A few concerns people keep messaging me about:
1) Regarding Leila leashed, we know Christian likes to go fast. Going slow just isn't his method. He lacks patience. It's not like he took time slowly introducing Ana, who he knew was a virgin who had never even masturbated, to his lifestyle. Everything that happened in the first book happened in about a month. Ana had never met him at the start, then went from being a virgin thinking penis-in-vagina sex is somewhat perverted to being tied up and beaten and learning quickly that Christian WILL have his way with her and is even turned on by her saying No to sex (in the boathouse he told her he was turned on by her saying no with closing her legs, and so he had to have her even though he knew she wasn't up for it - so much for consent). Leila leashed in front of Taylor a year and a half prior to this chapter is something that is going to be addressed in chapter nine. But it's the same sort of thing.
2) The only evidence we have that Christian and Mrs. Jones have never had any intimacy is from the mouth of Christian himself, as Christian is known to be less than truthful. Blondes aren't usually his type because it's the brunettes who remind him of his birth mother, and this is what made her a safe person, in his mind, to go to when overwhelmed. He wasn't so safe with the brunette birth mother, but found safety with his blonde adoptive mother. Christian and Ana really have spent very little time together. We only ever see of him what Ana sees, and there is plenty of time he could be doing who knows what. We know he's lied about how many women he's had sex with, at times claiming fifteen prior sexual subs, then claiming sex with fewer of them, and telling Ana he doesn't do long term, then later saying he had long term with four of them. He is so inconsistent that there's no reason to believe he didn't have a sexual relationship with Mrs. Jones that, in his mind, was all professional. Remember this is the guy who doesn't think there is anything wrong with a middle-aged woman coming onto, and having sex with, a 15-year-old. He doesn't see things the way normal people do.
3) There is no way in hell Christian started that business all by himself and runs it by himself, especially the way he does, and I guarantee it. I've had a hand in starting corporations, and am connected with people who run some I can guarantee you you have heard of, and there is always a board. As far as Christian leads Ana to believe, he is the sole person running it. This wouldn't be a corporation. Nor can he spontaneously decide to buy companies under the current company umbrella without a whole lot more time and work that deciding one day to buy more buildings or another company or two. There will be shareholders involved, and they won't back some rich kid deciding to buy some seemingly random publishing house or bailing on business meetings across the country because his new wife went out for drinks with a friend. His nonchalant treatment of this country is strong evidence that he is absolutely not in control. His claim to be the one running everything is shakier than Mark Zuckerberg's claim that he, and he alone, founded Facebook (he was sued over that and had to pay the CO-founder a whole lot of money, and it was proven that he was approached by Harvard to create the system for students to connect, so he didn't even come up with the idea, and he didn't use his own money to fund it, though he wants us to believe he pulled a Christian Grey, did some magic, and headed it all by his brilliant little self). If you start from the ground up using only your very own earned money instead of parental money or loans, the way Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac did, it's going to take a lot longer to have personal billions to blow, and you won't be a billionaire by 27.
As for how much control the CEO really has, just take a look at Steve Jobs. He was kicked out of the company he started by the board of directors. That's right, even founding a company doesn't keep you safe from them, nor can you have a corporation without a board of directors. If Christian was right in the middle of things as he wants Ana to believe, the board would kick his ass out of the company so fast for trying to buy other businesses without going through the proper channels that his head would spin.
So, without a doubt, someone else is pulling the strings for that company. There is no other explanation for how a guy who spends so much time vacationing and can leave meetings over trivial things can be in the one and only person behind a company's success, and there's no way he started such a massively large company off of money he earned on his own as a teen and young adult. I'll bet the hidden board of directors is really thrilled with a young guy bailing on them and wanting the world to think he is the only one running things. Chances are he's a puppet for the one most likely to have funded the starting of the company, and chances are those are his parents, and his involvement isn't quite as in-the-middle as he things. Corporations just don't work like that, nor do business sales or mergers or anything else.
DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHEN SEX WILL HAPPEN BEFORE YOU GET THERE. This is for the benefit of those who want a heads-up on explicit sex scenes.
Chapter 1
Nothing
Chapter 2
Nothing
Chapter 3
Nothing
Chapter 4
Nothing
Chapter 5
Sexual scene toward the end of the chapter. You have an idea it's coming before it happens.
Chapter 6
Nothing
Chapter 7
No sex or nudity, just some mild teasing.
Chapter 8
No explicit nudity or sex, though Jason and Elizabeth start off naked.
Chapter 9
No nudity or sex, but there is some pot use. By the way, pot, even recreationally, is legal in Washington state.
Chapter 10
Nothing at all.
Chapter 11
Nothing at all.
Chapter 12
This chapter has the first infamously bad scene. We can all laugh at Ana acting like a bicyclist nearly hitting her is equivalent to being pulled out of the way of an on-coming mac truck. No one should be laughing at Jose sexually assaulting her (you won't see much of that since this is Taylor's POV, and he wasn't right there when it happened), and Christian taking a severely drunk girl to his hotel to sleep in bed with him. You won't see Ana in Christian's bed, but you will see her going through the door.