Book Review: Buttons & Lace

Title: Buttons & Lace
Author: Penelope Sky
Genre: Romance, Fiction

What It’s About: Pearl was cooking in her apartment, when a man with an Italian accent knocks on the door looking for Jacob, her boyfriend, and tells her to tell him that he needs to pay up or else. Pearl forgets about the man when Jacob returns home, and tells her that he’s been fired from his job. For the next two months, he does nothing at home while she works for the City of New York as an engineer, and when she brings up the Italian man looking for him, Jacob doesn’t react beyond telling her that he’s taken care of it. At the end of the month, Pearl comes home from work to a clean apartment, and Jacob, who has cleaned himself up, tells her that he got a new job so he’s taking them both on a trip to the Bahamas. At some point during the trip, he takes her to a restaurant off the all-inclusive resort and then forces her to walk with him onto the docks because he wants to see a military ship or a cruise ship. Suddenly, Pearl’s head is covered by a black cloth, Jacob is punched, and she’s drugged.

The next time Pearl wakes up, she finds herself on a ship with no way out. One security man attempts to rape her, only for her to best him with his belt and get shot by his comrades, one of whom tells Pearl to undress and wash in the shower room. He continues to watch her throughout dinner and then shows up in her bedroom at night with a syringe to try make her more pliable, but she fights him off, hitting him in the dick and balls several times, resulting in more security pouring in and hauling him out laughing that he got bested by a chick. She finds the syringe and uses that on another guard who comes into her room, steals his gun and is almost on her way out, when she decides to turn back for the remaining girls on the ship and gets caught. She’s then placed onto a chair and examined by a doctor, who absolutely does not care that she’s been kidnapped and is being trafficked. He asks her questions about her sexual history, does a swab and sends her on her way.

Pearl gets taken from the boat to the mainland, and placed in a room with bars on the window. A stylist comes to make her pretty and dress her up for the auction, where she gets sold to the highest bidder for three million dollars. In the car, man promises to hurt and abuse her so hard that she won’t walk straight for a week as a welcoming gift, and in turn she promises to kill him as a parting gift. Unfortunately, he makes good on his promise and she gets sexually abused by him and even later by his three cronies, who make her bleed.

In the meantime, Crow is meant to meet with Bones to get his sister, Veronica back. Bones is late, but when he arrives, he lets Veronica go and Crow realizes that Veronica is no longer the person she was, having been abused by Bones with such savagery that she looks like a shell of herself. His brother, Cane, is there with him, and they give Bones the agreed upon money before he tells Veronica to walk over to her brothers. She walks too slowly for Bones, so he shoots her right in front of Crow, and after a gun fight, he drives off. Crow and Cane figure out that Bones paid three million dollars for a new slave, which is something he’s never done before. And they also find out a few other things that were the doing of Pearl.

After getting abused by the three men, Pearl decides that she needs to do something to gain Bones’ trust so that he won’t share her with others. She starts manipulating him by telling him that she does hate him but also wants to have power like he does. This piques his interest, and Bones willingly takes her to his warehouses where he shoots a man that was part of his illegal weapons manufacturing plant. He also takes her out to the Opera–something that Crow and Cane find out he’s doing and is unusual as he’s never done that with any of his slaves.

At the Opera, Pearl uses the restroom in an attempt to run away from Bones, but unknowingly meets Crow who tells her not to run away, and that she would make it worse for herself. So she returns back to Bones, despite not really wanting to, and realizes that she passed a test with him, as he believed she would run away, so she’s gained his trust. Then one evening, while they’re having dinner together, there is a blast, and Pearl gets kidnapped by Crow and Cane, who take her back to a warehouse, where Cane and his mean try to have their way with her. Except Pearl surprises them all and fends them off until she’s cornered in a room, and Crow decides to take things into his own hands to end this chaos. He promises her that Cane and his men will not hurt her, but she has to accept the syringe from him so that she doesn’t know where he’s taking her, though he doesn’t promise her that he won’t hurt her. He finds it odd that she doesn’t want the syringe because most women experiencing these horrendous moments would want it to at least not feel it, but he realizes that for her it’s about control. Ultimately, she takes him up on the syringe, and he takes her to his home in Italy.

Pearl then wakes up in a beautiful home, and spends that time healing, though she is still his prisoner. Crow does promise her not to hurt her, and the one time he does come into the bedroom to do something to her, she starts to cry out of fear, and it turns him off, so he leaves her alone. But then when he returns from work one day, he hears that his brother is in his house, and knows exactly what is going on. Crow runs up into her bedroom, busts the door open and finds Cane naked with Pearl tied up in bed–so he pulls out his brother, promises the revenge on Pearl, and sends him off, before turning back to Pearl and checking in on her.

He eventually gets into her bed, while she is dreaming, and takes care of her sexually. At first, Pearl is embarrassed and ashamed at her reaction because he is her captor, and avoids him for some time. Then she visits him in his office after he had just finished reading her file and discovering some things that piss him off. He tries to send her out of the office, but on her way out, she stops and notices the artwork full of buttons, which makes her want to ask him a question but she stops when she realizes he continues to glower at her. This gives him an idea–he has a jar full of buttons; three hundred and sixty-five buttons. The next day he demands her to come to dinner, but she denies him twice through his butler, before he goes upstairs himself and threatens her to come downstairs. So she does–and he tells her that he will give her the thing she yearns, freedom, but she has to earn all 365 buttons in the jar.

Pearl thinks about it for a week, then asks him some questions which he answers–she gets to retain control on what they do–and then agrees to it. For every sexual act, she gets a button, and he starts her out slow–normal sex, which Pearl seems to love, with the way her body responds. But it disgusts her–she should not love this, she’s upset that her body is betraying her–and so one night, she grabs a knife and holds it against Crow’s throat. He dares her to kill him, but she can’t go through with it, and they end up having sex in his bedroom, before she falls asleep next to him. For the first time since her whole ordeal started, Pearl is able to sleep soundly.

But for that, Crow promises to spank her, and the next day at dinner he tells her that her punishment will be spanking by belt, which freaks Pearl out. He offers only one button for it, but Pearl negotiates five, to which he agrees. He shows up in her room, and at first Pearl finds it hard to swallow the idea of being spanked with a leather belt, considering that Bones did that to her and it was rough, but she finds herself enjoying it and getting wetter when Crow does it, before he fucks her and she has a really good orgasm.

Then Cane comes back to visit Crow again, and Crow locks her in her playroom for safety. During their conversation, Cane tells Crow that Bones is willing to pay 25 million for Pearl, but Crow decides that he does not wish to give Pearl up–he knows his brother will be pissed if he gives Pearl her freedom, especially as Cane wants revenge for what Bones did to their sister by taking it out on a woman that seems to be important to Bones. Crow sends Cane away saying that he’ll handle it, and then heads up to see Pearl in his playroom. Crow wants to have sex with her again, and he wants to do anal sex.

Pearl isn’t comfortable with it because she hadn’t liked anal under Bones, finding it painful. She negotiates 7 buttons, and Crow agrees but tells her that he will give her 5 buttons only if she likes it. He uses a butt plug on her, then when she’s wide enough, enters her, and it’s the strongest orgasm she’s ever had. She tells him herself that he owes her 5 buttons only. Crow had revealed to Pearl earlier that he doesn’t enjoy having sex with partners when it hurts them unwillingly–he does get off on pain, but only if it’s willingly taken by his partners.

Pearl struggles with guilt–she has completely forgotten about Jacob when she’s with Crow and during the amazing sex that she’s having. But then she remembers Jacob and feels like crap because she believe that he’s waiting for her and worrying about her. After all, it’s been six months since she was kidnapped, and it would probably help to get word to him to let him know she’s okay. Pearl confides all this to Crow, and when she asks him to let her call Jacob, he angrily tells her that she should forget about that fucker. He doesn’t want to reveal it at first, but then Crow tells her that Jacob had sold her to traffickers for over a hundred grand in order to pay off his debt. Suddenly everything adds up for Pearl and she realizes that Jacob had planned it all out to sell her off, and used the money he made off of that to take her to the Bahamas to make her vulnerable. She takes a walk out of the mansion and into the vineyard, where she finally is alone and basically has a breakdown. The next morning, she wakes up all dirty from sleeping in the vineyard and comes back to her room, where it looks like Crow has waited up for her. She tells him that she will take a shower, and he join her in the shower, helping her wash off the grime.

Pearl stays in shock about the revelation around Jacob, and she cannot sleep that night. Instead she grabs a button from her jar, and goes to see Crow-offering him the button in exchange for letting her sleep in his bed to chase away the nightmares. He feels it, knows it’s a button, and then gives it back to her, telling her that she can keep the button this time. Pearl is grateful that she didn’t have to make a payment in exchange for what she wanted–the buttons and the freedom didn’t matter to her anymore; the kindness he had shown her did. So she joined him in bed, and cuddled up.

My Thoughts: Boy did this book start out really really dark, and it’s kind of messed up considering the power imbalance between Crow and Pearl when he kidnaps her. He’s justifying doing to her what was done to his sister in order to get back at Bones for revenge, and that’s not any less messed up that what Pearl has already been through. That said, Crow is nothing like Bones. Bones is pure evil, driven by power, and only is he interested in Pearl to the extent of exerting his power and influence over her by hurting her. Crow, while he does get off on pain and hurting others, is all about making Pearl be a willing participant in it–it doesn’t hold the same weight to him if she’s afraid and in immense pain, because he walks the fine line of pain and pleasure. This part of the book is very reminiscent of 50 Shades of Grey in the Dom-submissive type relationship. And for this reason, I’m really curious to see how Pearl’s and Crow’s relationship changes and grows over the series. Overall, a good book once you get past the dark stuff Bones does.