Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1)

by Lauren Harris

  “We should call it a night,” Jaesung said. “Eat something, head up to bed. I can’t make French toast, but I can boil a mean bowl of ramen.”

  I sank onto the couch as Isaac stepped outside for a cigarette, leaving Jaesung and I to sip at our ramen. Jaesung had added frozen peas and carrots, a boiled egg, and a drizzle of spicy oil.

  I finished my noodles and the egg first, then sat sipping broth and letting it warm me all the way through.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Jaesung said. With those three words, my stomach dropped. No one ever started with that if they had something good to say, and my mind was coughing up a thousand scenarios in which he left me behind, or asked me to leave when it was all over.

  I took a sip of broth to wet my suddenly dry mouth and tried to sound casual.

  “Thinking?”

  “Yeah.” He took a breath, leaning his forearms on his thighs. “The spell. The one on your shoulder. That’s the one that lets you…turn into a dog, right?”

  I hadn’t expected that line of inquiry, and it surprised me into honesty. “Yes.”

  “And that book you took from Gwydian-” God, it was weird to hear Jaesung say that name “-had that spell in it. That’s one you memorized that the Guild wants, right?”

  I nodded again, unsure of what he was getting at. His brows drew low, nostrils flaring.

  “I’m not staying behind when you go to fight Gwydian.”

  I set my cup down. “You’re…you can’t go. I’m bait. Part of my deal with Isaac is that the Guild keeps you safe.”

  “I didn’t make that deal.”

  Fear wound through my chest. “No, Jae. This isn’t…this isn’t like…this is magic. You literally have no defenses. I’ll have a hard enough time protecting myself to worry about you as-”

  “Then make me one!” His clasped hands popped apart, holding the air as if it weighed a hundred pounds. His eyes were hot, and he seemed to hunch under the weight of his own decision. “You know the mandala—you can do it to me.”

  I stared. Jaesung—a spell-hound. I imagined him sprawled across a mandala, Poo-stank’s body bleeding out at his side.

  “You don’t want that,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What I don’t want is to stand by and do nothing. I don’t care if I’m throwing rocks—I’m going with you.”

  My hands fisted over my knees. “I don’t need you to protect me.”

  “I know.” He slid off his chair, settling on the floor between my knees and reaching for my hips. My hands, the traitors, went straight to his shoulders, seeking the heat of his neck and collarbone.

  “You’re angry as hell,” he continued. “And reckless, and your life has gone to pieces, and you’re still so fucking strong. Of course you don’t need me.”

  “I’m not strong.”

  “You don’t feel that way, maybe, but you’re still facing Gwydian. You haven’t given up or let anyone make you do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Except come here with you as Isaac’s hostage.”

  Jaesung smirked. “Bullshit. You’d have found a way to get out of it. You wanted me.”

  I couldn’t deny it. His hands tightened on my hips and I let myself be drawn forward off the couch, into his lap. My stomach gave a pleasant flutter as our chests pressed together. Jaesung nudged my nose with his, and I nudged back. Finally it was just the two of us. The world disappeared as our breaths echoed in the inches between our mouths. His forehead leaned against mine.

  He’d found an old pair of glasses, outdated in prescription, but good enough to work. I’d missed them, and they made my heart thud warm and fast. Or maybe that was the product of being trapped between Jaesung’s chest and the base of the couch.

  “I’ll go nuts if you leave me behind,” he said. “I need to be there. Even if I’m just in the background like the guy with no hit points.”

  “I don't know what that means,” I murmured, but I didn’t care. His fingers were sliding under the back of my sweater, making warm circles along my spine. “Also, you can’t seduce me into letting you go with us.”

  “Can I try?”

  Both of our mouths split into grins, and, though I denied it to even myself right after, I giggled. He brushed a hand through my hair, caught a handful at the back of my head with a gentle, sigh-inducing squeeze. The muscles in my back relaxed.

  “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” he said. “Hands down. Badass. You'll probably call me an idiot, and I probably am with shit like self-preservation.”

  “Cell towers,” I said.

  “Cell towers, yeah. But even cell towers haven’t scared me like you.”

  “You shouldn’t want to be with someone who scares you.”

  I said it without conviction, the tip of his nose tracing up the length of mine. His lips pressed between my eyebrows, not quite a kiss.

  “No, that’s…” His breath flushed warm on my face. “You don’t scare me. What scares me is the thought of letting you walk into a trap with the people who failed to protect you last time. It scared me when you disappeared from the wedding, and it scared me when I found you beaten up. Before that, it was the shoulder and the ice and leaving you alone at the train station. But not because of what you did or what you were. It scared me because I am completely in love with you, and I can’t do a damn thing to help.”

  It took a moment for the words to hit. At first, I didn’t really feel them, just recognized that he’d said it. I’d thought it myself a few times, that I loved him, or at least felt for him the closest thing to love I understood. Weirdly, I didn’t expect him to feel it back. I’d imagined myself a charity case for all of them, subject to first concern, then suspicion, and finally pity. I was the stray taken in, not because I was wanted but because the effort of saving me created its own bond.

  And now he was telling me I was wrong.

  Heat flushed across my chest, working its way deeper, curling in tendrils between my ribs toward my heart. His fingers still tangled in my hair, his mouth still pressed against my forehead. I was grateful not to have to look into his eyes—I didn’t think I could.

  “You’re right,” I whispered. “I think you’re an idiot.”

  I felt him smile against my brow before he tipped his forehead to mine again. “As long as I’m not the only idiot.” His arms slid around me, hugging me into his chest.

  I laughed, but the sound was breathless with shallow panic. I closed my eyes, still afraid to look at him.

  “You’re not.”

  I felt the reaction in his body, the swift tense and release of all his muscles feeling the impact. His breath reflected off my lips in a shudder. I was dizzy with fear, with the feeling of his belt biting into my thighs and the heat of him against me.

  I couldn’t imagine life letting me have this. The thought was a barb to the chest. It would do just as much damage to remove it as to leave it there, festering. My breath hitched, Jaesung’s hands warm at the small of my back.

  I pushed forward, pressing my cheek against his and winding my arms tight around his neck.

  “That’s why you can’t go,” I whispered. “I’ve lost… I have no one else left. You said you’d go crazy if you didn’t know what happened, but if anything happened to you I… I wouldn’t… I don’t think I could live with it. Without you. I can’t lose everything again.”

  “Hel-” The patio door opened and cut him off.

  “Bad news, kids,” Isaac said. He made no snide comments at finding us sitting entwined on the living room floor. The news must be worse than bad.

  I leaned back, though Jaesung’s arms didn’t withdraw from around me.

  “Gwydian’s on the move. Miami Guild found his place empty, and Atlanta reported a spike in corruptive magic.”

  “You have a sensor for that?” Jaesung asked.

  Isaac tapped his chest. “We can feel it. Hel probably just thinks it’s normal, since she grew up with it, but the rest of us can tell.”

  I shive
red. “How long do we have?”

  “Assuming big-bad has to stop for pee-breaks? Two days, maybe.”

  My arms were going stiff with suppressed adrenaline. The blood thudded thick through my veins. I looked down, focusing on the ChiArts logo on Jaesung’s shirt. Two days.

  “Get some sleep,” Isaac said. “Let those mandalas sink in. Park. I need to talk to you.”

  I extracted myself from Jaesung’s lap, no longer feeling warm. My walk upstairs was mechanical, and I crawled into the narrow bed already shivering. I didn’t sleep. Mandalas swam behind my closed eyes, along with flashes of that night on the yacht. I could still hear him, soft voice in my ear as he told me to come “home”.

  I thought of Morgan, of Eamon, of Zenia and Rodolfo and Cai. All the people I’d loved who were either gone or forced to turn against me.

  When the door creaked open a long while later, I sat up, startled. Jaesung froze in the doorway for a second before slipping inside.

  “It’s just me,” he said, pushing the door closed behind him. “I brought this.” He held up the ring. “Isaac said all you have to do is prime it, whatever that means.”

  I pressed a palm into the mattress and shifted myself up. Jaesung sat on the edge, taking my other hand.

  “This feels weird,” he said, sliding it onto my middle finger, where it rattled loosely. He moved it to my index finger. “Like, ‘I love you, have a ring with a spring-loaded spell’.”

  I found a smile. “Your mom will never believe we didn’t elope.”

  He snorted, checking the tightness of the ring. “Still loose. Maybe you can wear it on a necklace. Actually,” he looked up at me. “That’s a better idea anyway, in case you have to change into a hound.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted. “I never wear jewelry.”

  He made to stand up, looking for something to thread through the center of the ring. My belly twisted, that gut-deep dread pushing its way into my chest.

  I caught his sleeve. “Jae?”

  He sat back down, looking uncertain and a little harassed. “What did Isaac want to talk about?”

  He put a hand on my leg, patting it through the covers. “Basically? How not to get myself killed when Gwydian attacks.”

  “Specifically?”

  His gaze flicked away from me, and he took a moment to gather his words. “He showed me how to load and use his gun. I can’t make the bullets do fun magic things, but…”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Jaesung with a gun. I bounced off the idea hard, but the survivalist in me recognized it as smart. He needed a way to protect himself in all of this. I couldn’t deny him that.

  “I guess I should learn to use them at some point, if I go into law enforcement.”

  “Yeah.”

  His hand tightened where it rested just above my knee. “Hey, it’s-”

  “Don’t say it'll be okay.”

  He scooted closer, brushing my half-assed braid back over my shoulder. His palm moved down my arm and he took my hand, running a thumb over my wrist. “You never know. What if it surprises you and you have a frustratingly long life?”

  “I can’t stop thinking about it,” I said, staring at our linked hands. “I can’t sleep. My brain is going too fast.” He nodded. “Thinking of the future forces me to think about a thousand possibilities, and none of them end with happily ever after.”

  I thought of Eamon’s hound form, engorged muscle splitting through shredded skin and fur, his teeth in my shoulder. How many more of my pack would be like that?

  My whole body clenched around the despair. I pressed my hand against Jaesung’s chest, felt the warmth of his skin and his beating heart, and considered the possibility of never feeling it again.

  I stood, certain I was going to vomit, and stumbled to the bathroom. Jaesung knelt beside me, and though he didn’t listen at first, a few choked out words sent him back into his room. I knelt there in front of the toilet, trembling, waiting for the distress to heave its way up my throat.

  Nothing came. I brushed my teeth anyway.

  When I returned, Jaesung sat on the bed, head in hands. The ridges in the hardwood floor scraped at my bare feet as I slunk across. Jaesung didn't lift his head until I stopped in front of him, the bed frame cutting into my shins where I stood between his knees. His thighs pressed in against mine, two points of heat in the chill air.

  He tilted his head back and met my eyes, helplessness drawn in the downturn of his mouth. I reached out, and the backs of my fingers grazed his jaw. It was rougher than it looked.

  “Distract me,” I said.

  The tendons in his neck flexed. I watched him consider me a moment, confirming my words against the physical signals. Slowly, he straightened. Both hands found my waist, and he pulled my stomach into his shoulder. A mix of relief and anxiety weakened my legs as his head tucked against my side, both arms going around my hips. There was something at once vulnerable and protective in the gesture, like he was trying to comfort both of us at once. What connection had he just made?

  I stared down the line of his back, cradling his head against my side. We stayed that way for several moments. Then his hands found my skin. Callused and warm, they slid up my back. I hadn’t put on a bra after my shower, and his fingers slid, unobstructed, into the grooves of my shoulder-blades. Those hands that soothed dogs and tied knots in climbing gear, that flew across computer keyboards and video game controllers, and held his friends when they were weak. I imagined I could feel all of that in the fingers caressing my skin.

  My legs weren’t working right. He moved his hands back to my hips and glanced at me over his glasses.

  Now that I knew him, he looked different. I understood the way his mouth moved, the story behind the tiny white scar hidden under his lip. It was easy to imagine the way his eyes looked when he laughed, when he was angry, sad, exhausted. I knew where his face would wrinkle someday, and why.

  My throat was hot, and my hands drifted up his neck. I grazed my thumbs over his ears, watching the quality of emotion in his gaze change. I no longer cared if he saw what was in mine.

  “Okay.” His voice, low and smooth, vibrated through me. And then he leaned through my hands, pushed up the hem of my shirt, and met my skin with a kiss.

  His mouth was a hot contrast to the cold air. My breath shuddered out, and everything under his mouth melted. He hooked an arm around me, holding me steady as he worked his way toward the angle of my hip.

  The effect radiated down the backs of my thighs, tendrils pushing into the crevices of my body. It had happened so slowly I’d barely noticed, but the months at Ruff Patch had changed the geography of my heart, made it struggle against all I’d told myself was impossible. Feelings I’d paved over long ago had cracked their cement seals like roots.

  Now, Jaesung was bringing them to life. The sweep of his tongue undid me. The room, the cold air, and the threats living in the night beyond vanished. All I needed, and all I cared about was the man in front of me, making everything ten times more complicated and a thousand sweeter.

  He slid his free hand down the back of my thigh, and I knew he could feel it shaking as he kissed a scar just above the hem of my jeans.

  I sank onto his knee; his hand found my neck. I leaned into him even as he drew me in, and we kissed like we’d never been interrupted.

  It wasn't enough. Not for either of us. He half rose from the bed, turning with me in his arms. My back hit the comforter. I drew him over me. Long bones and powerful limbs made him heavy, and his weight pressed me deeper into the bed. This didn’t inspire the visceral fear I’d experienced with guys before. I smelled him, I recognized his touch. My body knew it was Jaesung.

  It was safe to let down my guard, safe to let myself feel the surge of lust and pursue it. His mouth burned my neck. I untangled my arms from his shoulders and tugged his shirt up his back. He stopped kissing me long enough to duck out of it. His chest shook with a quiet laugh as his glasses got stuck.

&
nbsp; I leaned up and kissed the hollow of his throat. He could worry about his sleeves. Pushed up on his elbows above me, he looked even better than he had in the picture on the stairs.

  I studied the furrows of muscle, the way his abs flattened between his hip-bones, disappearing beneath the wide elastic waistband of his boxers. It wasn’t the perfect definition models had, but the natural shapeliness of an athlete. Part of me wanted to push him flat against the mattress, savoring-the-moment be damned.

  He caught me looking. “Are you objectifying me, Miss Martin?”

  “You enjoy it,” I said, running a hand down his chest to prove it.

  He snorted, tucked an arm around my waist, and pulled us tighter together. I inhaled, arrested by the desire in his dark eyes. “I can play that too.”

  I bit my lips against a silly, flushed grin. He shifted his hand between us and pushed up my shirt’s ragged hem. It joined his on the floor. Then there was just the skin of his chest and mine.

  His hips rocked down. It was controlled, firm. Intentional. I gave a sharp gasp, shock and pleasure fizzing through my nerves. My body moved instinctively. I wrapped my legs around his and grasped his hips, holding him in place. Everything in me had gone hot and pliant, every nerve ached for touch. He stroked up my side and found my jaw, drawing me into a kiss softer than I expected.

  I wasn’t sure which of us was trembling. Maybe it was both.

  “I want you.” I couldn’t recall thinking it, or giving myself permission to say it. He shuddered, and for once he didn’t seem to have anything to say, just shifted obediently against me. I lost my breath, lungs crushed by the sweet ache expanding inside me. He groaned maddeningly in my ears. We pushed off the rest of our clothes, discarding them with all thoughts of the future.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Jaesung and I woke again late that evening, pulling on our clothes in the cold shadows of his room. Neither of us turned on the light, as if it might break the spell of intimate safety we'd conjured. I spent the evening buried in spells while Isaac and Jaesung retreated to the backyard to practice firearm basics. I tried not to watch. The gun wasn't loaded, but just the sight of the mandalas carved down the barrel unnerved me.