The Curious Kinky Person’s Guide to Fifty Shades Darker: Chapter 4

There’s a fair bit of action in this chapter, but not much to actually advance the plot. Also, EL James’ idea of witty, flirty banter wouldn’t pass in a CW teen soap.

They talk about Christian buying the company Ana works at, and says that if Ana goes to another company, he’ll buy that one too.

Thankfully, they have sex instead of actually resolving any of the mountain of problems. Christian ties her to the bed, and thankfully he does get her consent beforehand. However, it still isn’t clear that Ana really gets this whole “consent” thing. He uses her robe sash. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a thick terrycloth sash, not a light silk sash, which is not safe for bondage.

When I’m tied-up, staring at him, he visibly relaxes. He likes me tethered. I can’t touch him this way. It occurs to me that none of his subs would have touched him either—and what’s more, they would never have the opportunity to. He would have always been in control and at a distance. That’s why he likes his rules.

There’s actually something to this, that Christian prefers the highly structured interaction of a BDSM Scene to the unpredictability of vanilla sex. In light of his issues about touch, this makes sense.

He does a little food play with her using vanilla ice cream, followed by intercourse. We’re still in the training-wheels level of BDSM, which I have to admit is okay.

Ana has another bad dream, and tells Christian about meeting Leila earlier. Christian’s first impulse is to call his private security at 5am (must be nice to be rich.) We find out that Leila has been harassing Christian’s housekeeper and made a suicide attempt in front of her, though its discomfiting that the psychiatrist attending her says it’s just a cry for help, and not serious.

I distract myself with pouring tea into teacups. So Leila wants back into Christian’s life and chooses a suicide attempt to attract his attention? Whoa . . . scary.  But effective.

As I said earlier, Leila functions as a dark reflection of Ana. Ana sees Leila’s self-harm as primarily a way to manipulate Christian, not as a sign of serious mental illness. Compare this to Ana’s own attempts to manipulate Christian.

Of course, Christian immediately forgets that a person he claims to be concerned about is in danger, in favour of sex with Ana. This gets diverted to another argument about the gift of the car he gave her. He responds to her defiance by making another call to deposit money in her bank account, which, of course, he knows.

Did I mention how, with only a slight change in perspective, Christian Grey is utterly terrifying?

Actually dealing with this is abandoned in favour of more sex.

After breakfast, Christian takes her to a salon named, of all things, “Esclava”. Ana realizes he’s subtly imposing the contract on her bit by bit: first the personal trainer, now the salon (which he, of course, owns). It’s like boiling a frog.

We also get to meet Mrs. Robinson, aka Elena. This sets off a minor psychotic episode of jealousy in Ana.