45 pages • 1-hour read
Ruthless Creatures
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, child death, sexual content, and cursing.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Nat”
As Nat and Kage drive away from La Cantina, Kage reminds Nat that she’s under no obligation to speak to the police. If law-enforcement officials find out about Nat and Kage, they’ll put Nat under surveillance. Kage believes that if Nat were sensible, she’d leave him, but if she stays, she’ll be his “queen.” He’ll give her everything he can, with some exceptions. First, he’s had a vasectomy, so they can’t have biological children. Second, because of his work, he can only see Nat a few times a month. Finally, she can never live with him, but he promises not to see other women.
Nat thinks of David’s overly fastidious habits—like folding his dirty clothes before he put them in the hamper—and realizes that they weren’t a match. In contrast, Kage admits to killing the two members of the Irish mafia before taking Nat into the bedroom.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Nat”
Kage and Nat have sex, which Nat describes as primeval. She feels no longer tethered to the ground and is glad that she can’t turn back. After sex, Kage praises her performance, and Nat reciprocates. Kage admits to reading Regency romance novels, which surprises Nat.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Nat”
Kage makes her breakfast and discovers her diverse selection of sex toys. He uses one of them on her, and after she orgasms, they have sex again. Nat describes his penis as very large. They each have intense orgasms, causing Nat to feel “out of [her] mind” (285). She falls asleep. When she wakes, Kage is gone, and the police are knocking on her door.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Nat”
She sees an unpleasant white police officer and attractive Black detective Doretta Brown, who suspects Nat in David’s disappearance. They ask about La Cantina, but Nat refuses to answer their questions. She tells them to leave and reminds them of their inability to find David.
Chris arrives with Nat’s handbag, which law enforcement found at La Cantina. Chris shows Nat a police sketch of Kage. He asks personal questions and vows to watch her. Nat feels her confidence eroding, so she channels Sloane and shuts her door in Chris’s face.
Sloane calls. She’s learned that Max, who is Ukrainian, leads the Bratva in the United States. Sloane flew to Rome with Stavros on his private jet, and now she’s on Stavros’s yacht. Stavros and his crew only take orders from Kage, highlighting Kage’s position as the acting head of the Bratva.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Nat”
Kage gets Nat an untraceable cell phone. On it, he reveals that he’s obsessed with her and has learned as much about her as he can, including her mother’s birthday and her first car (a used Mustang convertible that stopped operating after three months). Kage opens a trust in a bank in the country of Andorra for Nat and reminds her not to talk to anybody about what happened in La Cantina. She reminds him not to lie to her.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Nat”
Nat calls MoraBanc in Andorra and learns there’s $10 million in the trust. Feeling lonely on Christmas Eve, she then calls her parents.
Chris continually surveils Nat. He stops by, insults Kage, and warns Nat that she’s in a dangerous situation—Kage is known as the “Reaper.” However, Chris hasn’t told federal agents that Nat and Kage are in a relationship. If he did, Nat would probably have been interrogated in a secret facility. Chris conjures up a scary image of a brute named “Snakebite” torturing her. Unmoved, Nat threatens to shoot Chris if he doesn’t leave her property. After he leaves in a huff, Nat feels like the action-movie character Rambo and Western star Clint Eastwood.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Nat”
Nat senses someone in her bedroom. Grasping for a weapon, she grabs a sex toy, but the intruder turns out to be Kage. He’s been shot, and his shirt is bloody. Nat wants to stitch him up, but Kage wants to have sex first.
After sex, Kage wants to tie Nat up and blindfold her. He also suggests anal sex. Nat is reluctant, but after Kage agrees to let Nat do everything to him that he does to her, Nat is receptive. She performs oral sex on him, jokes about how the MoraBanc trust makes her feel like a sex worker, and claims that Kage would make an excellent nude model for an adult art class.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Nat”
After Nat and Kage have sex again, this time in the shower, Kage shares his history.
He was born in Hell’s Kitchen (a gritty neighborhood in New York City), and his parents ran a butcher shop. When Kate was 15, his parents missed a protection payment to the Irish mafia and were killed. Kage dropped out of school so that he could work in the shop and look after his two younger sisters. He refused to pay the Irish mafia, shot his parents’ killers, and relied on the Bratva to dispose of the bodies. To retaliate, the Irish mafia murdered his sisters and mailed him photographs. Kage killed the men involved in his sisters’ murders. Nat realizes that Kage is a man with a horrific past.
Nat finds Kage as titillating as pornography. Kage thinks of Nat as home. After Nat buys Kage new clothes, they discuss Sloane and Stavros. Sloane doesn’t have real feelings for him; instead, she objectifies men and sees them as replaceable.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Kage”
Kage wants to tell Nat his secret, but he doesn’t want to jeopardize her safety. If he loses her, he’ll destroy the entire world.
Chapters 16-24 Analysis
Kage’s mafia business is used to raise the stakes for The Irrationality of Sexual Desire, which takes precedence over all other concerns. The novel adds to this feeling of inescapable want by using the romance-genre trope of forced separation. Due to his job, Kage only sees Nat a few times a month—time apart that escalates longing, with Nat wondering when he’ll return. To further her suspense, Kage regularly appears without warning; when he does, the concentrated bursts of passion add to their relationship’s intensity. As a result, even bullet wounds can’t extinguish Kage’s desire for Nat. When she offers to stitch up his injury, he brushes the need for medical intervention aside: “Later. Right now, I need to fuck you. Every night, I’ve been dreaming about the way you sound when you come” (338). His “dreams” cement the link between distance and longing. Kage references the many red flags that surround their relationship when he tells Nat, “[I]f you have any sense, you should tell me to fuck off and never see me again” (245). However, Nat’s attraction transcends sense. The fantasy of this otherworldly passion manifests in the choice of diction for sex scenes. Nat calls sex with Kage “unlike anything [she’s] ever felt. Part terror, part desire, and part pure adrenaline” (259). The hyperbolic, abstract terms reveal the unquantifiable force of their intimacy.
The novel’s scenes of sexual expression both uphold and subvert gender norms. Following heterosexual courtship gender expectations, Kage is a dangerous and sexually adventurous man, while Nat is a beautiful and somewhat inexperienced woman: Although she owns sex toys, he is the one who introduces them into their relationship; likewise, he proposes light bondage and anal sex. However, Kage also flips traditional assumptions: He confesses to reading Regency romance novels—a subgenre typically coded as feminine. He is also willing to accept a passive role, allowing Nat to become the dominant partner to get her to be more open to new sexual experiences and promising to let Nat do everything to him that he does to her. Once again, Nat is empowered by the dynamic of the relationship. Rather than accepting police harassment, she stands up to Detective Brown and Sheriff Chris, comparing herself to the action-movie character Rambo, played by muscle-bound Sylvester Stallone, and to Clint Eastwood, an actor and director associated with Westerns. Nat’s assumption that an assertive woman is necessarily channeling male figures is anti-feminist, but her growing self-confidence is character development prompted by sexual agency.
Kage’s traumatic backstory underpins his status as a dark-romance antihero without making his association with organized crime seem irredeemable. He didn’t join the Bratva because he derives pleasure from killing and violence; rather, he became a part of the organization to punish the people who murdered his family. Nat views Kage’s personal history as evidence of his vulnerable side: “He grieves. He bleeds. He’s made of flesh and bone. And he’s been alone since he was a boy, with nothing to sustain him but terrible memories” (364). Like the other Women Humanizing Brutal Men in the series, Nat is the catalyst for Kage’s openness. While Kage’s “terrible memories” predate Nat, he only expresses them after meeting her.
Unlock all 45 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs