Previously: Surprise heir and another house on the Thames.
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Marines: Max is in a cab, on his way back to the office. He gets a call from someone named Joe. Joe somberly asks how Max is doing, so he knows he means “since your brother died.” Max says he’s surviving. Joe asks if he wants to fence, but Max can’t because he has meetings all day. “Earl shit?” Joe asks. Max laughs and says indeed.
Sweeney: This whole “hollow friendly banter to avoid explaining how any sort of job works” feels very familiar to me! I guess this is more of a title than a job, but…. it applies. Maybe. I actually don’t know what being an Earl entails. Anyway, I can’t wait to see him take to it instantly in the words of characters while being demonstrably bad it – characters describing things that are the opposite of what the novel shows being a hallmark of ELJ’s writing!
Mari: Reading an EL James book truly is like riding a bike. We thought we forgot, but no, here we are, pedaling along.
Anyway, Max tells Joe that maybe they can sword fight later in the week or maybe grab a drink. Joe offers to check if Tom is around. Max thanks him and they end the call. Max is in a bad mood, but I’m starting to think maybe Max just is a bad mood. (R: A bad mood spurted into a condom.) Right now, he’s pissy because he misses being able to do whatever he wants. (R: Note he’s done almost exclusively what he wants the entire book so far.) (S: That was fast! A shot for me!) He takes the time to explain to us that Joe is his friend and sparring partner, which of course, we would’ve never guessed. Max thinks some more about how rude it is that he can’t just go play with his swords right now and has to be responsible. “Kit,” he thinks, recalling his dead brother that died like a few days ago or whatever. “I blame you.” Charming.
Amazingly, we cut over any semblance of responsibility and join Max at a bar. It’s real loud in the bar, and he likes it that way so no one will talk to him. He heads to the bar for a drink because he’s spent the last day and a half in tedious meetings with fund managers, estate managers, and developers for all their riches and properties and shit. I’m honestly like already tired of having to listen to Max complain about the responsibilities of his incredible wealth. I’m too poor to have to put up with this shit, honestly.
Rebecca: “I need a drink and a warm, willing body” is a line I just had to read with my own, precious eyes. I’m sorry, eyes. I’ll have more wine, maybe it’ll get better.
Mari: Max tells us that Oliver Macmillan, who is Kit’s chief operating officer, has been in all of the meetings with Max, probably doing all of the work. I wasn’t really aware that like… earldoms… had COO’s, but what does my poor ass know.
Sweeney: If only this book about a newly made Earl made any of this clear! But also: seems like her understanding of an earldom is just Christian Grey with a title.
Mari: Kit and Oliver went to school together until Kit had to drop out and become a full time earl when their father died.
“Oliver is slight, with a shock of unruly blond hair and eyes of an indeterminate color that miss nothing.”
Imagine the decision to bring your main character to a bar so that he can think terrible descriptions of other people. Why are we learning about the Earldom’s COO in a bar??? WHY.
The point is that Max doesn’t really like Oliver with his ?????? color eyes, because he’s ruthless and ambitious, but hey, he’s running the earldom and deals with the staff. Max doesn’t understand how Kit managed all of this and held down a fund-manager job, but Kit was smart and funny. “I miss him,” Max thinks.
Rebecca: I already like him better than you, Max.
Mari: Correct.
Max orders a Grey Goose and tonic and thinks some more about how maybe Oliver is super good at his job, but also, he still doesn’t trust the guy so he’ll have to be careful. (S: Foreshadowing with the subtly of a pile of bricks! I feel so at home in this book!) The only bright spot over the last couple of the days was a call from Max’s agent, telling him he had a job the next week. This didn’t make Max happy because of the job, but because he got to tell “the old gorgon” that he wouldn’t be modeling for the foreseeable future. Sir, why were you modeling in the first place, then, you are very rich.
I jumped the gun, here is our answer:
“Modeling could be mind-numbingly boring, but after I was sent down from Oxford, the work had gotten me out of bed and given me an excuse to stay in shape. I also got to meet hot, skinny women.”
No one mentioned the Thames, but drink anyway.
Rebecca: OHHH I DID. I SURE DID. WHY IS THIS BOOK?
Mari: Max chugs his drink (R: You make me chug my drink too, fuckwad) and scans the room now for a hot, willing woman “skinny or otherwise.” How magnanimous. Will he pick up a fat woman? Absolutely not, but at least he thought about how he might. (R: He’s so brave!)
He also calls today “let’s fuck Thursday,” and I want it to stop immediately.
Rebecca: Now hang on. Maybe this could be something. Throwback Thursday is sooooo overdone now!
But really, James. Fuck Friday was right there. Just a day away! Get your shit together.
Mari: Max hears a woman laughing and their eyes meet. She looks DTF, so he gets happy in the pants. She’s got hazel eyes, long brown hair, and she’s drinking shots, everything Max is looking for in a “willing” partner. (R: I’m literally running out of wine.)
Max takes this woman, Leticia, back to his flat. She’s barely out of her coat when she’s on him, kissing him and suggesting to “Posh Boy” that they go to bed.
“Her attack takes me by surprise. Perhaps she’s more pissed than I thought. She tastes of lipstick and Jagermeister– an intriguing combination.”
Woooow. I mean, I was already on alert since James took the time to mention this woman was taking shots, but way to tell us in so many words that she’s definitely drunker than Max thought, but he’s still going to have sex with her.
Rebecca: I’m trying to think of something funny to say, but I got nothing. Not even half a bottle of red wine in. It’s just genuinely gross and unnecessary. What is the problem with her just writing a woman excited and sober (or at most, kind of buzzed) and wanting to have sex? We don’t need to be tripping over ourselves drunk or “Innocent” virgins experiencing lust for the first time to be wanting some sex.
Sweeney: Introducing unnecessary consent issues is her bread & butter! Also: women who want to fuck are bad! Duh!
Mari: Max tries to slow her down long enough to put her coat down, but she’s all “fuck my coat” and keeps kissing with “all tongue.” (R: Ew?) Max thinks about how he’d rather fuck her. Still, he does push her away a little, not because the lines of consent are blurry as hell here, but because he wants to make sure they make it to the bedroom. They have a little look around his flat and… and… she compliments the view out over the Thames. (R: Had to pour a new glass for that one.)
Leticia also compliments his piano and wonders if he’s ever fucked on it.
“Lord, she has a foul mouth.”
Excuse you, sir, but literally three paragraphs ago you were thinking “I’d rather fuck you.” You literally brought her here to fuck so calm the fuck down.
Rebecca: Seriously. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, etc.
Mari: Anyway, Max says he hasn’t recently, and he’d rather not tonight. He wants to take her to bed. He notices that her lipstick is smudged and figures he’s got some of it on his mouth, which “displeases him.” I’m so annoyed. SIR, you brought the drunk girl wearing lipstick home. GET OVER IT.
Leticia starts running her fingers over Max’s chest, but her nails are long and it’s almost painful. She takes his shirt off and then digs her pointy nails into his shoulders. She reaches for his pants, but Max stops her, probably because she’s getting super close to pawing at his dick.
Wait, not probably, definitely because they get to the bedroom, and Leticia reaches for his pants again, and he flinches. “I’m avoiding her nails.” He orders her to strip first and she is indeed *checks notes* skinny. (R: Aww shucks he ended up with a skinny girl who saw this coming.) Apparently, Max forgot one minute ago when he was afraid of her nails, and next tells her to take his pants off. She dives in, nails first, and he’s like “fuck this! She’s dangerous.”
2- I just.. why did you ask her to do it… when you knew about the nails?
3- If the whole she’s drunk thing weren’t making me cringe, this would be hilarious.
Rebecca: That’s exactly it! This is close to being a funny, sexy scene. But it’s just not because so much doubt had to be thrown in.
Sweeney: It’s the doubt and also the way he’s also going out of his way to look down on her for being an actual human woman who wants to fuck him??? Like????
Mari: Max sits up and flips her over, telling her she needs to be restrained. He heads to his bedside cabinet and reaches for a silk restraint and leather cuffs, telling her it’s her choice. See, he’s giving her a choice of which restraints to use so we’ll pay no attention to the fact that this woman is drunk enough to let a man she’s never met before tie her up.
She picks the silk, so he ties her up and tells her to pick a safe word. He threatens to blindfold her, too, and maybe even spank her.
Rebecca: All stuff that can be fun when discussed beforehand while no alcohol is involved. Ummm not to the point of a contract though. That was a thing, yes? It’s like she has no happy medium.
Mari: Correct, just unhappy extremes.
We jump straight over the sex to Leticia coming quickly and loudly. I 100% did not want to read a sex scene written by EL James, but if she was just going to jump over it, WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS CHAPTER?
Rebecca: For real. I can enjoy a good sex scene. We had to sit through every step of Alessia cleaning his apartment and doing laundry but sex is apparently just: 1) Tie up 2) Orgasm loudly. Cool.
Mari: Max watches Leticia sleep and recalls all the things he learned about her, probably through sex osmosis. Remember, he learns everything he could possibly ever want to know about a woman through sex. She’s a human rights lawyer (OH MY GOD) (S: Thank you for this outburst because I was gonna say that this detail unreasonably offended me but now I feel justified.), older than him, and likes to be restrained, at least when she’s drunk! (I added the last part.)
We jump again, this time to Max waking with a start from a dream in which he was searching for something, “an ethereal vision in blue.” Sounds like the Virgin Mary to me. (R: The sexy Virgin Mary.) The rest of his dream was him falling into an abyss, hence the startling awake. He wonders what his dream was about as “the pallid winter sun seeps through the windows as reflections from the Thames play on the ceiling.” Are we going to have to start interpreting the Thames?
Leticia isn’t next to Max when he wakes up, and he can’t hear the shower. He’s pretty happy about the fact that she’s apparently left and he gets to skip awkward small talk. That 0.1 second of happiness is gone when he remembers he has a meeting with his mother and sister that day.
Rebecca: More women! Ugh. Such nightmares they are!
Sweeney: Especially when they have independent thought 🙁
Mari: He hears something clatter to the floor from inside the apartment, and he’s like damn, conversation. He gets out of bed, pulls some pants on, and leaves the room. Instead of Leticia, he finds another young woman standing in his kitchen, staring at him with wide dark eyes. He asks who the hell she is and the absolutely pointless chapter ends. I feel like I’ve said that before, but really, WHAT WAS THE POINT.
Next time on The Mister: Max meets Alessia in Chapter 04.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I am a book, movie, and TV fanatic over the age of 30. I love baking, video games, and D&D. Legally I must tell you I am a disaster. I've written like 6 novels but haven't had the real courage to query agents yet, and also I don't know how to make decisions (DISASTER). So please send me wine for Courage. Maybe a heart too. Oh and also a brain.