick, almost as thick as the cock of her last sexual partner.”

OK, WHAT.

Let me read that again:  “His finger was…almost as thick as the cock of her last sexual partner.”

WHAT.

HOW.

I don’t…. Is that…?

You know what? Let’s move on.

So Jake Dickdigits makes the first move on his personal heist and fingers her anus:

No one had ever touched her there before. She didn’t think she was supposed to like it as much as she did. She wriggled, trying to move his fingers.

“Don’t try to get away from me, Princess. I know what you like. What you need.”

His finger stilled when he spoke. She forced herself to relax…..

When his tongue returned to her clit, his finger gently pressed into her ass. It wasn’t an overly comfortable feeling, but it didn’t hurt either.

Here is how I read this scene:

1. Jake explores the southern bypass.
2. Ana has some ambivalent feelings regarding said exploration.
3. Ana gives no verbal assent but moves her body to signal dissent.
4. Jake says he knows best what she wants and needs.
5. Ana again gives no verbal assent but stops wiggling.
6. Jake then breaches her southern bypass, and it’s not “overly comfortable” but it doesn’t hurt, either.
7. Then she has a big massive orgasm.

Now again, this may be my job, to bridge the consent for this character.

But it’s not going to happen.

It’s a substantial peeve of mine when the hero is all, “I know your body and your desires better than you do.”

The fuck you do, sir. It’s not yours. Whether you’re a member of congress or a romance hero, NO, you do NOT know better than I do about my own body and my own desires.

This sequence really made me angry. I don’t see clear consent, or at least knowledgeable awareness about what is happening to her at that moment.

But she liked it well enough that she sticks with Jake, and Jake sticks with his ass heist plans, telling her a few pages later, “Had I anticipated this, I’d have brought a butt plug for you.”

Ana’s reaction: “Excuse me?”

Jake presumes she’s being play-haughty again:

“You heard me. I’d love to start preparing you for my cock. Just a small one to start.”

She looked down at his tented pants and then back up to his face. “I don’t think that would work.”

He laughed again, a real laugh…. “Trust me, Princess, it’d work. And it’d make you feel so good.”

Then Jake feels sad that it’s almost morning because he hadn’t had a chance to do all the things his hornyfeels wanted to do:

And he desperately wished they’d have enough time to get kinky. He instinctively knew she’d be into that.

Hold up. Stop.

He “instinctively knew” she’d be down for whatever he thought was “kinky?”

Again, I already operate on a sizable cranky dislike of “I know what’s best for you and your body,” but what the hell. If he knows anything about being kinky, doesn’t that automatically include speaking out loud specific words about that very topic TO ENSURE HER CONSENT?!

Apparently not.

Then Jake starts explaining aloud all the different positions in which he would like to engage sexually with her, and the pros and cons of each. And of COURSE Jake mentions his ongoing heist:

“And then of course, we have that glorious ass of yours.”

“Jake.” He didn’t know if his name was a question or a plea….

“Yes, Princess?”

“I like all of those. Except the last one.”

He leaned down so he could whisper in her ear. “If we had time, I’d make sure you’d learn to like the last one, too.”

OK WHAT THE GODDAM MOTHER TRUCKING HELL.

“I like all of those. Except the last one.” 

That sounded like “No” to me. Anyone else?

But no, he’ll make sure she likes it.

My Google search results are now littered with gifs that did not come CLOSE to the rage I experienced.

So they kiss and whatever and it’s time for sexxytimes again. And we arrive at the OTHER thing that makes me so angry.

Seriously, I am keeping a list. The list is titled, “All of these cliches can burn in a fire, please now.”

First we have the hero who knows best about the heroine’s desire and doesn’t need any pesky consent. He knows.

Innately. 

Second, we have this conversation and any and all variants thereof:

He pulled back…and grabbed the condom he’d stashed in his pocket earlier.

“Before, in the other room, you said nothing between us but the diamond.”

He caught a note of desperation in her voice. Or was that only the hope on his part?

“Ana,” he started, using her name so she’d know it was serious. But she stopped him, a small hand on his warm chest.

“I’m on the pill,” she said. “And I know it’s stupid. I’ve never had sex without a condom before and I never would, unless it was someone I knew well. I’d never even ask anyone else. I’m clean. Safe, I swear it. And I trust you. I trust that you’d never do anything to hurt me.”

HOLD UP.

HOW ABOUT HELL FUCKING NO.

First of all, he’s pretty determined to heist her ass with or without her consent, but by all means, let’s trust this guy.

Second, how is this the right time to have the “I’m on the pill and also I’m clean,” conversation?

Jake’s reply:

“I’ve never had sex without a condom. Never. And Leonard makes us get routine physicals. I’m tested for everything under the sun regularly and I haven’t been with anyone in…a while.”

I’ve read this scenario in many other contemporary romances, and I get it. I really do. I get it. It’s all a form of pseudo-virginity, both the bareback meatus and the ass heist. I understand the context. But the actual practice thereof is utterly rage-inducing.

It’s science time! Setting aside the whole “Leonard makes us get physicals” thing, which both seems somewhat dubious AND introduces the spectre of the person they both hate into an intimate moment, here are some FUN FACTS ABOUT HPV, courtesy of the CDC (PDF link):

Currently, there is no HPV test recommended for men. The only approved HPV tests on the market are for screening women for cervical cancer. They are not useful for screening for HPV-related cancers or genital warts in men.

There is no test for men to check one’s overall “HPV status….” Screening tests are not available for penile cancer.  

Yeah, I totally ruined that moment, but sorry not even remotely sorry.

Even if Jake was tested “for everything under the sun” by Leonard’s requirement (ew) (also why?) there isn’t a test for HPV in men.

Here’s some more important info from the CDC:

HPV (the virus): About 79 million Americans are currently infected with HPV. About 14 million people become newly infected each year. HPV is so common that most sexually-active men and women will get at least one type of HPV at some point in their lives.

Hot damn, tell me more about Leonard’s testing, eh?

So we’re supposed to just believe everyone who says that they’re clean, and we can trust Ana’s declaration because Jake kept tabs on her (ew), and because of Leonard’s test requirements (also ew), Jake’s all safe, too? Based on…what, exactly?

And they’re going to have this conversation while they’re half naked?

The “I’m clean!” “Me, too!” “Let’s go!” conversation at the very last minute, when all parties are about to visit the Bank of Coitus, is not ok. It’s disingenuous, it’s kind of gross, and it makes me as a reader think less of the characters because that is some irresponsible bullshit. I get that a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required in contemporary romance, but I’m ready for this conversation and its timing to stop right fucking now.

(Also: there is now a vaccine for HPV, and the CDC recommends all 11 to 12 year olds get it. Imagine that, a vaccine that can prevent a virus which can cause cervical, anal, vulva, vaginal, and penis cancers! Science is real… real fucking amazing.)

Anyway, back to the Bank of Coitus:

“Like I said, I trust you.”

She shouldn’t.

He didn’t deserve it.

Especially since he’d been planning to walk out of here tonight with the thing she wanted most in the world. And then he’d planned to sell it. In the end, was he any better than Leonard?

He’s going to sell her ass?

OH THE DIAMOND. I forgot. My bad.

Now we get to the part that solidified my rage into all capslock texting. It’s time for some arousal non-concordance.

If that term sounds familiar, it may be because of the podcast interview Amanda and I did with Dr. Emily Nagoski. You can learn a lot about arousal non-concordance from Dr. Nagoski’s post, Unwanted Arousal: It Happens, but this is the salient part:

So, in other words, genital response, like “weeping” and similar descriptions, are merely that: a response. They do NOT equal desire.

Anyone got questions? How about Jake? Well, Jake likes spanking, and does not know about arousal non-concordance, and neither does Ana:

He spanked her again and she frowned. She wasn’t sure about this. It didn’t feel bad, but it didn’t feel good, either. She didn’t think. Though his fingers thrusting in and out of her felt amazing.

“What the hell was that one for?”

“For pouting.”

“I wasn’t pouting.”

Smack.

Her ass really stung now. She should be pissed that he was treating her like this. It wasn’t like you tried to get away. 

“I know you like it. I wouldn’t have kept going if you didn’t like it.”

“I don’t like it. My butt hurts….”

“You body says otherwise. Your pussy is dripping, and not just because I’m fingering you. You should’ve felt how tight you squeezed me when I spanked you.”

Oh hell, betrayed by her own body.

NO. No NO no NO

NOT betrayed by her own body. Seriously. NO.

Sexually relevant does not equal sexually arousing.

Dripping, weeping, and all other unfortunate word choices to describe genital response do NOT MEAN SHE LIKES IT.

In fact!

She said, “I don’t like it.” OUT LOUD.

And her body is NOT saying something different. Nor is it betraying her. To quote Dr. Nagoski:

There is no rage gif that encompasses my fury at this time.

SO, yeah.

I was not enjoying this story. I didn’t have much hope that there was going to be a discussion of boundaries or consent or “Hey, ask before you spank me or drive your dick-sized digits up my anus” conversations in the rest of the book. I was beyond angry at Jake Dickdigit’s repeated insistence that he knows best what Ana wants, and that every time she speaks aloud her preferences, he brushes aside her protests and lack of consent. I’m angry again re-reading it all.

I skimmed the rest of it, still slightly hopeful, but no.

I’m giving this an F for offending and infuriating me, for lack of consent, and for absent conversations regarding boundaries, respect, safety, spanking, anal play, and sexual kink. Her “no” was never respected.

So overall, I think that averages to a D.