Monday, February 15, 2010

Spargelkun Burns and Shines







In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say right off the bat that I fucking love Burn and Shine. I love the writing. I love the characters. I love the plot. I love how much pulsepoint seems to know about picking locks. That being said, it all pales in comparison to how much I love this lemon.


Uneducated Edward can identify an implied narrator faster than any English major I’ve ever met, and Bella can accurately calculate her BAC on the fly.You simply can’t not love them. The story starts when they ‘meet’ by chance in a police station. Bella is scared out of her mind, Edward is an ass, and the UST starts creeping in before the initial hostilities have played themselves out.

It’s a complicated road to sex for these two, but there is no cockblocking for the sake of cockblocking.. Even their first kiss (in chapter nine) goes from promising to horrific in about five seconds. True to form, Bella realizes mid make-out that things are going faster than she wants them to and calls time out. Instead of understanding immediately and agreeing completely like the unrealistic ideal that we expect him to be, Edward is annoyed and harsh.


Bella gives as good as she gets though, and in the next chapters I found myself vacillating between realllly wanting them to bang and realllly wanting them to get away from each other before they inflicted any serious damage. The worst (best) part of it all was I really had no idea if or when either of those things would happen.


The line between high tension and overwrought cockblockery is a hard one to walk, and pulsepoint does it like a champ. There are no virgins here. There are no endless cycles of should I, shouldn’t I. No one is waiting for love or marriage or for some contrived external complication to resolve itself. The anticipation is authentic, and it is at once devastating and delicious… and suddenly they are kissing again.

I was literally gripping my screen when Bella launched her inner monologue. Pulsepoint pushed me to my very limit, and at the exact moment I gave up on Bella ever wanting to seal the deal, she came through with this:

I was so busy panicking about how to field the problem that it took me a moment to realize there wasn’t one. I absolutely wanted to have sex with Edward right now.

“My room’s at the end of the hall,” I whispered.

Rainbows and puppies and non-evil leprechauns burst from my heart and loins and I very nearly died of happiness, and while Edward followed Bella down the hall I was floating to the ceiling. It was time. Having survived fourteen chapters of glorious UST hell, the only fear left in my sploded little heart was that the invasion would happen before anyone got off. Sometimes it seems like the pants come off and the most unique, three dimensional characterizations become flat, soulless sexbots. Not here. Bella and Edward are present and defined in every moment.

This is Bella’s first time on top, and Edward is giving her the ride of her life. The position allows Bella to seize an opportunity she’s never had before: mid-coitus skittle-diddling.

When I came it was like a hallelujah victory moment for me. All that time lamenting that it wasn’t going to work out, that I was one of those women who were destined not to orgasm while being penetrated? Ha! With a sharp cry I ceased moving, savoring both my ecstasy and my triumph.

I was so happy for Bella, I wanted to give her a high five even more than I wanted to tell her to keep moving, because I never want them to stop having sex


spargelkun is a prolific reader and reviewer. She is regularly plagued by her troublemaking dog that enjoys dressing as a bee, her younger sibling she lovingly refers to as manchild (or "mc"), and finding just the right piece of ASCII art to leave in her epic reviews.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

um hi, guess who.

I LOVE YOU SK.

This story is amazing and I read Chapter 15 every night before I go to sleep and think of you.