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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
K.J. Charles
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June 18 - July 7, 2024
“She didn’t want me as a baby. It would be remarkable if she wanted to know me as a man.” Doomsday
“Because earl’s sons don’t marry housemaids. In my experience, powerful people take what they want from the less powerful, and they don’t put a great deal of thought into the consequences for their victims.”
It transformed his appearance from a surprised owl to a tall surprised owl.
No wonder the study looked like a library had rutted with a law office and littered,
Oxney took a step back and surveyed him. “I am having trouble placing you, Doomsday. Are you a smuggler or a secretary?” “I had an unusual upbringing,” Luke admitted. “And I tend to be quite, uh—” “Cocksure?” Oxney suggested. “Confident, perhaps.” “Overbearing?” “Helpful. Competent. Invaluable.” “And unquestionably modest,” Oxney concluded,
“Good heavens. That is quite a bed.” “It is, isn’t it.” “Imposing.” “Ancestral,” Oxney suggested. “A challenge to live up to?”
Are they gonna break it???
He put the notion to one side for private enjoyment at a more convenient juncture, resisted the impulse to check how sturdy the posts were, and glanced around the otherwise very plain room. “Redecoration in here too?”
“Thank you. The difference was that Sir John felt my duties included bedding his wife while he watched, and I did not.”
Hello!
Lord Oxney was so obviously a man who gave people chances: there was a very kind heart under the thick muscle and temper. It made him staggeringly easy to manipulate.
“No. He likes looking at live creatures, not owning dead ones.”
They’d both adored their great-uncle Asa Doomsday,
Noooooooo
His hair glowed like an angel’s halo in an illuminated manuscript, the savage scar just a misplaced scratch of ink, and Rufus felt the breath stutter in his lungs.
She was a tall woman with an air of distant unconcern about her, hands and dress usually smeared with paint. She barely spoke at meals and was almost never to be seen round the house; Rufus had chalked her up as one step above the family ghost. Given the unexpected intervention, he might need to revise that. Matilda was glaring at her daughter. “Hold your tongue.” “Tell that to Father and you might get somewhere. You’ve both shouted over him every time he opened his mouth. If I were Oxney, I’d want to know why you were bullying his staff. As I’m not, I’ll merely ask why I have to sit and watch
...more
How can one lose one’s mother?” “Careful, Fulk,” Rufus said. “You sound like you’re asking for tips.”
“Odo, that is an outstanding piece of work. Thorough, comprehensive, and impressive. Doomsday, can you suggest any additional courses of investigation?”
Look at him! Helping his confidence
wider lines in the ledgers, or writing in capitals—” “That makes it worse.” “Noted. I’ve seen you with a newspaper: is there something about type that helps?” It was an intelligent, incisive line of questioning that offered practical assistance,
You struggle, so you need support.
“When people are frightening, you want to please them.”
I don’t know why I’m doing this, Luke thought. God knows I’ve more important things on my plate. I don’t know why you have to sit so close when we work, and watch me the way you do, if you’re not going to reach for me. I don’t know—
But there was still a kernel of him that was a desperate, lost, hungry thing, and no matter how hard he tried to starve it out, it was always there, poking its head out at a sniff of affection, howling for more, making him hopeful and vulnerable and stupid.
and was in every respect the sort of man one could fall hopelessly in love with if one didn’t know how staggeringly stupid that would be.
and left in a few long strides, not looking back.
They are so achy !!!
In short, where his fellows all seemed to have spent years in thrall to the beast with two backs, Rufus had never found it particularly compelling.
Rufus knew all those expressions, and wanted more. He wanted to touch, to stroke his hair and find out if it was as satin-smooth as he imagined; he wanted his name, not his title, on Doomsday’s lips. Curse it: he wanted his lips on those lips.
Rufus didn’t lust where he didn’t like. But he liked Luke Doomsday so very much, and now lust was flooding him in a way he’d never experienced in his life.
if you don’t like it, dismiss me. But the only say you get in who or how or when I fuck, my lord, is—” He still sounded calm, but his chin went up a fraction. “If it’s you fucking me.”
“You work for me, rot you! Do you not realise the position you’re putting yourself in?” “I was hoping you’d do that.”
Ha!
He needed the secretary, but he wanted the man, because he was irresistible and he laughed, and last night had been a joy. He
didn’t want to choose. He might not be able to choose, because it wasn’t up to him.
“If I wanted accurate historical detail I’d fuck Mr. Odo, and don’t ever make me have that thought again.”
“Make me.” “What did you say?” “You want me to use your name? Make me.” “God damn it,” Rufus said. “I am going to find out if this bloody place has a dungeon. Come here.”
He was considerate in ways that made Luke feel stupidly soft and vulnerable and cared for; he was brawny and bulky and mouth-wateringly good to look at, and it was all so unfair that Luke could have cried.
one simply couldn’t be this intimate without being noticed,
“You will, my End of Days. You will.”
Ha!
Impose taxes, create smugglers.”
He’s very—” Caring. Kind, strong, funny, bloody good in bed, and entirely, utterly, the wrong man at the worst time.
It was important to be understood.
Sir Gareth playing a trapdoor spider, lying in wait and leaping out to attack from hiding.
Adorable bug boy
laughing in the garden, Luke shone like the sun.
Joss was normally a measured, even-tempered sort of man. But he loved Gareth deeply, he protected his family, and he always
knew what was going on. Those were the three pillars of his life and Luke had struck at all of them at once.
She dragged his body to a dyke in the night and threw it in, then she raised the alarm as if he’d vanished.
Second Book where a lady killed her husband becuse he was a butt
Doomsday has a void where his ethical principles should be, and I can still rely on him more than I can on people who endlessly vaunt their lineage without doing a thing to earn or support or maintain it. You have entirely ignored your duty to our people, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Of course Mr. and Mrs. Conrad weren’t suggesting three in a bed, though he was going to need a drink to deal with the idea they had been.
“He means, I’m scared you don’t care, so I’m not giving you a chance to prove it,” Emily said. “He’s that way, Luke. Aunt Sybil says he’s hard to love but it’s not true. What’s hard is making him see it when you do, because he’s already decided you don’t.”
“I will not let you go, I will never let you go. I have you. You’re safe.”
I hate to sound like a bad Gothic romance, but I came to Stone Manor searching for treasure, and found—” “You sound exactly like a bad Gothic romance.”
“I’ve spent a deal more time thinking about what I wanted to gain, and resenting what I didn’t have, than noticing what I actually had. That’s obtuse.”
