you're too young & eager to love

Newbies! About a year before the actual planned story line takes place, so this is all background and dynamics.


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“I dwell with a strangely aching heart...” - Robert Frost


There is nothing Harper appreciates more than order. There is a calmness to everything having its proper place, to routine, to control. Meticulous, methodical, careful - they’re adjectives she values and words she lives by. Spontaneity causes panic, hot as a fire, to blossom in her chest, along with the fear of not knowing, of impotent empty-handedness and a will that lacks agency or direction.

This is why she’s the type of woman who, lying in bed, stares at the ceiling and makes lists in her head rather than turning her face into the pillow to seek sleep. The type of woman who wakes without an alarm, as the first rays of light barely breach the gap between the curtains, and why she does not linger in bed. The type of woman who walks with a purpose, her back held straight, her gaze always direct.

It’s that gaze which makes her infamous in the Steiner estate rather than her need for efficiency or her demand for perfection. It isn’t so much a look of fearlessness or boldness but one that is focused and highly alert so that all of her attention is centered. With her wintry eyes, it’s a chilling force to endure, like a blizzard or the bite of frost. So the servants in the estate call her Dagger on account of that cold, disapproving look she often directs their way, the one that makes them fidget and wring their hands and bow their heads. It’s never to her face and always out of sight, but Harper knows anyway. She knows and does not mind because she’s always thought there was something appropriate in the title. She is not, after all, a delicate thing with a lilting voice.

Her paleness, her leanness, could be contrary to the point, but the heat and the sun and her very own blood burned away the chance for her to be anything other than capable long ago. She is built for perseverance; she is no ornament. Her nose is a little too wide for the sharp angles of her face, and her jaw is strong (a trait that only intensifies whenever she shifts to feathers and red, leathery skin). She does not bruise easy; she does not shrink at the sight of blood; she does not gag at raw meat. She likes terrible smells - rotting bones spoiling in the kitchen, a carcass festering in the midday sun, a water-wrecked corpse dragged to the shore. The cries from the fighting pits excite her. She is not soft.

And yet …

And yet, Harper has started pressing her nose to the corner of Zane’s shoulder when she lies with him in his bed. She likes to smell the parts of him that are distinctly human, the sweat beneath his arms, the ink beneath his nails, the pallid, ordinary blood coursing through his veins. Without thinking, she has licked the salt of his skin from the inside of his elbow in a way that makes him laugh, loud and jarring, as though he were startled. She has brushed her fingers against his neck, as purposeful as a signature, when adjusting his collars over the silk of his business ties.

When he does not ask her to his bed, she wonders why, and then she wonders why she wonders. The lists she makes in her head circle back to him, like a current, until she twists in her sheets and feels hot enough to blister.

When she cannot abide it anymore, she wakes even earlier than usual, dressing quickly in the dark with nimble fingers, and forces herself not to pause in front of his closed door on her way downstairs. Her strides are quick, deliberate, unfaltering, but each one feels heavier than the last until she begins taking the steps in two. The cook in the kitchen is the only other person awake, but Harper does not stop to say hello. The churning noises and wafting scents make her nauseous. She is endlessly thirsty. She does not allow herself any water, as an atonement, and walks the entire way to the docks, ignorant to the lush beauty of the surrounding landscape or the harmonic, lulling crash of the waves and the briny smell of the sea in the air.

Most of the vendors are preparing for the morning. The smell of fish is strong and the sounds of the men working are loud - the heaving of the lines, the shouting of orders, the loading and unloading of crates. Harper buys three oysters from a stand and sucks them raw into her mouth. They’re slick and unsatisfying. She tosses the pearly shells into the water and keeps walking, traveling the perimeter of each dock.

There’s nothing beyond her but the ocean, deep and restless.

It doesn’t soothe.

She stays anyway.





“I could use another,” Zane says by way of introduction, swirling the last of the melted ice in his glass, when she returns in the afternoon. He’s in the office, although the ornate furniture and bountiful floor-to-ceiling bookcases make the space seem more like a small library.

“Say please.”

“Please,” he replies promptly, but he’s already holding out his glass, and she’s already taking it.
He hasn’t looked at her. His feet are kicked up on the same desk he’s been using for the past eight years and his collar is unbuttoned. There’s a small stack of supply orders in his hand. He leafs through the first few pages before shuffling them to the back of the group. A knot of frustration is beginning to crease the space between his eyebrows.

Harper pours him a finger of whiskey and adds one ice cube from the cart near the desk. With her back to him, she can focus on the coldness of the glass, of the dry, leafy smell of the whiskey.

“Did I miss a shipment today?” he asks, although the question is merely his way of interrogating her; they both know there wasn’t a shipment.

“No, but there’s always news on the docks. If you’re willing to listen.”

Zane makes a noncommittal noise, and she hands him his drink, balancing her weight on the edge of his desk in the space not crowded by his feet.

“Is that from the Isle?” she asks. “Let me guess... Mosaic for Eda’s wading pool.”

Zane tosses the papers on the desk and leans back further in his chair, the leather a rich chocolate that’s grown accustomed to bearing his weight. “No, no. It’s for the compounds in the East. That family is notoriously private with all of their affairs, but Harrow has no problem showing us how much he trusts us by making his usual difficult demands.” Harper gives a smirk and nods. “So, what is the news then?”

“The oysters are in season.”

“And?”

“And the cook is an early riser, which is an undesirable trait if you’re as heavy-footed as she is. She’ll wake the whole house.”

“Better than the old one. The Pacific man? Meanest cook alive, I swear. Genius with a roast though.”

“Is that why you loved him more than you love me?”

Zane doesn’t answer, but when he takes a drink, Harper sees the smear of whiskey left on his mouth. She grins at him, her lips pale and her teeth hidden, before sliding off the desk.

“Don’t drink too many of those,” she says on her way out.

“Harper.”

She’s reached the doorway when he says her name. She stops with her hand on the frame, the trim white and carved. She doesn’t look back.

“Why don’t you go back to your usual hours tomorrow? I know how much routine matters to you.”

“Sure, boss.”

“And Harper … ”

She’s almost around the corner. She has to turn back. Her hand finds the frame again, only this time she’s facing him, her gaze unfaltering. She lifts her pale eyebrows.

“Send in Sienna.”

“Say please,” she says.





Sienna is a waif of a thing with large brown eyes and quick hands who spends most of her days tidying the rooms in the main house and tending to Zane’s less official needs. Harper barely speaks to her, and she finds her smell assaulting: wet, buried dirt and dry grass, a sharp acidic undertone of anxiousness, like lemons.

Harper can still smell the girl on Zane in the morning.

It’s the lemons she detects first when he, not bothering to knock, walks into her bedroom. Hers is modest in comparison to his, the bed made up in sand-colored linens with coppery soft curtains that flutter in the wind when she leaves the windows open to catch the breeze from the water. The furniture is all golden oak that had to be shipped from the Arabian sea. The walls are papered in a wood pattern, a hundred birch trees in muted tones of beige lining the room with their thin branches arching from one to the other. She has two bookcases and few visible personal touches. Unsurprisingly, there is no clutter. It’s a space intended for its functions.

She has already been awake for an hour and is sitting at her vanity; she catches his reflection in her mirror and pauses with a tube of nude lipstick in her hand. That smell again, of sharp citrus, hits her and makes her nose wrinkle.

It’s ten steps from the door to her vanity, and Zane takes them in silence. Harper feels a twist low in her belly and a spike in her pulse.

When he stands behind her and gathers her hair from her neck, she rolls her head back with the action, feeling his fingers find anchor at the base of her skull. She should care more, she thinks, as he tilts her head to the left and stoops to mouth the tender spot below her ear. She can feel the scratch of his beard that needs to be shaved, and she still smells lemon, but she arches at the sensation anyway and reaches behind her to cup him through his jeans.

Zane leaves her door open, and they don’t bother moving to the bed. He wants her stretched across the golden oak floors for the others to possibly see, to hear. She opens to him anyway and enjoys the greedy, demanding way he fumbles with her shirt and tugs at her jeans. He doesn’t waste time. Pushing between her thighs, he drives into her in one quick tear, a hand at her throat and the other bracing against the floor.

She doesn’t know who this is for, him or her. She should care more, she thinks again, before losing herself to the pressure aching inside of her.





“I want to talk to you about something,” he says afterwards.

She’s been looking at his face, at all the small changes time has started to collect. He’s still handsome enough to be smug, but there’s a sprinkling of grey to his dark hair, and the lines on his forehead are deepening. His statement feels like an opening shot, startling her, and it’s an unfair one considering he’s already zipped up his jeans and buckled his belt. He’s tucking in his shirt while she’s still undressed, her own shirt unbuttoned and her breasts exposed. Her underwear is caught around her knees along with her jeans. She adjusts those first, lifting her hips to slide them up in one fluid movement. She doesn’t break eye contact, but she doesn’t reply.

“About an opportunity,” he continues. “I need you to check out an investment possibility in the Alaskan gulf.”

Harper keeps her tone level. “The gulf? That will take at least a month.”

“Hardly,” he says, without much conviction.

“Are you sure this isn’t a punishment?”

“What?” His brow furrows, and he grabs her arm, helping her to her feet.

She doesn’t reply to that either. Her shirt is still open revealing the long slice of her stomach.

Zane gives a confused laugh, gesturing in the air with one hand. “What’s all this then? Long hours at the docks. Waking up before dawn. Cryptically mentioning punishment. What’s bothering you?”

Harper shakes her head dismissively and works the buttons of her shirt, fastening them one by one. “I hate sea travel. It’s not meant for … I would have preferred a visit to the Eastern compounds. The desert I can handle.”

When Zane catches her by the jaw, his thumb digging into the side of her chin, she does not flinch. “You’ll handle what I tell you to. When I say sit, you do it. When I say come, you fucking run. Remember?”

“I didn’t forget.”

Zane brushes his thumb across her bottom lip. “Good.” He stares until she flicks her eyes away then presses a kiss to her temple. “You can leave in a week.”

Before she leaves, he’ll tell her that absence makes the heart grow fonder. He’ll mock her, she thinks, and she’ll feel panic spread like wildfire from her stomach to her heart. It’s an organ she’s always found useless, a perfunctory part of her that’s never factored into her way of life.

But now Harper will listen to it yearn.