Iron & Velvet (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator #1)

by Alexis Hall

  I took my time, savouring her. Like a pudding. My every touch won a gasp as Julian gave herself easily over to pleasure. She was languid and shuddery when I rolled her onto her back again, but her eyes gleamed with a sharp and feral focus.

  You had to admire Julian’s commitment to getting off.

  She was beautiful like this, beautiful and mine.

  I fell into her kisses, wine and roseleaves and a little drop of poison. She dug her hands into my hair and pulled me hard against her mouth, her hips arching restlessly under mine. Struggling free, I pushed my knee between her thighs, and she wrapped her legs around me, the heat of her body enveloping me in a second embrace. Madness and desire swept through me like partners in a riotous, never-ending waltz. I smothered a cry in Julian’s skin, my hands sliding frantically down the outside of her legs. I grazed my teeth across her nipple and she twisted into my mouth with a moan. My kisses tumbled downwards, wild and chaotic, the taste of Julian sweet against my lips.

  I hooked one of her legs over my shoulder and traced my tongue up her thigh, leaving behind an invisible signature of lust. Julian had gone as still as a snake ready to strike, her body taut as a bow string. I licked the tender crease at the top of her leg and she gave a stuttering gasp. Her head fell back against the pillow.

  “Oh, you fucking tease.”

  I looked up with a grin. “Ask me nicely.”

  “Please, Kate. Pretty please. With fucking sugar on top, you fucking tease.”

  I stroked my tongue lightly over the folds of her cunt, and she made a throaty sound of pleasure. “You have a dirty mouth for a nun.”

  She writhed about, chasing my touch. “And I’m starting to think yours is all talk.”

  I put it to use, slowly exploring her with my lips and tongue, and sliding a finger into her. She felt like raw silk, and she tasted purely of Julian. And when she came, she clutched at my shoulders so hard it drew blood, and cried out my name like it was the only word she could remember. When we untangled, she drew me lazily into a kiss. Wine, roseleaves, and Julian, my Julian.

  I nestled myself against her shoulder, my hair spilling over the pillow and across her chest, her fingers moving idly through the strands. She carefully teased out the white streak. “What’s this?” she asked, sounding a bit surprised.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. A zombie faery stag tried to suck my life out.”

  “That’s not nothing, Kate. What were you doing?”

  I did my best to shrug while lying in a postcoital pile. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “I said it was nothing.”

  Julian wriggled free and pulled the duvet round herself. “Is this how it’s going to be?”

  “This?”

  “You run off and do madly dangerous things and then won’t talk to me.”

  “What I do with my life is none of your business.” I claimed an edge of the duvet for myself. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

  “I’m not trying to tell what you do. I just care about you.”

  “You only met me a week ago.”

  Julian sighed. “I said ‘I care about you,’ not ‘you are my reason for existing.’” She turned back and took my hand. “You’re hot, you’re funny, I like fucking you, I like talking to you, and I don’t want you to die. And if you die, I want to know what killed you, so I know who to be cross with.”

  Huh.

  “Uh, sorry,” I said at last. “I might have issues.”

  “Don’t we all, sweeting?”

  I struggled into a sitting position and kissed Julian lightly on the shoulder. She made a happy noise. “It happened at the werewolf funeral,” I explained. “I needed to talk to Tara, and I followed her through a gate into the realm of the pale stag. The pale stag kicked my arse.”

  “You know I’m going to be very cross if you keeping running through the woods with other women.”

  I gave her a look. “Are you really getting jealous over my near-death experience?”

  “I have a very simple rule: no one’s allowed to get my girlfriend killed but me.”

  “Aww, I’m touched.”

  “Are you okay now?” She nuzzled into me.

  “I think so. I’m not keen on the . . .” I pointed at my white hair.

  Julian brushed it back from my face. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It’s totally sexy and mysterious.”

  “You say that about everything.”

  She pushed me back onto the bed. “That’s because it’s true.” She leaned down and licked my nose.

  “Ew.”

  She laughed. “So you’re okay with me sucking your blood, but nose-licking is outside your comfort zone?”

  “I’m a complicated woman.” I rolled her off me. “I’m going to need more of that duvet. And you’d better not watch me while I sleep.”

  Julian pouted. “I bet you look adorable. Like a snuggly little ferret.”

  “I hate you.” I pulled the covers round me in a manner not remotely adorable, snuggly, or ferret-like.

  Julian crawled in beside me and curled up behind me, her skin cooling slowly. “I’ll keep you company ’til you drop off.”

  “So,” I asked, settling in sleepily beside her, “do you still have the nun costume?”

  “No, sweeting, I lost that years ago.”

  “I bet you could get one, though. On the internet or something.”

  She slid an arm over me, her fingers caressing the underside of my breast. “Why, do you feel in need of spiritual succour?”

  “I’m always up for a bit of succour.”

  And on that optimistic note, I fell asleep.

  I woke up a few hours later to find the bed empty. I wasn’t entirely surprised by that, but when I rolled over, I saw Julian was standing by the window. She was wearing my fluffy white bathrobe and staring at the pieces of the rosary resting in her hand.

  I pulled myself into a sitting position. “Are you okay?”

  “Go back to sleep, sweeting.”

  “I can’t, you’re brooding too loudly.”

  “I’m not brooding, I’m just thinking.” She came and sat next to me on the bed. “I don’t know why Anacletus would come for me now.”

  “It might not be him.” I wrapped my arms round her. She leaned back against me, tucking her head under my chin.

  “Well, I can’t think who else it could be. Who else would send me this?” She held up the crucifix, the moonlight slithering over its tarnished surface.

  “And you really have no idea where he is?”

  “I tracked him for a while, but he vanished somewhere in Transylvania in the fifteenth century.”

  “Transylvania?” I smothered a snigger.

  Julian sighed. “Are we going to have the Dracula discussion? Fine. A powerful vampire from Wallachia did indeed show up in London in the 1880s and try to take over. I’m certain he was of Anacletus’s bloodline. He drew people to him and broke them.”

  “And you lot let someone write a book about this why?”

  “That was one of Sebastian’s schemes,” said Julian, with a look I couldn’t read.

  “One of Sebastian’s schemes?”

  “The Prince of Wands is the oldest and most duplicitous of the four princes.”

  I kissed the top of her head. “So you just let him do random shit?”

  “Sebastian plays a deep game. I learned long ago to pick my battles against him.”

  I had a sudden thought. “Oh, oh, what about that other one? With Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise?”

  “Fictions, my friend.” Julian smirked. “The vulgar fictions of a demented American.”

  That perked her up for a bit, and she seemed happy to be held, so I held her.

  “Well, look,” I said eventually, “worst-case scenario. Let’s say Anacletus does rock up. Can you take him?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I sometimes think he’s already won.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked where this was go
ing. “Huh?”

  “Am I not what he made me?” She’d gone all serious and brooding again.

  “What, a lesbian? I think you were ahead of the game on that one.”

  “No, a vampire, a hedonist, a debaucher, a corruptor.” She pulled out of my arms and brooded broodily across the room.

  “It’s not the same.” I scrambled up and went after her. “I’ve never seen you debauching anyone who wasn’t well up for being debauched.”

  “Neither did Anacletus. All his victims wanted what he gave them. Eventually.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Oh, I did.” She pulled my dressing gown tightly around herself. “It’s just the fear that held me back was stronger than the desire that drew me on.”

  “But you’re still not like that. You don’t break people. You just get them off.”

  She sighed and wedged her hands into the pockets. “It’s the same thing, Kate. It comes from the same place.”

  “So what if it does?” I stepped forwards, kissed her. “I’m not broken.”

  Julian drew back a little. “You’ve only known me a week.”

  I kissed her again. “I’m not broken.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I’ve had people telling me they were bad for me my whole life. But I have rights too. I can make my own decisions, and I know what I want. That’s you, by the way.” She met my gaze, her eyes a little wide. “And I’m going to get pretty pissed off,” I continued, “if you start getting all ‘you do not understand my vampire torment’ on me. I’ve been there before, and it gets really old really quickly.”

  She gave a little smile. “Well, I’d hate to be boring.”

  I held out my hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, she took it and let me lead her back to bed.

  I drew her down next to me and carefully unwrapped her fingers from around the crucifix. “You know, I do sort of know what it’s like.”

  “You mean because you’ve got a splash of faery blood?” She raised an eyebrow. “It’s really not the same thing.”

  I put the crucifix on the bedside table. It was, after all, still evidence.

  “It’s more than a splash, it’s a whole fucking bucket. My mother’s the Queen of the Wild Hunt, so you can stop trying to play ‘my darkness is darker than your darkness.’”

  She looked contrite. “Sorry. Please tell me more about your darkness.”

  I thwapped her lightly with a pillow. “I just meant that I know what it’s like to have power that comes from something that’s fucking ancient and fucking evil and gets a deeper hold on you every time you use it.”

  “Okay, maybe that is a little bit similar. My experience of faeries is strictly limited to killing them.”

  “Oooh.” I bounced up and down. “Is it time for another adventure from Sister Julian, Pudding Nun?”

  “Oh, all right, get back into bed. But you’re going to sleep straight after. And no asking silly questions.”

  I unwrapped her from my dressing gown, and lay down, pulling her with me so I could fold myself around her.

  “Once upon a time,” began Julian, in a determined voice, “there was a nun called Sister Julian.”

  “Pudding nun!”

  “I said you weren’t allowed to interrupt.”

  “No, you said I wasn’t allowed to ask silly questions.”

  Julian gave an aggrieved sigh. “Once upon a time, there was a nun called Sister Julian, Pudding Nun, who belonged to a sect of holy warriors called the Order of St. Agrippina. One spring morning, the Mother Superior received word from a priory in what is now Clerkenwell that some bad shit was going down in England.”

  “And,” I added helpfully, “she sent a crack team of ninja nuns to investigate.”

  Julian poked me.

  “That was a statement, not a question.”

  “It was a statement of interrogative intent.”

  I kissed her shoulder and she forgave me.

  “And, lo,” she went on, “the Mother Superior did decree that a crack team of ninja nuns should be dispatched forthwith to the island of Britain. Arriving in Clerkenwell, the holy sisters heard tell of knights errant, their armour decorated with hearts and flowers.”

  “Hearts and flowers. Hard-core.” I slid my hand up to her breast and circled a nipple lightly with my thumb until Julian shuddered.

  “More than you might think,” she said, a little breathlessly. “The heart didn’t have quite the same connotations that it does today. These knights roamed the lands performing mighty deeds of arms in the name of love.”

  “Oh, I hate guys like that.”

  “By which I mean, of course, killing things, burning stuff, and raping people.”

  My hand stilled. “That’s a bit of a mood killer.”

  “These knights,” she continued, “swore fealty to a being they called the King of the Court of Love and recognised no authority but his. Richard, Cœur de Lion, had gone abroad to kill people in the Holy Land, taking most of England’s knights with him, so the country was vulnerable to otherworldly invasion.”

  “This sounds like a job for Sister Julian, Pudding Nun.”

  “And so it was. The court itself was easy to find, for it was a shining white castle on an emerald hill, but it was well guarded, so the holy sisters were called upon to subdue a number of the King’s knights and avail themselves of their armour.”

  “Do you still have the knight costume?” I asked.

  “We said no questions, sweeting. Besides, chainmail is just not sexy.”

  “It’s sexy in my head.”

  “You have fun with that.”

  I stoked my hand over Julian’s hip and down the slender line of her thigh. “I am.”

  “I’m trying to weave a story here,” she complained, wriggling. “You’re distracting me. But don’t stop. The knights did not roam the land in bands, so each of the holy sisters was forced to enter the court alone. They had planned to meet inside the walls, but it was a faery place and its rose-hung bowers and golden archways twisted and misled, and they could not find one another. Sister Julian—” she sighed “—Pudding Nun, searched for her sisters for hours or days in the shifting marble cloisters and endless, petal-strewn gardens of the Court of Love. Two she found dead, and two were simply lost and never seen again.”

  I gave her a squeeze and nuzzled her ear.

  “The six that remained came together in the labyrinth and fought their way to the great bower, where the King of the Court of Love sat upon a throne of gold-veined marble decked with lilies. He was a vision of immortal beauty, with sweeping gossamer wings and hair the colour of fire. He was clad in diaphanous robes and, as they approached, he drew two slender blades.”

  “Where was he keeping them?” I asked, sleepily.

  “I said no silly questions.”

  “That isn’t a silly question. He’s basically naked.”

  “They were beside his throne, okay? The sisters had come prepared and riddled his pristine flesh with iron crossbow bolts. Even so, he was strong and swift, and he cut down three of the sisters before the others could react. The battle that followed was short and bloody. He was greatly wounded, but still he slew two more of the sisters before he finally fell. Sister Julian ran him though the heart with an iron sword, and then, taking the blade from one of her lost sisters, she hacked the body into pieces. She gathered the parts in a cloak of iron rings and warded the body with a holy token. Then she fled the crumbling palace that had once been the Court of Love. She disposed of the remains of the faery lord in a well at the priory and returned alone to Rome.”

  “Wow, you really know how to pick a bedtime story.”

  “Oh, because the last one was full of kittens and sunshine.” She caught up my hand and kissed my fingertips.

  “How am I supposed to sleep after a story like that?”

  She flipped over, her grin gleaming in the dark. “Maybe you’re not.”

  What with one t
hing and another, I didn’t get much sleep, but when I woke up, Julian was still lying next to me. She bounced chirpily out of bed and said something about trying to make coffee. When I heard the first crash, I thought I’d better get up.

  Julian was wearing one of my shirts and standing in the middle of my tiny, messy kitchen. All my pans were on the floor.

  “Who keeps saucepans in an overhead cupboard?” she asked. “I could have been hurt.”

  “You’re immortal.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I want pans falling on my head. Where do you keep your coffee?”

  “In the freezer.”

  She yanked it open and started rummaging. “That is actually the last place I would have looked.”

  I leaned in the doorway while Julian made coffee. There was a pyramid of mugs balanced precariously in my drying rack, and she plucked one from the top. It had been Archer’s. It said Now panic and freak out on the side. She poured me a generous measure of coffee and handed it over, inhaling deeply with a blissed-out look on her face.

  “Oh, not coffee as well,” I sighed.

  “I hear it tastes terrible, but it smells divine.”

  We went into what the floor plans optimistically called my reception area.

  “So, I’ve been thinking about the case,” I said.

  Julian gave me a look. “I’m a bit insulted by that.”

  “I meant between.”

  “My, my, aren’t we the multitasker?”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” I paused. “Not in a prostitute way.”

  She sat on my dining table and put her feet on one of the chairs. “What’ve you been thinking?”

  “I think we’ve been getting distracted—”

  “You can say that again, sweeting.”

  “No, I think we’ve been distracted because we’ve been focusing on who is trying to get you, instead of how they’re trying to get you. You had health inspectors into three of your places a couple of months ago?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “But it wasn’t a big deal. There was an electrical fault they put down to mice, poorly timed flies in the kitchens of one of our restaurants, and something grim happened to the pipes in a hotel.”