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… DEREK …
The day Marti got her words, the whole of the McTuri household was in chaos. More so than usual. Casey locked herself in her bedroom. Derek didn’t notice until almost an hour later, when some of the general excitement had died down.
Everyone had words, but outside of your family no one really told other people what they said — at least, not casually. Words weren’t secret, exactly, but they were private — even if they were difficult to hide in any situation where you needed to go without your shirt.
As it was her wordday, Marti still had her own shirt pulled up well over her belly button. She stared down at her rib cage, which was now adorned with fuschia lettering, just below her heart. Even Nora seemed to have forgotten about her eldest daughter as she explained the new reality her step-daughter would now come to face.
No one really knew what the words were for, but there were theories. They were a manifestation of your true destiny, a physical distillation of the most key part of your personality. They came to help guide your life towards its happiest path. They were merely a celebration of the purest form of human culture: communication — a kind of tulpa generated by thousands of years of worship of the written word. They were decorative, a pretty quirk of human DNA that scientists had not yet been able to pinpoint.
Or the most persuasive theory of them all. Your words were there to lead you to your soulmate.
It was romantic, even Derek could acknowledge that. But it definitely wasn’t foolproof. After all, he could just point to his parents. Once upon a time, they were so certain that their words pointed to each other. And a decade and a half later, here they were: divorced and with his dad happily remarried. Derek knew his father’s words. He’d grown up seeing them every summer when they’d vacationed in Grand Bend. But Nora had so far declined to share hers. The merging of their two families had been tumultuous enough, he supposed. Suffice it to say, Nora and Dad must have seen enough of each other in their words to make another lifelong commitment sound worthwhile, or Derek wouldn’t be spending so much time thinking about Casey McDonald on his little sister’s wordday.
Over on the couch, Edwin and Lizzie were hunched over a laptop, reading aloud passages from Google Books that might be relevant to Marti’s words. It seemed like they were having some difficulty pinning down their exact source.
“No, I’m pretty sure the song is referencing the book,” Lizzie said. “It was written three years afterwards.”
“No songwriter actually reads books though,” Edwin argued. “It’s far more likely that —”
Derek took the stairs two at a time, and by the time he’d gotten to the top, his siblings were talking over each other so much that he could no longer make out what anyone was saying.
…CASEY…
Someone knocked on Casey’s bedroom door. She hadn’t thought that anyone would bother her tonight. Not with all of the excitement downstairs. Besides, it was late. She was studying — just ask her open biology textbook.
“Casey,” Derek said, and knocked again.
Casey rolled her eyes and took her time before sliding back from her desk. She popped the lock and waited for him to barge into her bedroom. All of her lights were off except a small lamp on her desk. As he opened the door, more light spilled in from the hallway behind him. He leaned against the threshold. He folded his arms, a perfect study in casual nonchalance. He was the last person she wanted to talk to about tonight’s events. He probably knew it too.
"I need your help,” he said.
She looked back down at her notebook. "No you don't.”
"Casey."
She met his eyes. To his credit, he looked sincere, but he always looked sincere. Especially when he was making fun of her. It was part of what made him so impossible.
"Derek."
Their eyes were locked. She didn't dare blink. To blink in front of Derek was to lose in front of Derek. Who knew how many pranks he could pull in the time her eyes would be closed?
"I need your help," he repeated himself.
"You've already said."
Derek leveled a stronger glare. "I can't parallel park."
That was the last thing she expected him to say. But she didn’t falter, not even for a second. Years of living with him had taught her to be quick on her feet, ready at all times. "It's because you're careless."
"You can parallel park, I've seen you do it."
"It's because I'm very careful," she said.
"You're going to make me ask, aren't you?"
Casey blinked at him placidly. It was okay to do it now, because now she was already ten points up.
Derek sighed. "Will you teach me how to parallel park?"
"What do I get in return?"
"What do you want?"
"I don't know yet. I'll have to think about it." Teaching Derek to parallel park would mean spending several hours trapped with him inside of The Prince. Just the two of them in the cramped, horrible little car. For an untold amount of time. She wanted to think of something good, not just the first thing that came to mind.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “But you have to tell me before we start. I’m not just agreeing to whatever you want to spring on me later.”
Casey flicked her eyes at him. “Get out of my room.”
“You know where to find me,” he said, and then he left without so much as a fuss.
It wasn’t until she woke up the next morning that Casey realized his request had kept her so preoccupied that she hadn’t given a single thought to Marti’s news for the rest of the night. She wondered if he knew. She contemplated thanking him for all of fifteen minutes until she shook her head and stepped out of bed, ready for another day with a bare patch of skin over her ribs where her words should have been.
… DEREK …
Casey cornered Derek after class. There was a decided swagger in her step that hadn’t been there when they’d walked into school that morning.
“Okay,” she said, leaning up against the locker next to his.
“Okay?”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Teach me?”
Casey furrowed her brow. “To parallel park?”
“Oh, right.” Derek shook his head, feigning the need to clear it. He really only asked her to give her something else to think about last night. Sure, he wasn’t great at parallel parking, but he knew enough to have already passed his driver’s test, which was the only thing that mattered.
He had figured that she’d have asked for something so ridiculous in return last night that they’d spend a good hour negotiating about it. He’d chalked up her demure refusal to engage with him to her inability to be distracted from Marti’s news.
Even if she had finally come up with something she wanted in return, he was positive that it would be so outrageous that he could easily back out without her realizing he’d been trying to do her a favor. The fact that it hadn’t worked wasn’t on him.
“I want you to show me your words.”
Derek blinked. That was decidedly unexpected.
He reached for the hem of his t-shirt. It was a weird request, but it wasn’t like it was hard. He’d gone shirtless at home before, but usually his step-siblings did the polite thing and averted their eyes.
Casey reached out and covered his hand with both of hers.
“Not here!” she said. “Do you want everyone to see?”
The last bell had rung fifteen minutes ago. The hallway was entirely deserted. Derek looked pointedly back at Casey.
“Okay fine, but someone could walk down the hall at any moment,” she said. “Not here.”
He slung his bag over his shoulder with a shrug. “Whatever you say, Spacecase. Do you have all your stuff? I’ll meet you outside at the car.”
… CASEY …
Derek crawled into the back seat once they’d made their way out to The Prince and gestured for her to do the same. He pushed his bag to the floor and leaned up against the door.
“Private enough for you?”
“Only because the parking lot is empty,” she said. “I wish these windows were darker.”
“Afraid someone is gonna see you ogling me?”
Casey rolled her eyes. She’d wanted to make him uncomfortable, but of course Derek would always find a way to get the upper hand.
She scooted across the back seat until she was almost sitting in his lap. Their knees were touching. She reached for the hem of his t-shirt and he let her. Casey hoped her fingers weren’t unpleasantly cold. It felt like all of the heat in her body had retreated into her core.
With her fingertips on his waistband, she hesitated. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain that he could hear it. She took a deep breath and glanced up, directly into Derek’s penetrating gaze. He smirked and she felt the blush rise up her cheeks. She yanked his t-shirt up before he could say anything to change her mind. When he gasped, she smiled. She’d managed to claw her way back on top, even if just for the split second before she looked down to marvel at his words.
They were the same color as the sky at dawn, written in a classical-looking script. Between the tiny, tightly spaced letters and the quick rise and fall of his ribcage, she couldn’t make out what they said. She placed both of her hands on either side of the phrase spelled out just below his heart and pressed, trying to hold him steady. Casey swore he stopped breathing, and then they shimmered into focus.
Who will not change a raven for a dove?
“Shakespeare?” Casey breathed, disbelief evident in her tone.
Derek shrugged. “It’s from
A Mid — ”
“ Summer Night’s Dream , I know.” Casey sat back on her haunches. Derek’s t-shirt was still rucked up under his armpits. The musculature of his abdomen was more clearly defined than she would have guessed. His skin was winter pale and the icy-blue line of poetry pulsed as if it were a vein thrumming just beneath his skin. She traced it with a fingertip, reverent and a bit awed.
He didn't flinch. She thought he might have.
“Do you know the rest of the speech?” Casey was not sure why she wanted to hear him say it, but the passage scratched at the back of her skull like an itch. It was something she’d have read a long time ago, and thought she’d never need to know again.
“Content with Hermia? No, I do repent / The tedious minutes I with her have spent,” he whispered, in perfect verse. “Not Hermia but Helena I love. / Who will not change a raven for a dove? The will of man is by his reason swayed, / And reason says you are the worthier maid.”
Her breath caught, and it felt quite suddenly like a surreal dream. So heady in the close quarters of the back seat, with Derek's voice a deeper timbre than she'd ever heard before, reciting poetry that made her heart ache. It was like happiness was just at the tips of her fingers. She could reach out and touch it, but never keep it close or make it her own.
Because of course Derek’s words were that of history’s greatest poet. Of course they were the pinnacle of romance. Of course he would have everything that she’d never, ever get to have. He caught her gaze. She was sure he could read her every fleeting emotion in the space between her shallow breaths.
“Right,” she said and straightened up. She wanted to run away, but she needed him to drive her home — and there was that nagging matter of the promise that she had made with him in return for this most cruel humiliation. “Do you —”
“We should —” Her jerked away from her as if reeling from a static shock.
And the spell was broken. He reached behind himself, popped his door open, and almost spilled backward onto the pavement. Casey scrambled into the front passenger seat and so she didn’t quite see him fall. By the time he had stood up, his shirt had settled back down around his hips. He pulled on his sunglasses and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Home first?” he asked.
Casey nodded, entirely at a loss for words. “Yeah, home would be great.”
... DEREK ...
Back at the house, the younger sibs had what appeared to be half of the books from the local public library stacked into a fort around the kitchen table. When Derek walked past them on the way to the fridge, he saw a spreadsheet open on Ed’s laptop. Lizzie had armed herself with an array of colored post-it flags. When she was done with a book, she’d snap it shut and slide it across the table to Ed, who scowled down at her notes and dutifully cataloged each entry into Microsoft Excel. On the couch, Marti was engrossed in a single book, with one leg hanging off the arm rest. Derek grabbed her ankle as he walked past her, settling in next to her on the couch with a sandwich in each hand.
He passed her the peanut butter and jelly. “Fanks,” she said around her first bite. She didn’t look up from the book.
When he reached for the remote to turn the television on, all three of them woke up from their trance to shout at him. At the top of the stairs, Derek heard a door slam.
“Are you guys going to be doing this all night?” Derek asked, looking over the back of the couch.
“Probably,” Ed said.
Derek hummed. “Sounds like you should move to one of your bedrooms, then.”
“No enough room to spread out,” Lizzie answered.
“It would go quicker if you helped,” Edwin said, pointed.
“You know I’m no good with book stuff,” Derek deflected. He reached over to muss Marti’s hair. “Right, Smarts? You got the best of the sibs on the job. They’ll figure it out in no time.”
Marti beamed up at him. “I think it’s from this book anyway,” she said. “It's the only one so far that I’ve actually liked reading.”
“Then I can have the TV back tonight?”
Lizzie laughed. “Just because that one is her favorite doesn’t mean it’s the right one.”
“We’ll be done when we’re done, D.” Edwin collected another book from his stepsister. “If you want it done sooner —” Ed left the rest of his sentence hanging. There wasn’t enough time to finish guilting Derek when there were this many books to catalog.
Derek finished his sandwich. He wondered if he could convince Casey out of the house now or if he’d have to wait until she’d finished her homework.
... CASEY ...
At the back parking lot of their driving school, someone had set up cones. They were always there, and Casey’s instructor had encouraged her to come use them whenever she needed to refresh her skills. “Not that I think you’ll need to. You have a knack for this,” she’d said at their last lesson.
She directed Derek there now. “I’m sure no one will be using them at this hour. Besides, if you can learn to park in the dark, you’ll really have a leg up.”
“Is this how you’re so good at everything? You just practice in the hardest way possible?”
Casey flicked her eyes to his side of the car. Was that a compliment? “Don’t pretend like you don’t play all of your video games on legendary mode. It’s the same idea.”
Derek grunted. So much for compliments. She wished he had better manners.
“Anyway, you’re going to line up that flag in the back side window,” she said, pointing in the correct direction.
The wheel slid effortlessly through his grip as he maneuvered The Prince into the correct position. He looked over his shoulder, checking the position of the cone, and their eyes caught. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Why you’re so bad at parallel parking?” she deflected. Maybe it was her manners that needed work, and not Derek’s after all.
He flicked the turn signal. He rolled his eyes. “About Marti,” he offered.
“No,” Casey said. “Turn the wheel all the way to the right, then back in.”
He eased off the break, guiding the car smoothly backwards.
“When it looks like you’re going to hit the curb, then you want to cut the wheel the other way.”
He did.
“Slower,” Casey snapped. “Or you’ll run out of room.”
Derek bumped the cone on their right corner panel.
“Pull out,” she said. “Do it again.”
In the driver’s seat, Derek sighed. “We’re gonna be here a while. And I know you’re upset.”
“You’re the last person I want to talk to about it. You, like everyone else, would never understand. And on top of that, you're much more likely to use anything I say against me next time we fight than tell me anything that'll make me feel better.” She pulled her phone out of her bag and flipped it open. No new text messages, but she could pretend.
His second attempt went smoother, but they ended up with the tires perched on top of the sidewalk. He pulled out of the spot, and lined up the car to try again. She didn’t even need to tell him.
“Have you thought about trying to date again?” he asked, because he didn't know when to leave well enough alone. “Maybe you’re just a late bloomer and all you need to —”
“Truman asked me out,” she said.
In the middle of cutting the wheel to the left, Derek jerked the car to a stop.
Casey dropped her phone into the footwell. “What is wrong with you? Did you hit something?”
“That guy’s a creep,” Derek said. “You told him to shove it, right?”
Casey crossed her arms. She left her phone on the floor. He was unbelievable. “I can’t exactly be picky about who I date, Derek.” He eased his foot off the break and slid neatly into the spot. He didn’t bump a single cone. “I think you’re better at this than you let on,” she said.
“Maybe you’re just a good teacher.”
“I am, but I’ve hardly even told you what to do.”
“You shouldn’t go out with Truman,” Derek said.
“Says the guy just waiting for his Romeo and Juliet —”
“It’s Lysander and Helena,” Derek said. She waved her hand in his face, dismissing him.
“Just waiting for his love story to start,” Casey finished. “Why shouldn’t I go out with someone who’s actually interested in dating the wordless fr —”
“You’re not a freak,” Derek said. He cut the wheel again and pulled out of the parking spot.
“That’s rich coming from you.”
“You’re absolutely still a klutz,” he said, glancing over to her side of the car, the old mischievous glint in his eyes. “But you’re not — it’s not like you —” he sighed. “He’s not a good guy.” Derek put the car in park.
They were back in between the cones. He had maneuvered them there while she was hardly paying attention. “What the fuck, Derek?”
“What?”
She was furious. “You know how to parallel park!”
He swallowed. Casey watched the bob of his Adam's apple in his throat. “I mean, not entirely — this is just a really good place to practice.”
She wasn’t listening to him. Instead, she was slotting together all of the pieces of the last two days into place. Because suddenly his uncharacteristic effort to reach out to her made sense. “Was this some kind of a ploy to distract me from Marti’s wordday?”
“Well, it’s not like anyone else has noticed how you’ve hidden yourself away in your bedroom ever since she got them.” Derek wouldn’t look at her.
“I don’t need your pity,” she said. Because this was her cross to bear, and the fact that Derek had even noticed that she’d been upset was astonishing, for one. But also the more she thought about it, the more insulting it was. Because it meant that everything else he’d done since her family moved in with his family was deliberately mean. “What is wrong with you?” She felt her throat get tight. She clenched her jaw. She would not cry in front of him. He didn’t deserve it.
“Oh, god forbid I try to do anything nice for you when you’re suffering,” he said.
“You let me see your words!” she shouted.
“Well, I mean, it wasn’t like it was hard,” he said.
“Was that some sort of power play, too?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked. His voice was also getting louder.
“Don’t yell at me.”
“You’re the one who asked to see them!” He spun in the driver’s seat so he was finally looking directly at her. “Because you wanted to make me uncomfortable, right? How mad were you when I just said yes?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with you!” he returned.
“This!” she screamed. She grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it up over her head. She threw it into the back seat. “This is my problem. I’m not supposed to be like this. I’m a freak — I’m hopeless. I'm never going to find anyone willing to overlook this long enough to get to know me — and you!”
“What about me?”
“You don’t even care that you have everything that I’ve ever wanted because everything just comes to you so easily.” Her throat was hot. Her eyes were welling up. So much for refusing to cry in front of Derek. It was basically inevitable now.
... DEREK ...
Derek could hear the tears on her voice before they started to fall. He should have done a shittier job parking. He should have asked her more questions. She was always better when she had something to hold over him.
“And Truman makes you feel like you could have that?” he asked. He didn’t know why he had, it just fell out of his mouth.
“It’s more than anything else I’ve ever been offered,” she said. Her tone only had the slightest whimper in it. She drew a shuddering breath and she pressed her palms against her eye sockets. She wasn’t wearing her shirt. He was steadfastly refusing to look below her chin.
Her bra was lilac.
“I don’t think you should give up,” he said.
Casey scoffed. “I don’t want to be a thirty-five year old pining virgin, hoping and praying that some day my words will come. I’m almost eighteen! That ship has sailed.”
He wished that he didn’t care. When had she been able to get under his skin so easily?
“We don’t even know if that’s what the words mean,” he said. “It’s not like —”
“Derek,” she said. “Don’t belittle me.”
“It’s not like they’re foolproof. Just look at our parents.”
She sighed. He definitely didn’t catch the way it pushed her breasts against the cups of her bra.
Derek looked at the ceiling. “Would you maybe put your shirt back on?”
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
He flicked his eyes to hers. If he didn’t know better, he’d say her tone had turned flirtatious. Everyone who wasn’t willing to give her the time of day was a colossal idiot.
She smirked. She leaned one hand on the center console to reach for her shirt where she’d flung it in the back. And then her rack was centimeters from his face. If he turned his head, he’d have a mouthful.
“Casey.” He gritted his teeth.
“Yeah? One second, I’ve almost got it.”
She reached further, sighing, and then his hands were wrapped around her waist. His thumb over the skin where her words should be. He’d pressed her back into the passenger seat and hovered over her. Her shirt was in her lap. Their faces were so close.
Casey stared him down. All Derek wanted was to look away — to her mouth or her breasts or the blank spot on her ribs where his thumb had started stroking back and forth. He could feel her breath as it moved through her body, but he couldn’t tell if there was any air at all left inside of his.
“Do it,” Casey said. “You won’t.”
Derek blinked. He started to move away, to retreat to his side of the car.
“And that’s why I’m going to go out with Truman,” she said. Her voice was smug. The triumph of her statement didn’t reach her eyes. “Because he will.”
His body made the decision before his brain even processed what it was that she said.
... CASEY ...
Derek bit her lower lip. Casey made to shove him back — in outrage, in desperation — but then he ran his tongue along the place where his teeth met her skin and she gasped. With her lips parted, he kissed her for real. She couldn’t breathe. Her whole body was burning and it was the first time all day — in a whole week — that she had no thoughts in her brain and only the feelings at the tips of her fingers to guide her forward. She buried her hands in his hair. To better control him, she swore, but it only made her heart beat faster and the burn in her lungs all that much sweeter.
He pulled back to breathe. She didn’t want to stop. She kissed across his jaw, down his pulse point. He was chanting her name.
“Casey. Case. Casey. Case — seriously, do you —”
She trapped his face between her hands. “I don’t know,” she said to his hooded gaze. “Keep going. Don’t stop.”
She felt feral and he surged into her again. He was in her lap now. His arm between her legs, reaching — reaching — for the seat release on the floor, pushing them backward, giving them more space. His other hand down by her right side so he could recline them into the back seat.
It was so deft that she wondered how many times he’d done this before — who else had been in her exact same position. For some reason, the idea didn’t disgust her. She felt like she was in good, experienced hands. She felt like he’d keep her safe and god, when did she start feeling that way? And how?
Well, she supposed, maybe Derek was right. He had always noticed her. He was the only one who’d even seen her this past week.
And where his chest was pressed to hers, his heart pounded so fiercely, each beat like a promise. She shoved her hands up under his shirt, peeling it back from his skin so she could touch him closer with nothing in between them. His pulse jumped beneath her fingers and she thought It's for me. I did that.
Each press of his lips to hers was like another reassurance. I got you. I get you. I won't let you go.
Afterwards, she knew she would convince herself that it was just the rush of hormones speaking to her, but now, in the fogged-over quiet of The Prince, it was everything. Because he took care of her when no one else had a thought to spare. He saw through every single one of the defenses she’d ever bothered to install. He’d certainly proved that in the last couple of days.
And it was just the two of them in this moment. Derek was so unguarded that she didn’t have to hide herself. Tomorrow, she knew everything would go back to normal between them, and so she took everything on offer while she still could. Because she wanted . Because she needed to know, if even just this once, what everyone else took entirely for granted.
His skin was so warm. Everywhere they touched blazed with need. With want. With heady desire that made it so she could barely draw enough air into her lungs. She burned. She kissed him again.
“Can I —?” he asked, with his hand underneath her, at the clasp of her bra.
“If you don’t, I will,” she threatened.
Casey ran her hand down the center of his chest to the thin line of hair that trailed from his navel. His muscles jumped under her touch. It fascinated her. She had her thumb on the button of his jeans when her bra fell from her shoulders. Derek swore. Genuinely, she didn’t think he’d even noticed when she pressed her hand inside, and tore open the zipper. Take, take, take.
But then his hands were full with her and it was so warm. In his grip, she felt small, absolutely possessed. She wrapped both hands around his back. The half moons of her nails bit into his skin.
He pressed his knee to the apex of her thighs. She gasped. But he kept pressing.
“Let’s get in the back,” he said, scrambling over her. When she joined him, he pulled her into his lap. She sat across his thighs, thrilled when she found him hard and panting below her.
“We don’t have to —” he said. “We can just —”
Casey swallowed the rest of his sentence. His mouth was open and so she swept her tongue behind his teeth. She felt him moan more than she could hear it. She wrapped herself around his neck. Their chests came together and it felt like passing a test she hadn’t studied for. Sweet relief. Triumph.
Casey knew she had a bit of a reputation at school, ever since she and Max had broken up. They said she was easy. They said that because she didn’t have words, she’d sleep with anyone. In truth, it wasn’t that. She’d never slept with Max. But, she knew she didn’t have anyone to save herself for, so she let him under her bra a little bit sooner than she should have. That was it. But the rumors made it sound like she’d throw herself at anyone who asked. And she had been asked — several times, but Casey could tell from the cruel gleam in their eyes exactly what most boys on the football team were after. She said no. She said it over and over and over again. She’d have thought that after the eighth rejection she issued that a new rumor would have begun circulating.
With Max, she had felt like she owed him her body, because she could hardly expect him to make a claim on her heart.
But with Derek, there were no expectations. And that made it incredible. Like every touch he granted her was a gift. He covered her with his whole body. The windows had already fogged over with the force of their breath. He dragged his blunt fingernails up the center of her spine. He kissed her like she was the air he needed to fill his lungs. And she wanted it.
“I’m — can I —?” Casey panted. His teeth were on her jugular. She raised herself up, leaning back into the center console. “My jeans — I —”
“Fuck yes,” he said. And his hands were already pushing his own pants down his hips. “I —” he paused. “Me too?”
“You better,” Casey said, letting the denim tangle with his on the floor. Casey sat back down on top of him and moaned. They’d both kept their underwear on — that very last vestige of shyness — but it hardly mattered. She could feel every single inch of him. He burned, just for her.
Her brain was a single low hum of contentment, blessedly silent, concentrated on only a single goal. She arched her back. She was guided purely by instinct and the tilt of her hips. She’d never felt so needy in her life. Nor so desperate. It built deep within her, slow, steady, like a rising tide. His hands on her hips drove her wild. His fingers pressed into her flesh. He held her like he could form her to fit only the shape of his grip. And she was already most of the way there. When he stroked up her back it felt like drawing a bath; it felt like the moment her whole body slipped beneath the surface of the hot water. He was so hard she was positive he was already inside of her.
“Do you have —”
“In my wallet,” he answered. She felt a swell of affection. Derek Venturi, never prepared except when it mattered most.
She reached for his jeans, and the new angle moved her farther away. Derek tugged her back to him, and as she slid home, he groaned.
Casey passed him the foil packet and he met her eyes for the first time since before he kissed her. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Yes. Yes. I just — I want —”
You,
she thought. “This,” she said. She stood on her knees and traced a single finger down his temple and across his jaw.
He nodded, pushing his boxers around his knees. He rolled the condom on while she hovered over him. She yanked her underwear to the side and just before she sunk onto him, he held her by the hips.
“Have you ever —”
“Derek,” she said in her sharpest tone. “Fuck me. Now.”
... DEREK ...
He’d lost track of how many times he’d asked her if she was sure. And the heat of her so close to his aching cock was making it impossible to think.
Consent — check.
Condom — check.
Confidentiality? —
Well. No one would believe him even if he wanted to tell another soul.
Check.
“Have you ever —” he asked.
“Derek. Fuck me,” Casey said, and every syllable rocketed straight to his cock. ”Now.”
Well, if that wasn’t an engraved invitation. He released her hips so she could finally lower herself onto him. Each inch was pure bliss, until he was seated to the hilt. But then, he held her to him and kept her from moving while he panted. He wanted her to do it again, now, yesterday, forever. But he kept still until the grimace eased off of Casey’s face. Until she’d stretched to fit him. He was grateful that Sally had drilled that lesson into him.
Then Casey sighed. “Okay, I think —” she said.
“Give it another second,” Derek snapped. He drew one hand across her shoulder blades and slid the other down, down down between them, searching for her clit. He used the backs of his knuckles so he’d have a better chance of rubbing against it.
“What are you — ?”
Derek shushed her, and kissed her. He needed to do something. His quads were burning with restraint. He waited and waited, tense, until:
“ Oh ,” Casey moaned and then her hips moved entirely of their own accord.
Derek grinned into her cheek.
“I should have known you’d be so —”
“Good at this?” he finished against the corner of her mouth.
“Cocky bastard,” she swore. And he was pretty positive she’d never uttered those words aloud before. But she’d definitely read them somewhere. He knew what kinds of books she liked to read at night. All bright illustrated covers with titles like
Shopaholic
and
Gossip Girl.
Casey McDonald was definitely not as much of a prude as she pretended to be. And that didn’t even count the handful of titles he knew — after some strategic googling — were dirty retellings of Austen novels.
Casey drove the pace. She rocked against him, then drew up to hover over him before slamming back down. She rolled her hips, grinding herself onto his cock. Her breath came only in whimpers. His whole physical world narrowed to the space between her legs, and the heat of her where it surrounded him. She nearly screamed when he finally brushed against her clit. Simultaneously, her whole body went slack, loose like she trusted him to lead.
And so, when she finally let him, he gripped her hips between his palms and fucked her deep. He hoped she was close. He didn’t know how much longer he could focus on the titles of her books instead of the clench of her body around his.
But she pulled his hand back between them, put his fingertips back on the bundle of nerves and she begged him not to stop. Begged him to go faster. And just when he thought it would never end, she let out a string of curses and tensed every muscle in her body before she went slack against him.
... CASEY ...
Casey didn’t think losing her virginity was supposed to feel like that. But after she came, Derek wrapped her up in his arms, held her to him, and took two more strokes, maybe three. And she was exhausted, bone-deep-tired, but she held onto him like a life raft, lest she drift away on the open sea of her endless, mindless thoughts.
Derek. Derek was inside of her and she needed it, deeper, harder, even faster until he sank his fingernails into her hips and groaned low in the back of his throat.
She held him through it, stroking his triceps where his arms had boxed her in. She swore she could feel him pulse inside of her, and it sparked something desperate within her. She could go again, right now.
Slowly, he let her go. His grip slackened and reached up to sweep the hair from her eyes. She felt herself blush as she climbed off of him, collapsing into the seat beside him. She tangled her fingers into his, picking up his hand where it rested on the bench seat between them. And when he looked over at her, looking blissed out and just like she had changed his entire world, she exploded into hysterical laughter.
It was only one extra beat of her heart before he joined in.
She squeezed his hand. And as soon as she could breathe again she said, “Fuck.”
Derek grinned. The smile he gave her was devastating. “Fuck indeed.”