Subtle Blood Quotes

“Some people had strong views on attacking a man from behind. Well, Will did himself, those views being that it was an excellent idea, best done with a blade. He missed the Messer.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“But Kim had wanted him anyway, and he’d fought accordingly, until he got it through Will’s thick skull that it was time to stop seeing where they went and start heading there on purpose”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“If you trust someone, that means letting them into a position where they can really hurt you, and believing they won't. And if you're afraid to do that, either you aren't sure of them, or you aren't sure of yourself.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“I’ve always considered you an immovable object—you do such a good impression of one—but of course you’re not. You’re a man like the rest of us, albeit gloriously strong and gloriously solid, but perhaps the solidity comes at the expense of flexibility. That’s physics for you. Maybe you need to be a bit less strong and a bit more vulnerable for a while and see what happens. Good Lord, I felt you twitch there. You can be vulnerable if you want, my love. You aren’t at war any more.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Kim was starlight and privilege; Will had his feet firmly fixed in the mud. They didn’t belong together. Except they did.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“So many things mattered about Kim. The way his deep brown eyes lit when he smiled, the intense concentration he brought to work or to bed. How he had made undrinkably weak tea for Will just once, watched him make his own with catlike attention, and got it spoon-dissolvingly perfect ever since. There were so many tiny wisping moments of trust and truth and vulnerability that had slowly become something real and solid between them, and Will didn’t want it to slip through his fingers. Not again.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“I hope you find some of these as snugly up your alley as I find you up mine.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“A future. You know the concept? The shape you want the rest of your life to take? I want mine with you, all of it. A future, a forever. I love you.” He said it quite calmly, as if it was an established fact. “People say I love you to madness, but I love you to sanity, because loving you is the sanest thing I have ever done. You are everything to me, Will, and I cannot lose you to my miserable family and an accident of birth.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Fine,” Will said. “I promise. I promise I’ll just bugger off whenever it seems like the easy way out for me, and leave you in this hundred-room hellhole with your family rubbing cheese-graters on your nerve endings. Is that what you want to hear?” “I detect a note of sarcasm.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Kim seemed to feel the same, because he was whistling. Will must love him, because he didn't mind.
He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, he took his tea so weak it ought to be illegal, he might be letting his brother get away with murder right now, and Will felt like the whole world came to a point on him. Everything that mattered and everything he needed was right there in the dark-eyed man walking next to him, butchering ‘You’d Be Surprised’.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“No,” Kim said. “That’s the daily drip of insult you can expect as things are now, which is why I don’t want them to get worse. Because you are everything more, and I resent to the bottom of my soul that you should feel any other way. Wait for me; I’ll call you. Be good.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“I was holding myself together by my fingernails for a very long time, until the most magnificently stubborn sod of a bookseller came into my life. You treated me, against all the evidence, as if I were something resembling the man I ought to be, with such pertinacious obstinacy I have all but started to believe it myself. I spent the last few months thinking about this as I reordered your outrageous mess of a bookshop. How I came to be where I was, what I’d done to bring it on myself. What I need to do differently.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“I didn’t do anything.” “You stayed,” Kim said. “You loved me. You watched me, which obliged me to behave as the man I’d like to be, rather than the less impressive one I often am. I don’t like it when you’re not there either, Will. I’m better with you.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“But it could ruin us. But I could lose you, because your position will be intolerable, and I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to do without you; I don’t want you to leave me. I can’t stop you, of course, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. I’ll beg if I have to, and won’t that embarrass us both. I want a future with you.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Jesus,” Will said. “You don’t half talk bollocks. I know you, Kim Secretan. I know how you scoured England to find me when I was locked in a room, and how you lied up hill and down dale to get your hands on a paper and then handed it over anyway because it was the right thing to do. You ripped yourself apart for fear of hurting Phoebe, you gave up your ticket out of this mess for me, and you think you’re rotten? You stupid bastard, you’re true as steel.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“He met Kim’s dark eyes. “I think about you all the time. I see you hurt and it makes me want to burn things to the ground. I don’t know what a future’s supposed to look like or how it would work, but I’m not letting you go without a fight, no matter what. I don’t know what I’d do all day.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Kim breathed out, long and slow. “I have wondered where you were hiding the damage. First things first: forget what I said. I shouldn’t have asked and I’m sorry. You came through a meat grinder alive and won medals on the way. You ‘just got on’ in order to survive hell. If that’s what you have to keep doing, then in God’s name keep doing it, at least until you don’t need to any more.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Slippery, vulnerable, starlight Kim”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“You can be vulnerable if you want, my love. You aren't at war any more.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“The way you talk to me, the way you think, the ways you lie, even. Every damn thing about you. You drive me out of my mind, Kim. It’s been months and I can’t think of anything but you. And I suppose all that means I love you, but that—the words—”
“Not right?”
“Not enough. What it comes down to is—” He couldn’t find a better way to say it. “I don’t like it when you aren’t there. It pisses me off; I think it always will. Don’t piss me off?”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Tell me what you want.”
“Fuck me. Watch me. Make me beautiful.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Kim caught his hand and kissed the palm. “I couldn’t. You changed everything, Will. My life, my work, myself. It’s all changed—all better—because of you.” “You did that yourself, you daft sod. I just shouted at you a bit.” “A lot. God, I adore you.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“What it comes down to is—” He couldn’t find a better way to say it. “I don’t like it when you aren’t there. It pisses me off; I think it always will. Don’t piss me off?”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Will had left the Army like he’d joined it, as a private, and ‘cloak and dagger’ was accurate if you meant ‘stabbing people in the dark’. Kim was a bloody twisting slippery weasel liar, and Will had to hold back a savage grin of pride.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“You made me fall in love,” Kim said. “You made me want to be a better man, even if I had to claw my way to that conclusion through thickets and thorns. You made me wake wanting you there and sleep in the knowledge that you were, and believe that I had you by my side, with that glorious, stubborn, unshakeable Will Darling obstinacy. And I am terrified, I am sick with fear, that I will lose you to the walking ancestral curse that is my family—not just the painted trappings and gilded vainglory, but the hollowed-out decaying heart of it. That’s my magnificent inheritance: a family rotten to the core, a blighted tree that will fall in the next storm.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Kim’s shoulders heaved. “I had an idea that if you were with me it wouldn’t matter. Instead it’s so much worse because I’m seeing it all through your eyes. Christ knows what you must think.” “I think your family are arseholes.” “Apart from that.” “No, that’s pretty much it. Absolute arseholes.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“You say you trust him. But if you trust someone, that means letting them into a position where they can really hurt you, and believing they won’t. And if you’re afraid to do that, either you aren’t sure of them, or you aren’t sure of yourself.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“Kim jammed his hands in his pockets with the sort of jerky movement that suggested he wanted to punch a wall, or kick furniture. Will had always considered himself the furniture-kicker of the two of them.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“You can't expect me to take your word for things when I could work myself into a frenzy about them instead. Where would that get us?”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood

“I’ll manage,” Kim said. “All I need to know is that you’re with me today and will be here tomorrow. If I can have today and tomorrow on a rolling basis—” “Yes.”
― K.J. Charles, Subtle Blood