A hiss of pleasure escapes me as she wraps her hands around my swollen cock, sweeping her thumb over the head. 

“Jo, you gotta stop with that,” I gasp, her fingers stroking my length with a firm grip. “I want to be inside you when I come.”

Her hands still their movements and she leans over me, her hair brushing across my chest as she reaches into her nightstand drawer.  “We need to buy more condoms, we’re almost out,” she says, tearing open the foil packet and rolling the latex over me.

She sits back up and my gaze is caught by the sway of her tits as she guides me to her tight opening.  Joey waits until I’m about to go insane with the desire to be inside her before she slides down my cock slowly, inch by aching inch.  The expression on her face is one of sheer pleasure and she doesn’t open her eyes until I’m buried to the hilt within her. 

She remains still and just when I begin to grip her hips a little tighter in the hopes of spurring her into action, she raises up slowly.  Tortuously, she sinks again at only a slightly quicker pace and her muscles contract tightly around me. Her silken grip is so wet and warm I nearly come then and there.

I groan unintelligibly as she rises nearly all the way off me before sliding down quickly, building speed and finding her rhythm.  Holding on to her hips as her movements become more and more intense, I stare up at her and I know I’ve never seen a hotter sight. 

She bites her lower lip as she concentrates and her hooded eyes are cloudy with desire.  Her dark hair is falling all around her shoulders, the silken strands tangled together from where I threaded my fingers through the length of it, and it frames her face while she watches me watch her.  Her creamy white tits are bouncing with the force of her thrusts and she brings her hands up to pinch and pull on her rosy nipples as she fucks me.

She tosses her head back, breaking our gaze as she slams her hips down against mine, her release swiftly approaching.  A few more strokes and she’s coming, her voice cracking as she cries out my name. 

Her body grips me like a vice as she orgasms and I arch up off the bed, thrusting up into her slick heat as I come inside her, gripping her hips tightly.

She thrusts a few more times before collapsing against me, panting and laughing.  We lie still together for a few moments, catching our breath.

“I‘m going to be so sore tomorrow,” she groans playfully.

“You’re just not used to being quite that energetic,” I grin, raising a hand to her sweat dampened face to brush away a few strands of hair.  “We’ll have to keep working hard to strengthen those weak-ass muscles of yours, Potter.”

“These post-coital compliments of yours just get better every time, Pace,” she laughs.  Her smile fades as something catches her eye across the room and I follow her gaze to the door, which has been left slightly ajar. 

Gingerly she slides off me, padding to the door in nothing but her socks as I dispose of the condom.  She shuts it quietly and turns back to the bed.  “I don‘t want Bessie and Bodie to come home in the middle of the night and see us.”

“So am I spending the night?”

“Of course you are,” she smiles.  “Unless you want to go home to your own bed.”

“Come here, Jo.”

She comes back to bed and brings the covers up over us.  I pull her close and she wraps herself around me, tucking her head beneath my chin.  My arm circles her bare shoulders and I hold her as her heart beat slows, as the sweat dries on her skin.

“You’re not going to sleep, are you?”

“Me? Nooooo,” she replies sleepily, yawning as she snuggles ever closer.  “Vicious rumor.”

“Good.  Cause we still have to talk about what’s bothering you,” I remind her.  If we don’t talk about what had her scrubbing a hole through the dish earlier, I know from experience that she’ll be awake at two a.m., chewing her lip and staring at the ceiling.

She’s quiet for a few moments and just when I think she’s drifted off, she sighs and says softly, “Why does he act like I’m stupid for making the choices I‘ve made?”

“He doesn’t think you’re stupid, Jo,” I say, my words surprising both of us.  I’m defending Dawson.  A lot of strange things have to be occurring all around God’s green earth because ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls:  Hell just froze over.

“What?” she asks, equally confused.  “Who are you?”

“You have some explaining to do if you just screwed me not knowing who I am.”

“Oh, that’s funny.”

“I’m just saying, Jo.  He doesn’t think you’re stupid.  If anything, he thinks the polar opposite of that,” I tell her.  I’m putting myself in Dawson’s loafers and I don’t think I’m preppy or judgmental enough to wear them.

“Did you see the look on his face?”

He’d looked like he’d desperately wanted to pass that pesky kidney stone.  “He’s just shocked.”

“And disappointed,” she says, lightly tracing a simple pattern on my chest with her fingertips.  “He doesn’t understand why we’re doing this.”

“No, actually, I think he does understand.  And that’s the kicker, that’s what’s pissing him off,” I say. 

“What do you mean?”

“This is going to sound arrogant of me,” I warn her.

I can’t see her face but I know she’s rolling her eyes.  There’s a smile in her voice as she says,  “That’s never stopped you before, Pace.  Just say it.”

“I think he’s just now beginning to see how committed you are to me,” I say.  “I mean, he’s had a while now to accept the way you chose last spring.  He’s had months now to get used to the fact that we’re together, and more importantly, that we’re happy.  But this?” I ask gently.  “This isn’t something he’s going to handle very well, simply because he’s still in love with you.”

“You think he is?” she asks, her tone tinged with disbelief. 

“Yeah,” I say.  “Don’t you?”

“No, not really.  I don’t think he’s ever been in love with me.”

Well, that’s a new one on me.  “What makes you say that?” I ask her, perplexed.

“Tell me what makes you think he still is, if he ever was,” she returns. 

“I’ve seen how he looks at you when you’re not aware of it, Joey.”

“How?” she prompts me.

“Like he can’t bear it if you’re not with him,” I say.  “Like he has to remind himself that he doesn’t have you.”

“That’s just it, Pacey!  Right there,” she says, accenting her point with a poke in the chest, rising up on her elbow to look at me.  “He doesn’t love me.  He wants me for the simple fact he doesn’t have me.”

“Joey, I’m sure that’s not entirely it,” I shake my head.

“He said he loved me.  I said I loved him.  But Pacey, I know now that what he and I had . . . that wasn’t love.”

“What was it then?” I ask her.  I’m not quite believing what I’m hearing here.  “You don’t think you two were in love?”

“No.  I had a crush on him that developed into genuine feelings, and while I did love him and still do, I know now that I wasn’t in love with him.  And I honestly don’t believe he ever was in love with me, either.  Because . . . do you really want to hear this?”

“Yes,” I answer honestly, though I wonder if that’s going to change further along in the conversation.  “Tell me.”

“I had this huge, all-consuming crush on him.  Everyone knew that, even him, I believe.  But he was content to let things remain the way they were, with both Jen and I wanting to be with him.  It wasn’t until faced with the possibility of my leaving - either proverbially or literally - that he “realized” that he wanted me,” she says, raising a delicate hand and running it through her disheveled hair. 

I can see what she’s saying, because I myself have seen the way that Dawson only seems to want her when she’s not there for the taking.  She pauses as my hand caresses the length of her smooth bare back, her skin like warm silk.

Closing her eyes, Joey arches in response to my touch before continuing.  “I was starting to grow into my own person, separate from him. He was starting to see that we could very easily continue to grow apart.  That and the fact that I’d been offered that chance to study in Paris.”

“Which you didn’t accept because you wanted to stay here to be with him,” I recall.  I don’t know how I feel about that, because if she’d gone, I wouldn’t have her now. 

“I didn’t accept it because I was afraid that I’d lose him and he played on that fear,” she corrects me.  “And then we got together and I stayed and I never told this to anyone before, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But the fantasy of being with Dawson and the reality of being with Dawson didn’t match up.  Inside, I began to wonder what it would have been like if I’d gone to Paris, and I think maybe I resented him for not being what I stayed for.  Does that make sense?  I thought I stayed for something wonderful, for a mature relationship.  For love,” she tells me, pulling off her socks with her toes and kicking them from beneath the covers. 

“What did you get instead?  Because you two seemed pretty happy for a while there,” I say. 

She nods, the ends of her hair brushing my chest.  “What I got was a confused friendship that couldn’t seem to fully evolve into a relationship.  He was discovering little Joey Potter while I was growing beyond her.”

"Then there was your passion for art that he never quite got," I say, remembering how Dawson would complain to me that he didn't understand why she wanted to take all these art classes when she so obviously wasn't going to be a career artist.  I'd told him that Joey could be whatever she wanted, could do whatever she put her mind to.  I shouldn't have had to remind him of that, and if he'd been even half as supportive as he should have been, there wouldn't be a need for it.  He hadn't been listening anyway, too busy wondering if her art classes were going to interfere with Movie Night.

“And then there was Jack,” Joey reminds me.  “Who did get my passion for art, and seemed to get me, too, in a way that Dawson never did.  He listened to me and he encouraged me to draw when all I was getting from Dawson was professed support in the hopes of being the boyfriend he thought I wanted him to be.”

“The both of you were confused.”

“If Dawson was truly in love with me, he wouldn’t have reacted so badly to me exploring myself, who I was.  If I was truly in love with him, I wouldn’t have left him for Jack.  To get back to the point, I know that what he and I shared wasn’t love,” she says.  “Want to know how I know that now?”

I can hear it in her voice, know it in my soul, but I go along anyway.  “How?”

“Here’s my own arrogant comment,” she says, widening her eyes and sticking her tongue out in the cutest way imaginable.

“No snippy “surprise surprise” from me,” I say, and she swats at me.  “Go ahead, Jo.”

“I know he’s not in love with me because I know now what it feels like.  You love me and I know it.  I feel it,” she tells me, smiling down at me and blushing slightly.  “I know what it is to be loved, and there’s no comparison.”

It is, perhaps, the least arrogant thing she’s ever said.  She’s speaking truthfully, from the heart, and it feels good to know that I‘ve given her a feeling that makes her eyes sparkle the way they are right now. 

She touches my face, her palm warm against my cheek as she says, “It doesn’t matter if Dawson still wants me or not.  I have everything I want right here, in you.  In us.”

Reaching up, I run my fingers through her hair and grasp the back of her head, pulling her close to kiss.