The warm morning sun of a Canadian spring in Toronto cast shadows on their naked bodies, draped across the soft purple sheets strewn across Casey's comfortable double bed.
In that same room, they lazed around, digesting what had happened the night before. They had been going out for a few weeks, and it was going very well, but up until last night, their relationship had not been physical.
It all started innocently enough. A dinner and a movie, one that Derek, for one, really wanted to see, and Casey was agreeable enough on it. They went out, did not drink, watched the movie like a pair of respectable adults and returned to her house.
The good-night kiss heated up and one thing led to another, and they finally did it, and then did it again four other times, slept, and then did it again in the morning, just after they woke up.
Neither party was really disappointed, far from it, but it had been one jarring occurrence. One that they realized they wanted. They wanted it very much.
In fact, Casey could not help herself but note, within her thoughts, that the girls in their high school were on to something when they lusted senselessly for Derek, while the man came to nurture a new-found respect to performative dancing. Who would have known such resourceful uses to corporeal expression?
Derek, his mind flowing with amorous thoughts about his last few weeks, nestled into her side and dropped his head onto her shoulder. He sighed in deep content to be in her presence. Casey was something like an oasis, a source of peacefulness and comfort in a world demanding, careless and unfulfilling to him.
It was much a rather recent phenomenon he had not still quite understood, to be sure, but found that he did not mind it at all.
She carded her fingers through his mussed chestnut hair with a low hum under her breath, her long and manicured nails massaging his scalp, making him hum in a low baritone with his throat, resembling of a cat purring. If her new housecat, a rescue she picked up two months ago, had such a privilege, he found himself envious of the little creature.
Derek drew her closer to him and moaned into the slender slope of her neck, the domesticity of it all was completely unknown to him. He found that, while the act was commonplace in his past thirsts with the fairer sex, it seemed much too different doing it with her.
It all seemed different. In their short physical relationship, he felt like he was back before that fateful summer when they first met. When he was a twerp putting up a confident act, but in all actuality, feeling his knees go weak when the pretty upperclassman girl showed him the ups and downs of the birds and bees.
"I'm over the moon, you know?" Casey spoke suddenly into the silence, a serene smile on her lips. "This is the happiest I've ever been."
He mumbled an incoherent response, lost in the pleasure she provided him with her tender motions.
"I love you, Derek."
He went tense with those words, unable to believe his ears.
His head shot up in a movement that would have worried her had she not been much more concerned over the way he'd reacted to her declaration. Which was very understandable of her part, given his track record.
She did not mean to do it, she knew it would come as a shock for him, but she blurted out without meaning to. She did love him, had loved him for a while now, but at the same time she feared his reaction.
Casey feared his impulses.
As she reeled, Derek's almond eyes brimmed with constrained tears he forced himself not to spill, as his mind processed her earnest and very subtle confession of love.
He reached to her face, trying to touch it softly with his hand, both to calm her manic thinking and to make sure she was still in the room with him. He was not really sure how he should go about answering it.
In all honesty, Derek was self-aware enough to know he was damaged goods. He had his abandonment issues, stemmed most likely from his mother walking out on him as a child, and his past relationships were mostly a sham. Even with Sally, his one and only serious girlfriend, it was much too infantile and temporary, in a sense.
Love had been a foreign concept to him. Sure, he had his father, his siblings, and even Nora and Lizzie, but familial love much differed from romantic love. He did not know how to administrate it properly, which is why he tended to avoid it.
He knew what he was getting himself into with Casey. Not only she was rather obsessive and fixated, she was not one for casual sex and relationships. She was a forever kind of girl.
Not to mention, she was his goddamn stepsister.
The spirit is lively, but the flesh was weak, however. He desired the kind of love Casey tended to profess, he wanted the domesticity, he wanted the feeling of powerlessness of his teenage years. He wanted it all.
Therein laid his answer.
Most of all, he wanted her, and so he did not have the strength of will to enforce his usual restrictions in their relationship. He could not let himself miss the opportunity life presented to him. There was only one thing left to say, really.
Derek opened his mouth, then hesitated and opted to press his lips to hers in a sweet kiss as tears streamed down his cheeks and added a saltiness to their connection.
Casey deepened the unexpected action with passion, her hands leaving his hair to cradle his face and wipe at the drops on his fair complexion. He broke the kiss but did not pull away, preferring instead resting his forehead against hers.
"I…" He opened his eyes and locked them onto hers. "I love you, too."