you're too young & eager to love

Ten years ago, Harper had been searching. What for, she hadn’t known. It hadn’t been a hunger lurking, dissatisfied, inside of her or even an ache like it was now. It had simply been an awareness of the desire for opportunity, a desire for a new horizon.

She’d spent time in the desert, adept at navigating the wastelands, wrapped in scarves and scavenging the drifter towns. She’d visited the oasis so skillfully tucked between the vast, sloping dunes before exploring the ranches on the edge of mountains. Then she’d wondered to the seaside, called by the salt on the wind and pushed by the threat from the East where the nightmarish rumors suggested more truth than hearsay.

Even then, Hamu was a bustling port. The culture allowed for an easier, more affluent way of life, with diligent shifters eager for opportunity working alongside a range of humans. Bars swarmed with prospectors, restaurants brimmed with the smell of savory and sweet scents, enticing the citizens to come inside, and brothels tempted in the same fashion with their welcoming women cooing from balconies or doorways. Harper found work at Oakworm, a brothel claiming to be dignified with women ripe and unbruised. Old Martha had needed help, so she’d kept the men’s hands away from her and busied herself with the books and overseeing the girls.

Nearly forty, Zane Steiner had been at the peak of manhood then: well-defined arms with ropey muscle, a head full of dark hair, only the whisper of wrinkles around his devious eyes, a confident gait from a lifetime of entitlement and success. When he visited Oakworm, he didn’t come for the girls; he didn’t need to. He came for the atmosphere, to be doted on, and to watch.

He had been searching too.


--


“Harper,” he says, his hands in your hair, his mouth at your neck, your shoulder, your breast. “Harper. Harper. Harper.” Like a liturgy, as though you’re something worth worshipping, as though the sound and shape of your name in his mouth is divine.

You’ve never heard it said that way. It makes your skin prickle every time, like soft fingers down your spine.

When he trails his mouth lower and then lower still, you fist his hair. He makes you shake until your thighs are sore, until, laughing and gasping, you slap at his shoulders to make him stop, your body humming with tired pleasure in a way you’ve never experienced before. Oriol wears a smug smile, wet with the taste of you, and lazily kisses behind your knee.


--



Cato reminds her of caramel, the kind of indulgence that sticks to your teeth, the kind you should only have a little of. He has a wide grin that, much to her surprise, makes her smile in return. He’s boyish, as blonde as the sun, with a lean grace. He doesn’t look surprised to see her; he looks like he’s been waiting for her his entire life.

Harper’s wary by this eagerness. She was hoping he’d look mistreated, worn down, hungry, even just bored. She could have worked better with disenfranchisement. Instead, he’s more like that cat who ate the canary. She buys him a drink and a hot meal in a pub across the street from the one he works at. Drinking only coffee herself, she watches the way he watches her.

“A man I know said you were pretty well known around these parts. Popular.” Harper’s voice, as always, is even.

“Well, I must be famous enough for you to have found me off of just that description. What do you think? Do I look good enough for all the gossip?” he asks between spoonfuls of stew.

“I think you’re probably trouble.”

Cato shrugs. “Some people like trouble. You look like you might.”

She feels herself smile again, but it’s more softly this time. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I could. If you’d like.” That shrug again, like it was all the same to him either way, like she wasn’t offering him a golden opportunity wrapped in a satin bow.

Harper shakes her head slowly.

He licks his spoon, his eyes shining, and sits back in his chair. He can’t be more than nineteen, cocksure and raging with confidence, alluring precisely because of the way he’s so comfortable. “You have beautiful skin, d’you know? Like cream.”

“Is that important to you? Beauty?”

“Isn’t it important to everyone?”

She shakes her head a second time. He lifts his eyebrows and leans a little closer to the table, his elbows digging into the old wood, framing his bowl of stew. “I think you’re a bluffer.”

“Takes one to know one, kid.”


--


“Can I sleep in here?” Oriol asks from your doorway, his arms full of bedding.

You look up from the book you’re reading, startled. “What? ...Why?” He’s only been here for a month, so you aren’t used to his voice or the sound of his steps in the middle of the night. You aren’t used to him, plain and simple, and you haven’t quite tucked aside your anger at his betrayal. His request seems out of place, but your steady pulse knocks too quickly at your wrists. Something inside of your flutters with heavy wings.

“It’s storming,” he says, as though this is a logical response. His huffs his hair out of his eyes, waiting.

“I don’t think Zane would-”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“He left late this afternoon. To visit the Everstons.”

“Oh.” You’re struck by the news. Why didn’t you know this? Something on your face must reveal your surprise because he shuffles his bedding in his arms and smiles in a way that’s reassuring. Or hopeful? You can’t tell.

“He said something about the need for discretion or some such shit,” he says.

You don’t answer, but you close your book. Oriol seems to take that as an invitation because he walks in, settling the comforters on the floor in front of your bed. The silence that fills the spaces beyond the sound of thunder and the rain hitting the windows isn’t uncomfortable, but you’re unsure. Maybe it’s because you can smell his skin. It’s distracting. Like heat and oak and night time waters.

“You don’t have to do that,” you say after a moment. “Sleep on the ground.”

“What?” It’s his turn to sound surprised.

“I’m just saying. It’s a big bed.”

You don’t know why you offer. You wait for panic to seize you, but it doesn’t come. This in itself is disorienting.

When Oriol climbs on top of your bed, it’s with a grin that makes you think of his brother.


--


Kissing him is like coming home.


--