The Curious Kinky Person’s Guide to Fifty Shades Darker, Chapter 15

Christian used to be a Master of the Universe (minus the blond pageboy haircut and fun-fur undies); now he’s regressed to the point at which Ana stepping into another room makes him panic. When she comes back, he flips from fear to arousal in an instant. Things get a bit hinky, and even Ana feels uncomfortable.

“Christian . . . Stop. I can’t do this,” I whisper urgently against his mouth, my hands pushing on his upper arms.
“What? What’s wrong?” he murmurs and starts kissing my neck, running the tip of his tongue lightly down my throat. Oh . . .
“No, please. I can’t do this, not now. I need some time, please.”
“Oh, Ana, don’t overthink this,” he whispers as he nips my earlobe.
“Ah!” I gasp, feeling it in my groin, and my body bows, betraying me. This is so confusing.
“I am just the same, Ana. I love you and I need you. Touch me. Please.” He rubs his nose against mine, and his quiet heartfelt plea moves me and I melt.
Touch him. Touch him while we make love. Oh my.
He rears up over me, gazing down, and in the half-light from the dimmed bedside light, I can tell that he’s waiting, waiting for my decision, and he’s caught in my spell.

So, Ana was saying “no” and “stop”, but she didn’t mean it?

Ana starts touching him on his chest, formerly a forbidden area, and he acts like a heavy masochist.

I reach up and tentatively place my hand on the soft patch of hair over his sternum. He gasps and scrunches his eyes closed as if in pain, but I don’t take my hand away this time.
I move it up to his shoulders, feeling the tremor run through him. He groans, and I pull him down to me and place both my hands on his back, where I’ve never touched him before, on his shoulder blades, holding him to me. His strangled moan arouses me like nothing else.

[…]

I groan and run my fingernails across his back. And he gasps, a strangled moan.
“Oh, fuck, Ana,” he chokes, and it’s half cry, half groan. It tears at my heart, but also deep inside me, tightening all the muscles below my waist. Oh, what I can do to him!

As I said before, Ana is a passive-aggressive sadist, though she won’t admit it.

After more vanilla sex, Ana asks the Expander about his nightmare and his childhood of abuse. (Her idea of pillow talk, I suppose.) We get Christian’s primal scene.

“Sometimes in the dreams she’s just lying on the floor. And I think she’s asleep. But she doesn’t move. She never moves. And I’m hungry. Really hungry.”
Oh fuck.
“There’s a loud noise and he’s back, and he hits me so hard, cursing the crack whore.
His first reaction was always to use his fists or his belt.”
“Is that why you don’t like to be touched?”
He closes his eyes and hugs me tighter. “That’s complicated,” he murmurs. He nuzzles me between my breasts, inhaling deeply, trying to distract me.
“Tell me,” I prompt.
He sighs. “She didn’t love me. I didn’t love me. The only touch I knew was . . . harsh.
It stemmed from there. Flynn explains it better than I can.”

Here we have the old “sadomasochists are driven by childhood trauma” idea, which is simplistic and generally just wrong. Ana also asks to meet Dr. Flynn. I anticipate a lot of ignorant psychobabble.

Back at work, Ana is up against her boss, Jack Hyde. Now that Leila’s out of the picture, we have to deal with the other doppelganger. As Christian grows increasingly squishy (though still controlling), the hardness transfers over to Jack, who is exhibiting every jackass boss trait in the history of working girl romantic comedies. Strangely, Ana can ask Jack why he’s being an ass, but she can’t with Christian.

Christian, meanwhile, pesters her with cutesy emails, and she has both Jose and Ethan vying for her attention. Gosh, who would be interested in little ol’ me?

Ana takes a moment by herself to think about Christian.

So can I love this man with all his issues unconditionally? Because he deserves nothing less. He still needs to learn boundaries and little things like empathy, and to be less controlling. He says he no longer feels the compulsion to hurt me; perhaps Dr. Flynn will be able to cast some light on that.

Fundamentally, that’s what concerns me most—that he needs that and has always found like-minded women who need it, too. I frown. Yes, this is the reassurance I need. I want to be all things to this man, his Alpha and his Omega and all things in between because he is to me.

This is a bit of retcon, saying that Christian was actually intent on hurting Ana, when previously it seemed he wanted to control her. Not quite the same thing.

Late at night at the office, we start the other whacko plot that will distract us from the Ana-Christian relationship, when Jack puts the moves on Ana.

His lips twitch into a grotesque smile, and his eyes gleam a deep, dark cobalt. “At last, I have you on your own,” he says, and he slowly licks his lower lip.
What?
“Now . . . are you going to be a good girl and listen very carefully to what I say?”