Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/595634.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage, Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Hunger_Games_Trilogy_-_Suzanne_Collins, Hunger_Games_Series_-_All_Media
      Types, Hunger_Games_(2012), The_Hunger_Games
  Relationship:
      Katniss_Everdeen/Peeta_Mellark
  Character:
      Katniss_Everdeen, Peeta_Mellark, Primrose_Everdeen, Peeta's_Brothers,
      Mrs._Mellark, Mr._Mellark, Mrs._Everdeen
  Additional Tags:
      Mutual_Masturbation, Masturbation, Fluff_and_Smut, Emotional_Hurt/
      Comfort, Angst, Abuse, Grief/Mourning
  Collections:
      EverlarkRecs_Dirty_December_Smut_Challenge
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-12-17 Updated: 2013-06-05 Chapters: 4/? Words: 28788
****** It Begins In Mystery ******
by Everlark_Pearl
Summary
     Modern Day AU. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark's friendship takes
     a sudden turn down a road they weren't expecting while working on
     homework together one afternoon. Is it possible to pinpoint the
     moment when a friendship becomes more, or will it always remain a
     mystery? What other secrets will it reveal along the way?
Notes
     You can find me on Tumblr: mellarksloaves. Thank you for reading!
***** Chapter 1 *****
Chapter Notes
     Thank you very much to for-prim for beta'ing this first chapter for
     me!
“We’re never going to make it out of junior year if we keep doing this,” I say
to Katniss. She’s sifting through a bowl of old cookies my parents brought home
from the bakery, ignoring me.
“Are there any more peanut butter cookies?” She asks.
“Dumb and Dumber ate the last of them this morning,” I tell her, pulling the
bowl away and setting it in the middle of the table where our school books are
set out. I open to the pages we’re supposed to be studying. “Can we please get
to work? I don’t want to be up until midnight finishing my homework again.” I
grab my Trig book and throw it on the floor between us.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do homework together anymore if this is what happens,”
Katniss suggests. “We never get it all done before I have to go home.”
“That’d be even worse,” I reply. “We just have to focus on finishing the work
before we reward ourselves with cookies and TV.”
“But it’s Big Cat Week on Nat Geo Wild,” Katniss gripes.
“You hate cats.”
“No…” Katniss laughs and shakes her head. “I hate Prim’s cat, not all cats.”
“Let’s finish this and then we can watch TV until you have to go home,” I
reason.
“How about we watch one show, then we start the homework?” Katniss counters,
picking the book up from the floor and setting it in her lap. She mimics my
position on the floor – back propped against the coffee table, legs stretched
out in front of her. She drums on the top of my book, waiting for my answer.
“Come on, Peeta,” she hums, begging.
It’s like she knows just how to get to me, though it never takes much for her
to get her own way. Sit close, smile at me -- distract me from what we’re
really supposed to be doing. It’s even worse if she touches me. She doesn’t
know what her presence does to me, and she can never find out. I value her
friendship too much to ruin it by having a crush on her.
She delivers her final blow when she leans to the side and pushes me with her
shoulder, coaxing me to agree to watch TV instead of working on homework, her
touch sends a line of heat from my shoulder down to my stomach.
“Fine,” I agree, exasperated. “Oneshow!”
She flashes me a satisfied smile and pulls my Trig book from her lap, setting
it back down on the coffee table while I switch the channel. The show has
already started, and I smile to myself, knowing that we agreed to only watch
one show and this one is already half over.
Katniss sits back down next to me in the same position, hands in her lap while
she looks straight at the TV. I steal a glance at her and notice the way her
eyebrows are raised in interest just slightly, and that even though her mouth
is pulled up into a small smirk, it still looks relaxed. When I look back to
the TV, I don’t like what I see.
“Oh come on!” I shout, angrily. “That damn lion is eating the hyena!”
“Nature, Peeta,” Katniss says teasingly, patting my knee. “Lions have to eat
too, you know, that’s just the circle of life.”
“Yeah,” I nod, smirking. “And so is that.” I point to the TV where the scene
has abruptly changed from a male lion eating a hyena, to the same lion mounting
a female. Katniss laughs at the scene and shakes her head.
“She doesn’t look very pleased with her situation,” Katniss says, tilting her
head and squinting. “I don’t think I’d be very pleased either if someone just
hopped on my back and stuck it in. It’s not very romantic.”
“Stop,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. She can’t talk about this right
now. Not when she’s this close.
“Do you think the females even come?” She leans over and pushes her shoulder
into mine again and laughs at my gasp.
“Katniss!” I shout, horrified.
“Well it’s a valid question, Peeta,” she points out. “Is there even time for
her to get off?”
“Why are you even thinking about this?” She has to stop talking. I can feel my
pants growing tighter with every word that comes out of her mouth.
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I just wonder if she gets any pleasure out of it,
because it doesn’t seem like she does.”
“Most animals don’t mate for pleasure,” I remind her. Steering the conversation
away from the pleasurable aspects of sex is doing nothing to stop me from
getting hard, and I take a deep breath, shifting my right leg up to try to hide
the bulge that is forming.
“Well, that’s shitty.” She crosses her arms and falls silent, bringing her eyes
back up to the television, but by then it’s too late for me. She can’t see me
like this. What kind of guy gets a woody over lions mating?
But I know it wasn’t the lions, it was her. It was what she was saying, and the
way her shoulder kept brushing mine while she said it. I’m pathetic.
We continue watching the show in silence. Katniss seems enthralled, so I take
advantage of the moment and shift again, pulling the front of my sweatpants
away from me in attempts to hide the erection that doesn’t show any signs of
subsiding.
“What the hell, Peeta?!” Katniss shouts, causing me to jump. I pull my hand
away quickly and look at her, only to find her eyes trained right on my dick.
She has a smile on her face, but it doesn’t look particularly happy – it looks
more like she’s trying to hold back a laugh. “Do you have a boner?”
I don’t know what to say. I wish she would have just pretended not to notice
and spared me the mortification right now, but our friendship doesn’t work that
way. We take any opportunity to embarrass one another, and today, Katniss seems
to have to upper hand. The only thing I can do is look away.
“Jesus, Peeta, we were barely touching,” she says. She doesn’t sound like she
wants to laugh anymore, but there’s something in her voice that isn’t familiar.
“Look, I like you and everything, I don’t…”
“Who said, it was because of you?” I scoff. “Stop being so arrogant.” Of course
it’s because of her, but I know what the end of that sentence was going to be.
She likes me, but she doesn’t like me, like me. What the hell does that mean,
anyway?
“So you don’t think I’m boner material then?” Katniss asks. Boner material?I
want to ask her what that is supposed to mean, too, but she sounded so offended
that I can’t help but stare at her, dumbfounded. “So you don’t, then,” she
says. It’s not a question, but a statement.
“I didn’t say that,” I reply quickly. “But you’re my friend.”
“So that just automatically counts me out? You’re getting horny watching a
couple of lions fucking while I’m sitting here right next to you?” She shakes
her head. “I’m not sure if I should feel sorry for myself, or feel sorry for
you.”
“Where is this coming from, Katniss?” I ask. I have no idea how this went from
her taking advantage of my embarrassment, to her getting offended at my denial
that this is because of her. Why does she even care?
She doesn’t answer. All she does is sighs and looks down, seemingly embarrassed
over what she said. I don’t know what else to say, so I stay quiet until I
realize this whole time she has been staring straight at my crotch.
“Stop staring at it!” I finally tell her when I can’t take the scrutiny any
longer.
“Sorry,” Katniss says, finally cracking a smile. She turns her head and looks
at the wall while I try to think of anything to get this erection to subside,
but I know it’s no use. Not with her still here and not with the way she was
staring at it.
“You don’t have to keep your head turned, just don’t stare… that weirds me
out,” I lie. It doesn’t weird me out at all; it just turns me on even more.
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do? Act like it’s not there?” Katniss
grouses.
“I don’t know!” I yell back. She turns her head again and sighs. “I’m sorry
Katniss, I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” I begin to move. “You can get started
on the homework; I’ll just leave the room for a little bit, all right?” I’m
just about to stand up when her voice breaks the silence.
“What do you usually do?” she asks.
“I usually just think about old Miss Sae and it goes away pretty quickly,” I
explain. I leave out the part about how it won’t work right now because she’s
in the room and hoist myself up on my feet.
“No, I mean when you don’t want it to go away, like… when you’re alone.”
 Did she really just ask me that? All I can do is stare at her, dumbfounded.
She turns to me, no longer looking at the wall to her right, and begins to
speak again.
“Show me,” she requests quietly, looking down to the floor after she says it.
“Stop fucking with me, Katniss. This is embarrassing enough as it is, all
right?” I make to walk past her but she stands up to meet me before I can get
past her.
“I’m not,” she says, looking me right in the eye. “Fucking with you, I mean.”
“Right,” I say sarcastically, nodding. “I’ll be the idiot again and show you,
then you’ll tell Madge tomorrow at school and then by lunch the entire school
will know what a fool I am.”
“And I shouldn’t be worried that you won’t run and tell Finnick that I asked
you to show me?” Katniss retorts, crossing her arms. “I’m just…” she purses her
lips together, as though she is choosing her words very carefully. “I’m
curious, that’s all.” She looks at me, clearly noticing the unconvinced
expression on my face. “And I’m serious.”
I should trust her, she is my best friend, but I just can’t do it. I feel like
the minute I make a move to show her she will start laughing in my face. I move
to the side and brush past her, not looking back to her when she calls after
me. I just need a few minutes alone to calm down, then we can do our homework,
and she can go home.
I slam my bedroom door and begin to pace while I try to clear Katniss from my
mind, but every time I feel like I’m getting somewhere, I just see that look on
her face again when she told me she was serious. She wasn’t looking away, she
wasn’t looking down – she was looking right into my eyes. Maybe she was
serious. I can tell when she’s lying. She never looks into my eyes when she’s
trying to lie to me, why would she start now?
Why does she want me to show her that? Does she even still want me to after the
way I stormed out of the living room? Is she even still here? I’ll go back out
there and see if she’s still here -- I hope she’s still here.  I hope she still
wants to do this. Who knows if I’ll ever have this opportunity again? What was
I thinking by walking away from her like that?
To be on the safe side, I reach between my mattress and box spring and pull out
the bottle of lube I keep hidden there, shoving it into the pocket of my
sweatpants before I pull the door open and walk back out to the living room.
I find Katniss sitting on the living room floor where she was sitting before
this ordeal started – back against the coffee table, legs stretched out in
front of her. I stand in front of her, not saying a word.
“Feeling better?” she asks, keeping her eyes glued to the TV.
“You tell me,” I reply. My response causes her to look away from the TV.
“Still?” She asks, stunned.
“I can’t concentrate on anything but what you said,” I tell her honestly. “Did
you mean it?” She keeps staring at the front of my pants, but pulls her eyes
away long enough to meet mine while she nods. I sit down next to her and put my
hand out to her. “You have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone.”
“I promise,” she replies, taking my hand and giving it a shake.
“Katniss, I mean it,” I warn her. “Nobody. Not even that cat you hate.” She
still has a hold on my hand and squeezes it, pulling me a little closer to her
while still looking in my eyes.
“I said I promise,” she says firmly. “Now you have to promise that you won’t
tell Finnick, your brothers, or the whole fucking wrestling team.”
“Of course I won’t.” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “I promise.” Katniss
nods and looks back down at my pants.
“So? What do you usually do?” she asks again. I hesitate before reaching into
my pocket and pulling out the bottle of lube. I hand it to her.
“Well, I like lube when I do this,” I admit. “Sometimes it hurts if I don’t use
it.” She nods and hands the bottle back to me. When I reach for the waistband
of my sweatpants, I see her eyes move back down. I want to ask her not to look.
Let me start and she can look in a minute or two, but the look on her face
stops me from asking. She looks… anxious. Ready.
 I pull my pants down slowly, lifting up to allow them to move past my ass, but
leave the front covering my dick. I take a deep breath and look at Katniss. Her
eyes have moved from the front of my pants down to the side of my ass that is
now exposed.
“Staring at my ass?” I tease. I had to say something, anything to break this
tension. Her head snaps up to meet my questioning gaze, but she doesn’t answer.
She just keeps moving her eyes back and forth between my face and the grip I
still have on my pants, like she’s silently asking me to keep going.  I look
away and at the wall in front of me before pulling my pants down past my dick,
feeling it spring forward. I exhale audibly at the feeling of relief.
“Did that feel good?” Katniss asks. Her voice is timid. I want to look at her,
survey her face and see where her eyes are trained now, but I can’t seem to
take my eyes off the wall.
“Yes,” I breathe, nodding and still looking forward.
“Why?” She asks, intrigued.
“The pressure,” I explain, forcing my eyes off the wall and to her face. “It
starts to hurt after a while.” I think I catch her off guard when I look at
her. Her eyes grow wide when she looks up into mine, and she takes a deep
breath before nodding.
“What next?” she asks, turning her body in my direction.
I open the bottle of lube and pour some into my hand, looking back to her as I
bring my hand to my dick, coating it from base to tip. As hard as I was trying
not to, a light moan escapes from my mouth from the friction. I see Katniss’
eyes widen even more at the sound as she stares right back at me, stopping only
when I break eye contact to look down at my hand gripping my erection.
I begin to run my hand up and down slowly, showing Katniss what it is that I do
when I’m alone and needing relief. I bite the inside of my cheek, stifling
another moan that wants to break free when I look at her. She’s sitting on her
feet; head tilted, eyes downcast. Her mouth hangs open just slightly and she
keeps swallowing hard, breathing out loudly each time she does.
“What do you think about when you do it?” she questions, never taking her eyes
off of my dick. I can’t answer that, because every answer is the same. You,
Katniss. I think about you.
She’s asked enough questions – it’s my turn now.
“Do you touch yourself, Katniss?” I don’t stop running my hand over my dick
while she contemplates whether or not she wants to answer me. I watch a whole
range of emotions wash across her face – shock, fear, embarrassment, and
finally, after I give myself a squeeze and finally let a fully audible moan
pass my lips, she nods.
“Yes,” she says, her voice unsteady.
“Why don’t you show me too, then?” The need to change the focus from what I
think about has become so strong; I’m beginning to say things I wouldn’t
normally say, especially not to Katniss. But it doesn’t matter what I may be
doing right now, she can’t know that I think about her when I want to get off.
To my surprise, Katniss doesn’t look offended by my request. She looks up at
me, then to the clock on the wall, but not once does she look upset by what I
just asked her to do. I let go of myself and wait to see what she does next.
“What time will your parents be home?” she asks.
“Not until after they close up the bakery tonight,” I tell her. “And you know
my brothers don’t come home until curfew at ten.”
Katniss stares at me, her gaze so intense that it feels like her eyes are
burning a hole right through me. She hasn’t refused, but she hasn’t agreed yet,
either. I let go of my dick and turn to her.
“I showed you, now you show me.” I don’t know where my voice is coming from,
but the fact that Katniss hasn’t slapped me yet is almost as surprising as what
I’m saying.
“Are you sure nobody is going to be coming home any time soon?”
“I swear,” I answer. “But if you want, go make sure the top lock is secure.
Nobody is getting in if that’s locked.” I can’t take her to my bedroom. What
would that mean if I did?
She hops up off the floor quickly and practically sprints to the front door.  I
hear the top lock click, and soon she is back in the living room.
She stops abruptly when she re-enters the living room, standing a few feet to
my left and staring as I run the tip of my finger up and down the length of my
dick. I wait a minute for her to join me on the floor, but she doesn’t move.
When I look over to her, she seems frozen, staring at my finger as it moves
along the shaft. I nod to her, letting her know that it’s alright, and she
begins to undo her jeans.
“If you tell anyone,” she begins.
“Hey,” I cut her off. “I said I wouldn’t.” She pulls the zipper down and begins
to pull on the fabric, pulling them down slowly. I notice that she’s removing
her panties off with her jeans and in a minute, she’s standing in front of me
with nothing on below her waist, kicking her jeans off her feet.
Something inside of me snaps and I know I need to touch her. She looks so
embarrassed standing there. Our friendship may revolve around embarrassing one
another, but right now, I want nothing more than to make her feel safe. I reach
out for her with my free hand and she takes it, allowing me to pull her closer
and down, where she comes to rest on her knees at my side.
I let go of her hand and place it on her bare thigh, running my hand across the
skin and feeling myself twitch. I may not be able to tell her how I feel about
her, but I can at least try to show her. She closes her eyes and inhales
through her nose at my touch.
“Show me,” I coax.  She nods, and with her eyes still closed she brings her
hand between her legs, moving to spread them as she kneels on the carpet.
I wrap my hand around my dick again and resume the up and down motion from
earlier as I stare at her hand as it rubs small circles between her legs. I
almost lose it when I hear her first moan. I have to squeeze my dick so hard to
calm myself even the slightest. I force my eyes away from what she’s doing to
look at her face. She must sense my eyes on her, because she looks away from
what I’m doing and up to my face.
“Are you… wet?” I ask. The question sounded better in my head, and now I want
to take every word back.
“Getting there,” she answers, looking back down to my hand. I add a few twists
to the up and down motion now, and notice that she matches it by twisting her
hips and grinding on her hand.
I seem to lose myself in some sort of trance watching her as her body moves
over her hand like she’s done this a million times before in her room late at
night. I think about those times now. I’ve been in that room plenty of times
before, but the thought of her in the bed we sit on when we do homework, using
her hand to make herself wet, writhing on it like it was… me. I begin to moan
while I watch her. I wonder what she thinks about. Who she thinks about.
“What does it feel like?” Katniss asks suddenly, snapping me out of my trance.
“What?”
“I mean, does it feel good?” she shakes her head. “No, stupid question… of
course it feels good, but… what do you feel like?”
“Well, what do you feel like? I counter.
She doesn’t answer for a minute, and then quickly takes her hand away from
between her legs. I’m just about to let go of the grip I have on myself when
she lifts her hand up to my eye level, rubbing her thumb over the two fingers
she used, and I see them glistening.
“Want to find out?” she asks.  This time I really do let go of myself. I stare
at her in awe, trying to gauge the expression on her face. She can’t be lying;
she’s still looking into my eyes.
“Really?” I manage to reply. She walks even closer to me on her knees and nods.
“Go ahead,” she says.
I have no idea what to do. Do I try to copy what I watched her doing before? I
inch my hand up reluctantly and move it between her legs. There is no space
between us now that she’s gotten even closer, and I place my entire hand over
her middle, feeling how warm it is. There is wetness on my palm, but I don’t
move. I keep my hand over her and wait for her. Finally, she reaches down and
grabs my wrist.
“Like this,” she says, she pushes all but two of my fingers down, pushing them
up between her folds. The heat and wetness there is even more apparent and my
dick twitches again at the contact. She stops guiding me and hisses inward when
my fingers graze the nerve at her front. “Rub here,” she says. “In circles,
like I was doing.” She lets her hand fall from my wrist and I begin to rub
circles, but her hand is quickly on my wrist again. “Gently,” she tells me.
“Like this.” She takes her other hand and puts two fingers to the inside of my
wrist, gently rubbing circles on the skin, and I begin to mimic her pressure
and movements. “Yes, just like that.” She gasps.
“You’re wet now,” I comment, enthralled, though my voice still sounds unsure.
“Yes,” Katniss moans in answer, bucking against my hand just as she was doing
to herself. My fingers slip through her folds as she moves her hips.
I can feel my dick beginning to throb from the lack of attention and what I am
doing to Katniss, and I take a chance at speaking again while Katniss is caught
up in the moment.
“Do you want to know what I feel like?” I ask, trying my best to keep my voice
from breaking. She moves against my hand a few more times, and I almost forget
that I even asked her a question. Her face looks so relaxed. Her eyes are
closed as she rocks her hips, using her hands to hold her shirt up just enough
so I can see her bellybutton peek out from under it.
“Yes,” she answers again. It’s the only word she seems able to get out right
now. She opens her eyes and stops her movements, but I continue the circular
rhythm that I’ve worked myself into.
Leaning over, she reaches her hand out in the direction of my dick, but stops
when I haven’t given her instructions, just the way I did earlier.
“Just wrap your hand around me, like I was doing,” I re-assure her, halting my
movement between her legs until she’s situated.
“Do I need lube, too?” she asks.
“Do you want some?” She shrugs her shoulders at my question and I reach to my
side and grab the bottle, squeezing some into her hand. She wraps her hand
around me, but doesn’t move – the lube starts to drip from her hand and down.
When I gasp, she tenses. “It’s alright, your hand just feels different than
mine,” I explain. “Better.” She looks at me, but doesn’t speak. “Just move your
fist up and down, like I was doing before.”
She begins to slide her hand up and down, re-coating my dick with the fresh
lube I poured into her hand. I can’t hold back the moans by biting my cheek
anymore, and I let her hear them freely, so she knows she’s doing a good job. I
resume the circular motion against her nerve and soon, her moans are also
filling the room, mixing with mine and the sounds of her lube covered hand
slipping over me time and time again.
“Rub faster,” she instructs, suddenly letting go of my dick. I don’t have time
to protest, because she takes that same hand and clutches my wrist again,
rubbing a faster pattern into my skin, along with the lube that remained on her
hand. I match her movements and she begins to buck more dramatically against my
hand, gripping my wrist to keep me in place, clutching hard so her wet hand
doesn’t slip.
With each hard thrust she makes against my hand, my fingers slip further and
further into her. They soaked now, and her breathing is getting heavier and
heavier, I wonder if she is close.
“I’m going to come, Peeta,” she gasps, her breath hitching. I’ve been so busy
watching my hand cover her, and the movement of her hips, the sound of her
voice causes me to look up at her face. She’s completely lost right now; eyes
closed, jaw clenched, and hand gripping my wrist so hard that I’m beginning to
lose feeling in my hand, but I don’t stop her. I let her go, and I watch her.
She doesn’t look like the Katniss I know, but more like the Katniss I dream
about -- so lost in her ecstasy that she forgets for a minute that we’re only
friends. I keep swirling my fingers as she rides my hand.
Her whole body tenses suddenly, and her mouth falls open, bringing with it a
moan at least 3 octaves higher than her speaking voice, on the next exhale, my
name falls from her lips expertly, like she’s said it during moments like this
before. She falls forward, only holding herself up by placing her hand on my
shoulder. Before she pushes herself up, she buries her face in my hair and I
hear the sound of a light kiss against the curls.
I don’t know what to do next. I wait as she hovers over me, cheek resting on
the top of my head while her breathing begins to come back to normal. My hand
is still between her legs, slick with her come. Finally, she moves away and I
slip my hand out from between her thighs.
“Sorry,” she apologizes, looking down at my hand, her cheeks turning red.
“Don’t apologize. That was…” she looks at me, waiting for the rest of my
sentence. “That was awesome.” She begins to laugh, but still looks embarrassed,
and I take my hand that is still slippery and wet and grab my dick, rubbing her
all over me – she seems to notice, because I see her look up out of the corner
of my eye.
“Can I?” she asks. “You did for me.”
“With your help,” I remind her, knowing damn well I never would have been able
to do that without her guidance.
“Help me,” she says, suggestively.
“Hold me again, like you did before, but closer to the top,” I instruct,
removing my hand and letting her smaller one replace it. “And this time, don’t
move, I’ll do the rest.” She nods and sits on her legs, settling in.
I place my hands down on the floor at my side and use them to push myself up. I
watch as my dick slides through her hand and back again. Between what this
looks like, and how long I’ve been hard, I know I’m not going to last much
longer. I concentrate on the view before me, and hear Katniss groan as she
looks on at the sight as well – I join her with a few groans of my own.
She takes the initiative and grabs the lube again, pouring some over the top of
her fist, coating the head of my dick as it pushes through her hand again, and
then there’s that sound again, the rhythmic sloshing of the lube plus her hand
on me.
“Fuck, that’s sexy,” Katniss says, gasping after she says it. She looks at me,
eyes wide like she can’t believe she said that out loud, and then I’m done.
“Gonna come,” I manage to choke out as I raise my hips slamming them into her
wrist. Suddenly she tears her hand away, and I drop onto my ass, using both
hands now to grab for her arm, shaking my head.
“No, no,” I beg. She lets me guide her hand back to my dick and she grips me
again. I keep both hands over hers and begin to move up and down again. “It’s
okay,” I sooth, pumping our hand over me in unison a few more times before I
feel my orgasm begin deep in my stomach.
I cry out, keeping my hands over hers as I spasm and burst, the liquid running
down my hand and between my fingers, catching Katniss’ hand where one of mine
doesn’t cover.
“I’m sorry,” Katniss apologizes again. “I got nervous.”
“It’s alright,” I smile, letting go of her hand; I motion for her to grab the
box of tissues on the table behind us with her clean hand. “Your hand just felt
really good. And different.” 
She wipes her hand off and pushes the box to me, abandoning it in favor of her
pants which she silently puts back on before excusing herself to the bathroom
to clean up better. I wipe my hands off and make sure nothing dripped onto my
shirt, When I’ve inspected everything, I wash my hands in the kitchen and sit
back down in the living room, unsure of where to go from here.
Katniss comes out of the bathroom a few minutes later, smelling like the soap
we keep on the sink. She sits down next to me once again and re-braids her hair
before turning around and grabbing my Trig book.
“So, I think you were right,” she says, opening the book and finding the page
we’re supposed to be working on. “Next time, we do homework first, andthen
reward ourselves.”
 
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Every car that drives down the street causes me to look up from the drawing I'm
working on. After a third car drives by and doesn't stop, I grab my phone and
look at the text that Katniss sent me almost an hour ago.
"On my way over."
The drive from Katniss's house to mine is less than fifteen minutes, and while
I know I shouldn't be keeping track of the time, I can't help myself. It's been
four days since we last saw each other. Since Spring Break began, my wrestling
schedule, coupled with Katniss's new job at the pet storehas made it almost
impossible for us to see each other, even for an hour. My ears begin to burn
hot with embarrassment over my thoughts. It's only four days. This isn't the
first time our schedules have prevented us from hanging out, but that was
before --
"Peeta! Katniss is here!" My father’s voice bellows loudly through my closed
bedroom door, tearing me away from my thoughts and causing my stomach to lurch
up into my throat. I was hoping he would be gone by the time Katniss got here.
I don't bother answering him. I'm off my bed and out of the door before he even
has a chance to wait for me to respond. The hallway between my bedroom and the
living room feels impossibly long today, and my pulse pounds hard against my
throat when Katniss comes into view.
Her hair is pulled back into a tight braid, leaving her neck exposed.
Remembering how warm her skin is and how sweet it tastes forces me to dig my
fingernails into my palm in attempts to take my mind off of the fact that just
the sight of her is making my dick stir.
“Hey,” I mumble, lifting my hand in greeting.
With my father playing the awkward third wheel, the tension in the air is
tangible. Katniss gives a slight wave in return, then immediately places her
hand back on the strap of the green backpack slung over her shoulder.
“So, what will you two be working on today?” My father inquires. It’s the same
series of questions every time my parents are around when Katniss is here.
“Chemistry project,” Katniss says quickly. “It’s due when we go back to school
on Monday.”
My father nods, seemingly satisfied with Katniss’s answer. “Will you be staying
for dinner?” He asks.
Katniss looks to me, waiting for an answer. She hoists her backpack higher onto
her shoulder, letting her fingers drift across the exposed skin near her
collarbone. Whether or not she did it on purpose, she has me fixated.
I continue to watch her fingers move down further until they hit the chain of
the simple silver necklace that used to belong to her father. He died a few
years before we met, and I have never seen her without it. She pulls the
pendant out from her shirt and begins to move it back and forth across the
chain. It’s an action I’ve seen her perform hundreds, if not, thousands of
times, but today I can’t stop staring at her while she does it.
“Peeta?”
“What?” I turn my head rapidly, meeting my father’s confused stare.
“Are you going to invite your friend to stay for dinner?”
“Oh, right.” I let out a breath and laugh nervously, pulling my hand through my
hair. “You’re always invited to stay for dinner, Katniss.”
She smiles at me while nodding, and I can’t help but smile widely at her in
return. I have to fight to hide the look of agitation and soon after, fear,
that is probably painted on my face when my father clears his throat, breaking
our focus on each other.
“I’m heading out to the bakery in a few minutes to help your mother until
closing. There’s a meatloaf in the refrigerator, put it in the oven at six
o'clock on 350 so we can eat around seven.” As I listen to my father talk, all
I can do is hope he hasn't picked up on the change between me and Katniss. It's
the elephant in the room right now, and it feels like that elephant is sitting
right on my chest, suffocating me.
“Sure, dad,” I reply, looking at my watch -- Four thirty. That gives us an hour
and a half. "Ready to get started?" I ask, turning to Katniss. With her nod, I
motion for her to follow me to my bedroom. "We'll have to work in my bedroom
since we need the Internet and I don't have a laptop."
I stress the final words in hopes that my father doesn’t argue the fact that
I’m bringing Katniss into my room. It’s usually off limits to her if my parents
are around when she gets here. In the past, I have been able to get them to
make exceptions when there is a project due that needs the Internet, and I’m
hoping that holds true today.
"I'll see you two for dinner," my father laughs, making no protest against
Katniss coming into my room. I let out a breath and continue walking up the
hall.
The walk to my bedroom is silent. I can feel my father's eyes on my back as I
lead Katniss up the hall, and judging by the way Katniss keeps cracking her
knuckles behind me, she feels it too.
I push open my bedroom door and step aside, allowing Katniss to walk in first.
Glancing back up the hall to the living room, I notice my father is no longer
where he previously stood, and I smirk to myself, relieved that he didn't seem
to pick up on the heat that seemed to be radiating between me and Katniss.
Before I can even process what's happening, Katniss's hands are pushing my
shoulders and my back painfully makes contact with my bedroom door. It slams
loudly, and Katniss presses her body against mine and kisses me hard.
The shock of the moment sends my mind into a tailspin. While kissing isn’t new
to us anymore, the fervor behind Katniss’s kisses have definitely changed since
the first one a month ago.
Katniss swings her leg over my hips and straddles them, grabbing my hands to
keep her steady above me. We shouldn’t be doing this. We agreed not to do this
today. Not with Katniss’s sister Prim, and their mother down in the kitchen
making dinner.
It started with Katniss’s hand on my thigh while we silently compared homework
answers. Little by little, she moved her hand higher until her entire palm was
resting on the front of my jeans. With one squeeze, I had my eyes locked on her
face, right into her half lidded eyes and down to the corner of her lip that
was quirked up in amusement. With a second squeeze, I was done.  
Now, I stare at her body on top of mine. The mess of dark hair fresh out of its
braid that falls in waves over her right shoulder, our hands clasped together
tightly, her chest rising and falling heavily with her ragged breathing, and
her hips grinding slowly against mine.
It was pointless to even say we weren’t going to end up like this today. Every
time we see each other now we end up like this.
Katniss leans forward and lets go of my right hand, enabling me to snake it
behind her body and slip it into the back of her sweatpants. She grips my shirt
in her fist and begins to move with more vigor, sucking in a sharp gasp between
her teeth when I thrust my hips up to meet her middle, making sure she feels
how hard I am.
And then suddenly, her mouth covers mine, muffling the sounds of a moan that
starts deep in her chest. Katniss has never kissed me before -- at least not
like this. I decide not to call attention to it, and continue thrusting my hips
upward, listening to the small noises that she continues to make against my
lips, and the fleeting gasp when she opens her mouth to catch her breath and
trace my bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.
“Peeta!” My father barks. “What was that?!”
Katniss and I break apart quickly, and I turn, hauling the door back open and
setting the doorstop underneath it.
“The wind made my door shut again!” I call back. With my windows open almost
all the time, a sudden gust of wind more often than not will cause my door to
slam shut if I don’t have the doorstop underneath it -- now if my father would
just believe my quick lie, I can relax.
He shouts back something about how I always forget to use the doorstop, but I
can barely hear him over the sound of my heart beating loudly in my ears. I
throw a halfhearted apology in his direction and turn to find Katniss standing
a few feet from me looking uneasy.
“The door isn’t supposed to be shut when you’re in here,” I whisper firmly.
“You know the rule.”
“I’m sorry,” Katniss says sheepishly. “I just...” she looks down at her feet,
the tips of her ears turning red. “Nevermind.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her, suddenly feeling guilty for my tone. “He’s leaving
soon, let’s just pretend that we actually have a Chemistry project to work on
until he’s gone.”
"Right," Katniss breathes. It’s as though she is just remembering the plan we
came up with last week so we could see each other. We never had a Chemistry
project due. We barely even had homework over spring break, and what we did
have, we finished separately.
She plops herself down on my bed and brings her legs up under her and begins to
fish through her backpack, finding her chemistry book and a blue folder. I want
to crack a joke about how prepared she is in her attempts to lead my father to
believe she's here for school work, but she already looks so tense that I can't
bring myself to do it.
Instead, I decide to follow her lead. Sitting down in front of my computer, I
grab a stray notebook that I usually use for doodling and open it up to a clean
page, throwing a pen down on top.
"Quick," I say, turning my chair in Katniss's direction. "What are we doing our
project on?"
I notice that Katniss has begun to pull papers from her folder. She has them
strewn across my bed, and she rifles through her textbook, hopefully looking
for a topic, just in case my father starts his questioning again.
"Um, what about.." Katniss flips through a few more pages, stopping and
pointing at a page. “Ionic and covalent bonds?”
“Ionic and covalent bonds it is," I reply, smiling. "Nice touch with the
textbook and papers, by the way."
"I didn't have a choice," Katniss sighs. "Right as I was getting ready to
leave, my mother came into my room and asked me to take Prim to the park so she
could take a nap. When I told her I couldn't, she started questioning me. She
even had Prim come ask me to take her out, so I had to tell them we had a huge
project to do. I couldn't very well walk out of the house without my stuff
after that."
"You told Prim no?" I ask, dumbfounded.
"I told her I'd take her out tomorrow," Katniss shrugs, turning her attention
back to her textbook.
Since the day I met Katniss in freshman year, I have never known her to say no
to her little sister. She has canceled plans with me, invited me along, and
even brought Prim with her here while we worked on homework in the past, but
she has never done anything like this before.
"It's just the park. She's old enough to look after herself while our mother
naps now," Katniss mumbles into her textbook.
"Yeah.." I decide not to press the issue, and force the shock to the back of my
mind. I have the whole night to mull her behavior over. Now is not the time.
I'm actually relieved when I hear my father's light tap on my door frame.
"I'm leaving now," he announces, grinning when he spots Katniss diligently
reading her textbook. "I just wanted to remind you again about putting the
meatloaf in the oven."
"I got it, dad," I say, rolling my eyes. "Now go before mom gets angry and we
all pay for it later."
My father slaps his hand against the door frame twice and turns, disappearing
back down the hallway.
Katniss and I sit in silence as we listen for signs of my father leaving -- the
telltale jiggling of his keys, the front door closing, his car starting, and
finally, the sound of his engine fading off into the distance as he drives down
the street and away from the house.
I leap from my desk chair as if it caught fire and reach my door in no time. I
kick the doorstep out from underneath and slam it, making sure the lock clicks
before I cross the room in three steps to meet Katniss on the bed.
When I reach her, she kneels up to meet me. I take her head in my hands and
tilt it up, bringing my mouth down to cover hers. There’s nobody to interrupt
us now, so we take our time with our kisses. Katniss opens her mouth, allowing
my tongue entrance, tangling her hands in my hair as I nip at her bottom lip.
“Don’t worry about the papers,” Katniss manages to say between kisses. “They’re
graded ones.”
Shaking my head,  I pull away to look at her and laugh, watching her gray eyes
come to life when she chuckles in return. I kneel on the bed, ignoring the
papers crinkling loudly under my knees and kiss Katniss again, reveling in the
sweet taste of her tongue gliding across mine. She moans into my mouth, and my
chest caves with a sigh. Just hearing her is enough to get me hard.
Katniss is breathless when she pulls away from me and untangles her hands from
my hair. I am just about to protest when her hand cups my cheek.
Our pauses when we fool around usually only last as long as it takes us to get
our pants off, so when the pad of Katniss’s thumb brushes lightly under my eye,
and her face softens, the gesture is so tender that it feels foreign. She
stares, and there’s something in her eyes that I can’t quite decipher, but I
feel like she’s staring straight through me. It causes my heart to beat wildly
in my chest, and I have to stop myself from asking her what she’s doing.
Suddenly, her face contorts and the soft look has been replaced with a wicked
grin. Both of her hands drop to my shoulders and she pushes me roughly. I fall
back purposefully, smirking when she straddles my hips.
“It would take a lot more force than that to put me down if I were to fight
back,” I quip, bringing my hands to rest on Katniss’s hips.
“Are you complaining?” Katniss asks, quirking her eyebrow. I shake my head
quickly in response.
At some point, I always end up on my back with Katniss on top of me, peppering
kisses across my face and learning which hip movements get me the hardest,
until she finally moves down and helps me out of my pants so she can touch me.
This is the dance we do -- all action, minimal talk.
It has been a month since the first time we did this, but nothing has really
changed. We barely talk about it, we never stray from the familiar, and Katniss
always ends up leading the way. Why can't I be more outgoing with her? Pin her
to the bed and kiss every part of her that to this day still remains hidden.
Pull her shirt off, her bra, touch her breasts, kiss them. Would she like that?
Does she want that? I'm not sure what is scaring me. It's clear that she likes
when I touch her, but maybe she is just as scared to ask for more as I am to
act on it. I'll never know if I don't try.
The space between our bodies in small. With each shift of her body, Katniss
closes the space, pressing our chests together. It's now or never. As she moves
away, I snake my hand between our bodies and find her breast. I cup it lightly.
So lightly that I'm not even sure she feels it, so I set my hand on her more
firmly and squeeze once.
Katniss gasps and pulls away away from me. I tear my hand away, embarrassed.
"I'm --"
"I'm sorry!" Katniss stammers, cutting my apology off. She sits perched on my
hips, her hands pressed against my chest. "I just wasn't expecting it. Here..."
Katniss picks my hand up from where I dropped it to my side and brings it back
to her breast and holds it there with both of hers. I take a chance and squeeze
again, and I watch in awe as she closes her eyes tightly and throws her head
back slightly, taking a deep breath in through her nose.
The look of protest Katniss shoots me when I pull my hand away pierces straight
through my chest and down into my stomach. She liked it. She didn't want me to
stop. I decide to try something else. Slowly, I work my hand under the hem of
her t-shirt. Katniss looks down at my arm intently as it disappears under the
fabric.
I move slowly, grazing my fingers over the warm skin on her stomach, feeling it
contract under my touch. As I move further up, I listen, waiting for her to
tell me to stop, but the words never come. The way she stares back at me when I
look up to gauge her reaction is all consuming. I can't tear my eyes away from
her. Her chest heaves under my hand when it reaches the fabric of her bra. Each
exaggerated breath threatens to push us both into an abyss that I'm not sure
I'll ever be able to crawl out of, but it's too late to think about that now.
My fingers find the lip of Katniss's bra and I work my fingers underneath,
slowly blurring the lines of what's familiar and unfamiliar between us, until
the silky fabric is pushed up and my hand covers her bare breast. Once again, I
squeeze gently, feeling her hardened nipple brush against my palm. Katniss
arches her back, pressing harder against my hand as she moans airily and
anchors herself by grabbing my sides.
Do you like that, Katniss?I'd love to say the words out loud, but I can't seem
to get a sound past the lump in my throat that only seems to get larger when
Katniss bites her bottom lip and starts to grind against me. She looks lost,
like she is giving into urges that have been bubbling inside of her for weeks.
I hold onto her hip with my free hand while she glides her middle over my dick
with nothing but our clothing stopping us from truly feeling one another.
Suddenly, Katniss stops and moves her hands to the bottom of her shirt,
whipping it up and over her head in a hurry. Without a moment of hesitation,
she reaches back and unhooks her bra, leaving me staring at my hand covering
her breast, the contrast of my fair skin against her olive tone is striking.
"They're small..." Katniss says feebly, her cheeks stained red. She won't look
at me anymore. Is this why she hasn't taken her shirt off until now? Does she
actually think I care about that?
"No," I manage to choke out, pulling my hand away. I allow my fingers to graze
the newly exposed skin down to her stomach. My hand comes to rest on her thigh.
"Don't say that." Finally, she looks at me again, eyes wide and uncertain.
"Come here." I wrap a hand around the back of her neck and pull her down into a
kiss to try and convey all of the things I cannot say. That there's nothing to
be ashamed of, she is beautiful and she is perfect in my eyes.
"Touch me again," Katniss breathes against my mouth. I close my eyes and take
in the sound of her voice -- ragged and wistful. She pushes herself back up
into a sitting position and grabs my hands, bringing them over both of her
breasts. She squeezes my hands, encouraging me to knead harder than I had been
before. "Yes," Katniss hisses, her hips respond again and I moan in unison with
her. "Like that."
The tips of my fingers find her nipple -- small and pebbled, and I swirl the
pad of my thumb over it before pinching it delicately.
"Harder," Katniss instructs ardently. I follow her direction and pinch harder.
“Yes,” she moans again.
Just listening to how this is affecting her is beginning to make me feel
unhinged. She bucks harder on top of me, and I let out a strangled moan from
the friction between our bodies. My dick is almost aching to be touched by her
small, soft hands. She works me in ways that I have never been able to, and I
know that just her body gliding over mine with clothes on is not going to be
enough for much longer.
I can’t take my eyes off of her face. The way her jaw is lax, mouth slightly
parted as she flicks her tongue out and wets her lips. I wonder what she’s
thinking right now. Does she like how my dick feels rubbing against her? I
should ask her -- I want to ask her, but I still can’t find the words.
She drops down and presses her bare chest against my clothed one and kisses me
again. She looks beautiful. Sounds beautiful. When she breaks away and looks
down at me, I reach up and push a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and I know
at that moment, I’m a goner and have been since the day I met her.
As if on cue, Katniss begins to move, slithering down my chest and off of my
body. I’m used to this. It’s all part of our dance. She pops the button on my
jeans and begins to tug them down, catching my boxers as she pulls. The relief
I feel when my dick springs free brings a groan to my lips.  
Katniss looks down at me and reaches out, grabbing my erection almost expertly
now compared to that first day. There is no trepidation in her movements as she
smooths her hand down my length, but then she stops. I look at her, confused,
and knit my eyebrows together. I am just about to ask her what’s wrong, when I
notice the intensity of her gaze. It’s almost intimidating.
What isshe thinking?
She hovers over me and grabs my dick again, smoothing over it the same way she
did before, but this time, she leans her chest forward and pulls the tip down
between her breasts, rubbing it over the skin there and across to her left
breast. Her eyes flick back up to me nervously, and I nod at her, dumbfounded.
“Feels good,” I groan, encouraging her to continue.
She begins to rub the head of my dick across her hardened nipple. I suck in air
between my teeth in response. When she looks up at me again, her expression is
full of fear.
“What’s wrong?” I manage to ask. She won’t answer. She just keeps looking up at
me, her eyes as wide as saucers.
Finally, Katniss licks her lips and breaks eye contact, looking down at my dick
and then back up at me quickly one last time. Slowly, she moves back down onto
her stomach, continuing to stroke me as she situates herself between my legs.
I prop myself up on my elbows and watch her, clad in a pair of jeans, lying
between my legs, stroking my hard dick. When she swallows hard and begins to
move her face forward, I have to question if my mind is playing tricks on me.
Is she really about to do what I think she is? I twitch in anticipation just
thinking about it.
We keep ours eyes locked on each other. Katniss licks her lips once more and
leans forward. We’re both breathing heavily as Katniss’s lips make contact with
my shaft where she places a light kiss. And then another, moving higher each
time, halting all of my thoughts until finally she is at the tip of my dick and
her lips are enveloping it.
She sucks for a quick second before the bellowing moan I let out stops her. No,
don’t stop. Katniss looks up at me, and I try to give her an encouraging nod,
but I’m afraid it doesn’t work. I can’t seem to close my mouth. My breathing is
uneven and I know that my eyes don’t show the confidence that I’m trying to
convey.
The sigh of relief I let out when Katniss takes me into her mouth again is loud
and almost desperate. She moves down and takes more of me into her mouth, but
her teeth scraping across my shaft cause me to jump and wince slightly. Katniss
looks up at me worriedly.
“Teeth,” I explain sheepishly. Her eyes grow wide in horror, and  I smile at
her in attempts to not make her feel bad.
“Shit...” Katniss berates herself. “I didn’t mean to...”
“It’s okay,” I breathe. “It’s okay. Just.. please. Please do that again.”
“You liked it?” Katniss asks, shocked.
“It felt incredible,” I tell her reassuringly, but she still doesn’t look
convinced. “Your mouth felt incredible.” I can see Katniss’s breathing speed up
when she hears my words. She jumps up, placing a quick kiss on my lips before
tugging at my t-shirt.
“Can you take this off?” He says, looking away to finish her sentence. “I want
to be able to touch you.”
“Sure,” I chuckle, sitting up and pulling my shirt over my head quickly. After
I’ve thrown it to the side, I look at her and watch her eyes sweep over my
body. We’ve never been completely naked in front of each other before. I look
down at Katniss’s jeans. “Take your pants off,” I say, trying to keep my tone
steady.
Without protest, Katniss unbuttons her jeans and slips them off. She settles
herself back between my legs and I admire her completely naked form for the
first time. My eyes follow the arch of her back down to the curve of her ass. I
want to touch every part of her, but right now she has other plans.
With less hesitation than before, Katniss slips the tip of my dick into her
mouth again and sucks, swirling her tongue over it.
“Oh fuck,” I mumble. I’m about ready to lose it already. I can’t finish yet. In
attempts to distract myself, I sit up higher on my elbows, watching Katniss’s
mouth take in more of me. Warmth engulfs me and I can’t keep myself still. I
want to thrust my hips, push my dick in deeper, but I know I can’t do that. I
shouldn’t.
Katniss’s hand comes to rest on my hip and she presses down hard in attempts to
get me to calm down, while her other hand begins to trail up my stomach to my
chest, touching everything she can manage while she continues to suck. She
drags her tongue up the underside of my dick until her lips find the tip again
and she sucks in. I’m panting, unable to even find a word to mutter under my
breath.
I’ve never felt anything this amazing before. If her mouth feels this good,
what does shefeel like? I can’t stop my mind from wandering to thoughts of
plunging into her over and over again. It’s not the first time I’ve thought
about it, but right now, with her mouth on me while her nails are scratching up
and down my stomach in time with her movements, it brings my thoughts to a
whole new level, blurring my vision and clouding my mind.
Katniss starts to move faster, as though she is gaining control of her rhythm
and getting used to the feeling of having me in her mouth. I keep watching the
way her lips slide over my dick, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite
like it.
How did we get there? From friends to.. what are we now? I push those thoughts
away and reach out, running a hand through the hair that has come loose from
Katniss’s braid, making sure that I take my time and focus on keeping my hips
still while I take in the sight before me.
Katniss shifts and takes her hand off of my stomach, leaving behind a trail of
red, angry skin where her nails grazed. She reaches between my legs and finds
my balls, cupping them in her hand. My hips come up off the bed involuntarily
when she begins to massage and run her palm over them.
This is too much. I know I’m not going to last much longer. I can feel the
familiar sensation buliding up deep in my stomach.
“Katniss,” I moan heavily. She looks up at me, but continues to suck. “Gonna
come.”
She hesitates for just a second, but in the end continues with even more fervor
than before, working eagerly to get me off.
“Katniss,” I say warningly one last time before my hips seize and my dick
twitches. Katniss keeps her mouth on me while I come, but pulls aways quickly,
and it spills over the head and down my length. Her hand comes up to her mouth
and she swallows before letting out a gasp behind her hand.
"I'm sorry," Katniss apologizes. "I'm so sorry! There was just too much."
I look at her quizzically for a moment while I struggle to catch my breath. It
takes me a little while to realize that she is apologizing for pulling away. I
reach out, finding my discarded t-shirt and use it to clean off my stomach,
looking up to Katniss whose eyes are still filled with uncertainty.
“Hey,” I say soothingly, reaching my arm out and gesturing for her to come
closer. She moves over to me and presses her naked body flush against mine, our
faces aligned. “It’s okay. There’s nothing to apologize for,” I finally tell
her.
Katniss looks at me tenderly, leans down, and kisses me deeply. Her tongue
enters my mouth without hesitation. I can taste what I can only imagine is
myself on her lips and tongue. It’s oddly thrilling and I know immediately that
I want to find out what she tastes like.
Does Katniss want that? I can’t ask her. I don’t want to ruin our kisses by
stopping to ask if I can eat her out. Instead, I shift my weight, getting up on
my knees, coaxing Katniss to do the same. I cup the sides of her head with my
hands and continue kissing her, moving my tongue into her mouth and sliding it
along hers languidly. The low moan that vibrates in Katniss’s throat gives me
just the boost of confidence I need to gently urge her to lie flat on her back
on the bed.
Without thought or even a look, my hand finds Katniss's breast again. I knead
it in my hand, enticing her. She sucks on my bottom lip and squirms underneath
me, arching her back as though she needs to feel more of me.
"Peeta," Katniss moans softly. She wraps her hands around the back of my neck
and pushes down, guiding my head toward her chest. Even without speaking, I
know what she's trying to tell me.
My mouth finds her breast easily, and since I know she wants this I don't
bother looking up at her for approval. Her skin is warm and smooth against my
lips, and she keeps her hands at the back of my head, softly caressing my hair
and periodically dragging her nails across my neck while I dot kisses across
her chest.
When I reach her nipple, I flick my tongue out over it to test Katniss's
response. She sighs and arches her back. I smile against her skin as I wrap my
mouth around the hardened nub and begin to suck, gently at first, but then I
remember her words from earlier. Harder.
The harder I suck, the louder she gets. Her legs fall open, allowing me to fall
between them. It has never been like this before. There is nothing hiding us
from each other now. I can feel every inch of her skin as it presses against
mine. The warmth and wetness between her legs is evident against my stomach.
It's exhilarating -- I have to taste her.
Each kiss I leave on her skin moves me lower and lower down her body. Katniss's
breathing is erratic, her hands still buried in my hair. She pulls fistfuls
aggressively, anxiously, as though she is anticipating what is to come.
I give her stomach a final kiss and push her knees up until her feet are flat
on the bed. My hands roam her thighs, followed by my lips. I kiss the inside of
her thighs further and further until I'm face to face with her middle. I can
see how wet she is, and I resolve to try to make this as good for her as she
made it for me, even though I've never done anything like this before.
Starting with what's familiar seems to be the easiest. I push my thumb between
her folds and rub her clit, dragging it down through the wetness before I bring
the soaked digit to my mouth and suck, looking up to make sure Katniss sees
what I'm doing.
Katniss’s taste is distinctly different from my own, but intoxicating. She
opens her legs wider, inviting me back in. Repeatedly, I run my fingers between
her folds and lick them clean, indulging in the slight hint of sweetness.
"Peeta?" Katniss says, squirming underneath me. I bring my eyes up to meet her
confused stare. Shit.She isn't enjoying this. How could she? I wasn't doing
anything to make her feel good.
"Sorry." I look up at her sheepishly, determined to tell her what is going
through my mind. "You just.." I almost stop, but force myself to continue. “I
like the way you taste,” I finish, causing her cheeks to redden.
This time, I take my pointer finger and trail it down the inside of her thigh
all the way down until I find her center. I use my other hand to spread her wet
folds before gently pushing my finger inside of her. She's tight, even with
just one finger, and it makes my dick twitch when I think about how wet and
warm her walls are against my finger.
Katniss doesn't seem to be responding when I pull my finger out and push back
in. I try a few more times, but notice she has propped herself up on her elbows
as is staring at me.
"Fingers don't really do much for me. Not one at least," Katniss shrugs. "Every
time I've tried to add a second though, it hurts too much so I stop. I was
hoping since your finger is thicker than mine it would work but..."
"It's not." I cut in, finishing her sentence. Katniss shakes her head sadly. I
pull my hand back, overcome with embarrassment. I should just stop trying. Go
back to getting her off the way I know works and leave it at that.
"What you were doing with your thumb felt great, though." She smiles at me
encouragingly, probably sensing my discouragement. "I bet it'd feel even better
if you did it with your tongue."
Somewhere along the way I lost my focus. The plan all along was to do for her
what she did for me. I feel stupid that she had to remind me what I was
supposed to be doing, but I try to ignore it and settle myself back between her
legs.
The silence since Katniss's reminder is only making my nerves worse. What if
I'm terrible at it? Then again, as far as I know, nobody has ever done this to
her before, so maybe she won't realize that I'm terrible. If all else fails, at
least I know how to make her come with my hand.
I take my fingers and spread her folds again, moving my head in close. Before I
can over think it, I dip my tongue in and drag it up, stopping at her clit. She
tastes even sweeter now, and I lick greedily, trying to taste as much of her as
I can.
As I work, I begin to notice that every time my tongue circles Katniss's clit,
she gasps louder. I think about the way she liked when I sucked on her nipple
and I decide to experiment by wrapping my mouth around the sensitive nub and
sucking.
"Holy shit, Peeta!" Katniss gasps, fisting my hair again. Her noises fill me
with certainty. I take my mouth away from her middle briefly, leaving Katniss
breathless while I kiss her the inside of her thighs and suck on the skin with
so much force that I know there will be a mark later.
I find a pattern that seems to be working, alternating between licking and
sucking. Katniss grabs my hair tighter, and I stop moving, but continue to lick
when she begins to swirl her hips over my face, guiding where she wants my
mouth to be.
She calls out my name one last time before her orgasm takes over, but I don't
stop. I don't want to stop. Her body shudders against my mouth while I continue
to lap at her center, the sound of her deep breathing and satiated moans
threatening to make me hard again.
After her body has calmed and I've pulled my mouth away, I feel a swell of
pride deep in my chest. I move up her body and kiss her deeply.
"Do you taste yourself on me?" I ask huskily.
"Yes," Katniss replies, pulling me down into another kiss, moaning into my
mouth. I feel my dick begin to stir even more, but I can't let it take over, as
much as I want to. It's almost six now. I'd never hear the end of it if I
forgot to put dinner in the oven.
"I have to go get dinner started, I’m sorry," I whisper against Katniss's lips.
"You can stay in here if you want, or come out when you're ready."
I slither off the bed and slip my boxers back on, remembering at last minute
that I used my shirt to clean my come off of my stomach.
In the kitchen, I peel the foil away from the pan of meatloaf and crinkle it. I
almost don't hear the sound of the side door opening before my brother Rye,
walks inside.
"Cooking in your underwear?" he laughs, peeking into the pan at the meatloaf.
"Fuck off," I retort, irritated. "Why are you even home?" I hope he can't sense
the nervousness in my voice. Katniss, just stay in the bedroom until he's gone.
Please.
"I forgot something. I'll only be a minute, then you can go back to jerking off
and crying in your room." He laughs at his joke and begins to leave the
kitchen, but stops abruptly when he almost collides with Katniss.
Rye narrows his eyes at me before laughing and shaking his head.
"I had a feeling you two were fucking," he says, turning and walking out of the
kitchen snickering.
I run after him, panicked, and grab his shoulder forcing him to turn around.
"WE'RE NOT..." I stop to clear my throat and lower my voice. "We're not
fucking,"I hiss.
"So you just walk around in your underwear in front of every friend you have
over?" Rye questions. "I'm not stupid, Peeta."
"We're not fucking..." I repeat seriously. "At least not yet."
Rye nods.
"Just screwing around then, huh?"
"Yeah.. I guess," I admit, rubbing the back of my neck. "You're not going to
tell mom, are you?"
"Hell no, I'm not going to tell mom. She'd never let her over here again," he
says, shaking his head. "I'm not going to deny my little brother the chance to
get his dick wet, what kind of a monster do you think I am?"
"Thanks," I say gratefully, cringing at his choice of words.
"Don't say I never did anything for you, now go get dinner started before mom
gets here."
When I get back in the kitchen, I sigh in relief when I see Katniss leaning
against the counter, sipping a soda.
"Good think I put my clothes on," Katniss observes, pointing her chin in the
direction Rye went. "Does he know?" Her voice is suddenly nervous.
"Yeah, he knows," I confirm. "He said he wasn't going to tell." Katniss sighs
and drops her shoulders just as the oven beeps, indicating it is ready for the
meatloaf.
Silently, we disband. I get the meatloaf into the oven while Katniss gathers
silverware for the table. I reach behind Katniss to pull plates down from the
cupboard above her. Once I set them down, I wrap my arms around her from
behind. Katniss melts into me and rests her head on my arm. I'm not sure if
it’s the relief of knowing that my brother isn't going to rat us out, or if
it’s something else, but this isn't something we normally do. Our affections
usually stopped as soon as we were finished fooling around.
I don't question it. Instead, I dip my head down and kiss the exposed skin of
Katniss's neck. She brings her hand to the back of my head, and runs her
fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp.
We're interrupted by the sound of Rye clearing his throat from the archway.
"Mom will be home in forty five minutes," he says warningly. Katniss and I both
hear his tone and understand what he's trying to say -- Make yourselves
presentable and practice acting like you didn't spend the afternoon messing
around.
"Thanks," I say, pulling away from Katniss reluctantly.
Rye nods curtly and is out the door seconds later.
"Go get dressed, I'll set the table," Katniss offers, smiling warmly at me. Her
smile holds something that I can't quite figure out, but it fills me with so
much ardor that the only way I can respond is by kissing her. I run my hand
down her side, lingering longer than I should then I leave the kitchen,
disappearing into my bedroom to change and make sure everything looks as it
should.
Alone here in the quiet room, I can't stop my mind from contemplating what was
in Katniss's smile. Something is changing, I can feel it, and even though we
haven't discussed it, I know we will need to. Soon.
 
Chapter End Notes
     Thanks for reading, the next chapter is going to have a lot more
     focus on pushing the plot and not the porn (but the porn will still
     be there) ;)
***** Chapter 3 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
“Fuck, Katniss,” I exhale, unable to hold my tongue. The sight of Katniss’s
mouth enveloping my dick for the second time today has me reeling. I grip my
sheets in my fists when her tongue comes out and swirls around the head.
Every time she does this it feels even more amazing than the last. Over the
last two weeks, it seems like we’ve spent more time making each other come than
we have spent talking. Every time I resolve to sit her down and talk -- truly
talk -- about what we’re doing, something distracts me.
Sometimes it’s the intoxicating scent of her hair -- light, like grapefruit,
often with a hint of vanilla. Other times it’s the feeling of her smooth, warm
lips against the skin of my neck, or the gentle nipping of her teeth on my
earlobe. The thing that gets me the most, however, are the soft noises she
makes when she’s near me. They’re so light and so soft that I’m not even sure
that she realizes she’s doing it.
It’s those noises that I can now feel vibrating against my dick. Her hand grips
the base of me as she takes more of my length into her mouth. I can barely tell
where her mouth stops and her hand begins anymore.
“Shit,that feels good,” I growl.
Katniss moans louder against me, as though she’s challenging me to use my voice
and make more noise. I match her volume, letting an uninhibited moan pass my
lips that only seems to grow louder when Katniss uses her free hand to begin
massaging my balls. The effect is almost devastating.
I drop my hand and bury it in Katniss’s hair that is now free from the braid
she arrived in. The corner of my mouth quirks up into a lopsided grin over the
way her hair is still mussed as a result of writhing across my bed so
forcefully when I made her come earlier. I can still hear the way she sounded
when my name fell from her lips, unbridled and heavy. I can still feel how hard
she fisted my hair as she rode out her orgasm.
Katniss’s hand begins to move from the base of my dick up to the tip. She leans
forward and kisses the head before taking it back into her mouth only briefly,
dragging her tongue along the slit and pulling away.
“Does this feel good?” She asks, squeezing me tightly while she pulls her hand
up and down the length.
“Feels great,” I breathe. “Keep going.”
“What about this?”
She adds her tongue again, slowly licking a line up the underside of my dick
from the bottom to tip, closing her mouth over me and moving down, taking me in
as deep as she can.
“Oh my God,” I mutter, my voice strained.
Before I can stop myself, I lift my hips from the bed and thrust gently into
Katniss’s mouth. I open my eyes quickly, ready to apologize, but instead of
pulling back, she is staying in place. She lets out a muffled moan that
vibrates straight down to my toes -- she liked it.
I try again and the same thing happens, so I continue, finding a rhythm that
works, being careful not to thrust too hard. Our moans mix together, filling
the room and echoing through my mind, driving me closer and closer to the edge.
I’m not sure we’ve ever been so loud. I’m not sure I ever want to be quiet
again.
“I’m there, Katniss,” I croak. She braces herself and waits for me to thrust
once more before I feel myself spilling into her mouth. I watch as she sucks
hard, draining me of every last drop of come that she can before she pulls away
and licks her lips again, smiling proudly.
As I work to steady my breathing, I watch Katniss quietly get up from the floor
and gather her clothing, quickly slipping into them. When she is dressed, she
climbs into my bed, waiting for me to join her.
Finally, I slip my boxers on and lie back against my pillows. Katniss curls up
against my chest, snaking her hand out across my body, absentmindedly rubbing
soft circles across my stomach. My fingers find her hair and comb through the
tangled strands delicately as I close my eyes.
I could lie here like this with her all day if she’d let me. The pressure to
speak isn’t there during these moments. It’s just the two of us enjoying the
presence of one another, reveling in the silent, blissful minutes that follow.
Minutes that are sure to be etched in my memory for a long time.
Before I fall asleep, I reach across my bed and grab my phone to set an alarm.
Katniss and I have gotten used to taking naps together lately, relying on the
alarm to wake us up before either of my parents come home.
“Actually, Peeta, I have to go now,” Katniss mumbles, pulling out of the grasp
my arm had on her shoulder.
“What?” I ask, confused. “Why?” She didn’t tell me she had to leave early
today.
Katniss sits up and sighs as she begins to re-braid her hair. She looks down at
me sadly. It’s clear that she doesn’t want to go.
“I promised Prim that I’d take her to the park this afternoon..” She trails
off, securing the fresh braid with a hair tie. “Since I haven’t in awhile.”
The guilt I feel is strong and immediate, and I can tell Katniss feels it too.
Even though she didn’t say it, we both know that Katniss hasn’t taken Prim to
the park, her favorite place, because she has been spending all of her free
time with me instead.
Katniss leans forward, resting her hand on my chest again before pressing her
lips to mine tenderly.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, ok?” She murmurs, brushing the hair off my forehead. I
nod and watch her move off of my bed and slip her shoes on as she makes her way
to the door, stopping abruptly after she’s pulled it open. I furrow my eyebrows
at the back of her head, observing the way she taps on her thigh nervously with
her hand. She spins around quickly, a sheepish look painted on her face. “You
wouldn’t want to come with us, would you?” She asks.
I am off my bed, throwing my clothes on, and following Katniss out of my
bedroom and to her car without a second thought.
                                      XXX
At the sound of Katniss’s horn, Prim runs out the front door and hops off the
porch, blonde braids bobbing up and down with her steps. Prim is small for her
age, just like Katniss, but that is where their physical similarities end. Prim
favors their mother, fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Katniss’s olive
skin, dark hair, and gray eyes come from their father.
I don’t know much about Katniss and Prim’s father, Katniss doesn’t like talking
about it. She was eleven when he died, and Prim was seven, and beyond that, the
only thing Katniss has ever told me about her father is that he was in a car
accident as he came home from working the graveyard shift at the hospital where
he was a security guard. The same hospital Katniss’s mother works at to this
day.
Prim stops abruptly when she notices me sitting in the front seat of Katniss’s
car. I make to open the door and let Prim sit in the front, but Katniss’s hand
on my arm stops me.
“Oh. Hey, Peeta,” Prim says through the open window, giving a slight wave. “I
didn’t know you were coming with us today.”
“Hey,” I smile. “I could move to the back if you want.” Suddenly I feel like
I’m imposing on Katniss’s time with her sister. Maybe this was a bad idea.
“I can sit in the back,” Prim laughs. “And now that you’re going with us, you
can keep Katniss out of my hair while we’re out.” She steps to the side and
throws a small purse into the back seat before hopping in.
I look at Katniss and smirk when she glares at her sister. I push the thoughts
of imposition away and settle into the passenger seat, enjoying the warmth of
the sun on the side of my face.
“Buckle up,” Katniss instructs her sister, waiting until she hears the belt
lock into place before pulling back out of the driveway.
                                      XXX
When we get to the park, Prim is out of the car and running across the grass as
soon as Katniss’s car is in park. Katniss and I are a little slower, taking
time to roll up the car windows and lock the doors before setting off toward
the water.
Walking through the grass that is still well kept and now covered in bright
yellow dandelions, I suddenly remember the first time Katniss brought me to
here.
“You can just throw your bike down in the grass,” Katniss says, dropping her
own down with a thud. I follow her lead and abandon my bike in the grass,
jogging to catch up to her as she walks toward the water.
“This is the park,” Katniss announces, spreading her arms out. “Well, it used
to be the park. A new park was just built a little further away. It’s much
nicer, so that’s why nobody comes here anymore unless they are going to play
basketball.”
“They don’t have basketball courts at the new park?” I question.
“They do, but so many people go there that they’re usually full. Since they
took down the playground equipment here, but left the basketball courts, people
come here to play sometimes.” She nods at me, seemingly satisfied with her
explanation. “I still like this place better, though.”
I stand in awe and watch her talk. This is the most I've ever heard her speak.
Her voice is nice. Higher and lighter than I'd imagined it being.
“I like it,” I say with a shrug. It’s a big place with a lot more space than
any of the parks back home. A wooded area surrounds us, and right in the center
is a large lake. I smile when I spot a line of ducks swimming across it. “Do
you swim here?”
“You don’t want to go in that water,” Katniss warns, shaking her head. “It’s
disgusting. You’ll see when we get closer.”
She’s right. As we walk across the grass and my focus on the lake becomes
clearer, I can see how green and cloudy the water is.There is algae that I can
only imagine getting tangled in floating as far as the eye can see.
Katniss sits herself down in the grass about ten feet from the water and pulls
her knees up to her chest. I plop myself down beside her and take in my
surroundings.
“So,” Katniss says, staring out into the water. “Why did your family move
here?”
“My parents bought a new bakery in town,” I explain. “Too far to drive to every
day, so we all moved here.”
Katniss nods, still keeping her focus on the water.
“How far did you move?” She asks.
“About 150 miles, I guess,” I shrug.
“Do you miss your friends?”
“Sometimes. It would have been nice to start high school with them instead of
strangers, but my dad said he’d drive me back there to see them whenever I
want.”
“Do you think I’m a stranger?” Katniss asks.
“I don’t know anything about you except for your name, so.. yeah,” I reply
honestly.
“You agreed to go to an unknown park with a stranger?” She teases.
“I don’t know how to make friends any other way,” I reason.
“Well, what do you want to know about me?”
Katniss is a lot different when she’s not at school. Less standoffish -- funny,
even. And I haven’t seen her scowl once.
“I’ll start with something simple. What’s your favorite color?” I ask. “Mine’s
orange.”
“Green,” Katniss says quickly. “Can I ask one?” I nod. “How old are you, and
when’s your birthday?”
“That’s two questions,” I say with a smirk. I see the corner of Katniss’s mouth
pull up into a grin. “I’m fourteen, and my birthday is in March.”
“You’re older than me,” Katniss pouts. “My birthday isn’t until May.”
We fall into an uncomfortable silence as we both stare out into the water,
watching the family of ducks wade through the water. The sound of Katniss
clearing her throat brings my attention back to her.
“So.. why’d you do it?” She asks in a voice just above a whisper, her tone
completely changed as she plucks a dandelion from from grass and blows on it,
causing the fluff to float through the air.
“Do what?”
“Give me your homework to copy.” She looks at me with a scowl. I spoke too
soon. She throws the dandelion stem to the ground angrily, her eyes hard and
unreadable.
“Oh.” I shrug. “I didn’t like the way the teacher yelled at you last time, and
three missed assignments is detention, right?”
Katniss sits next to me in Mr. Abernathy’s math class. In just this first month
of school, Katniss has missed handing in two assignments already, and Mr.
Abernathy only allows three missed assignments for the entire semester before
he starts handing out detentions.
When I noticed that Katniss didn’t have her homework again, I quickly slipped
her my sheet of answers and let her copy them before Mr. Abernathy came around
to check our work.
After class, Katniss stopped me in the hall and asked if I’d be interested in
riding to the park with her after school. I agreed happily, eager to make a
friend, but at the moment, I’m beginning to question my decision to come here
with her. She’s angry. She narrows her eyes at me and clenches her jaw, and I
can't help but wonder if she brought me here just to tell me off.
“I’m not stupid, you know,” Katniss snaps.
“I didn’t say you were,” I say defensively.
“I can do the work just fine. It’s just that I...” She stops and looks at me
again, her expression softening just a bit, as though she’s trying to decide if
she should finish her sentence. “I don’t always have the time to get everything
done that I need to everyday.”
“What do you mean? What kind of stuff do you have to do?” I ask gently.
“Laundry, dinner, making sure my sister’s homework is done,” Katniss rattles
off. “Everything, I guess.”
“What about your parents?”
That was the day that I learned that Katniss’s father had died three years
earlier, and that her mother is still often consumed by her grief. Even though
she still works at the hospital, she frequently disappears to her room for days
at a time, leaving Katniss and Prim to fend for themselves.
It was also the day Katniss and I decided to become homework buddies.
It started off with me going to her house all the time. While I was there, I
would also help her get the laundry and dinner done, sometimes even helping
Prim with her homework. Eventually, as Prim became more independent and started
chipping in, Katniss was able to start coming to my house too, where she’d help
me set the table for dinner, wash dishes afterwards, and occasionally, take a
trip here to the park together.
That’s what our friendship was until this past winter. Between the things we’ve
now done and the things we still haven’t said, everything feels like it has
been turned upside down. I scan the area and find Prim, far off in the
distance, digging into her purse and feeding a mangy, orange cat.
“Prim’s found her stupid cat,” Katniss says, rolling her eyes.
Katniss has told me all about this cat. How one afternoon, about a year ago,
she and Prim came here to the park and the ugly cat sauntered up to Prim out of
nowhere, purring and rubbing on her leg and never leaving Prim’s side. The next
time they came back, he was still here. Eventually, Prim started bringing food
for him to eat and tried to bring him home, but he wouldn’t stay. The very next
day he was right back here. It’s why she likes to come here so much. To see
that cat. She even named him Buttercup.
“Why do you hate cats?” I ask with a chuckle.
“I hate Prim’s cat, not all cats,” Katniss reminds me, joining my laughter.
All at once, we fall silent as though we both remember the first time Katniss
said that to me. I feel the opportunity to speak slipping away, so I keep my
eye on Prim to make sure she’s not coming back toward us and take a deep
breath, steady my body, and urge myself to say something.
“Katniss?" I say, coaxing her to look at me. "I think we need to talk."
Katniss is silent for a while, pulling at the dandelions underneath us and
twirling them in her fingers, the same way she did the first time we came here,
only these dandelions are bright yellow and begin to stain her fingers as she
starts to crush the flowers between her thumb and forefinger.
"I think so, too," Katniss finally admits with a sigh. She meets my gaze with
hesitance. There is worry in her eyes. Over what, I'm not sure, but her silence
tells me that she's waiting for me to start.
Where do I even begin? Do I ask her how we got where we are now without talking
about it first? Do I ask her how far she wants to take this while casually
mentioning that my brother has already supplied me with condoms that are now
sitting in the drawer of the table in my room, just in case we ever decide to
take things even further than we already have? Nothing sounds right, so
instead, I spit out the first thing I can think of.
"I had fun today,” I offer, lamely. “I mean!" I stammer, trying to get the
words out. "I always have fun with you. Even before..."
"I know what you mean," Katniss says, keeping her eyes on Prim.
"I like spending time with you.”
"I like spending time with you, too," Katniss replies, finally looking at me.
She feigns a smile, but I can still see the apprehension in her eyes.
This is not going the way I imagined it would. I sigh, frustrated, and try
again.
"No. I mean, I reallylike spending time with you." Katniss raises her eyebrows,
waiting for me to continue. "So much, that I think.. maybe we could be good..
together."
"Together?" Katniss repeats.
"As more than friends," I say on the exhale. My breathing is short from the
nerves that have now set in, and my heart thumps wildly against my chest as I
wait for Katniss to answer.
Her silence threatens to crush me. Each second that ticks by is like another
weight added to my chest. Katniss has turned her focus to Prim again, who is
now holding the cat like a baby as she sways back and forth. She's fine,
Katniss. Can you at least look at me?
It catches me by surprise when she whips her head around to look at me again.
Her eyes are softer, almost sympathetic. I brace myself for her rejection.
"So do I," Katniss murmurs.
A wide grin breaks out across my face before I have time to stop it. Katniss
laughs airly, as if she’s relieved to have finally admitted it. I want to lean
over and kiss her, show her how happy I am to hear that she has had the same
thoughts I have, but I know she would never allow it with Prim so close.
Instead, I reach between us and grab her hand and the dandelion she was
holding. I lace our fingers together and hold the wilted and crushed flower in
front of us.
“I’m not sure we can save this one,” I say with mock sadness. “And so young,
too.”
“Let’s give him a burial at sea,” Katniss adds, plucking the dandelion from my
fingers and throwing it into the water. We watch it float on the surface in
silence.
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to talk to you for weeks,” I finally
confess sheepishly, steering the conversation back to where it needs to be
right now. As little as we did say, now that it’s out in the open, I feel
lighter somehow -- elated, even. “If I knew it’d be this easy, I would have
done it a long time ago.”
Katniss’s hand finds my face, and for a fleeting moment, she gently rubs the
pad of her thumb across my cheek bone, pulling away before Prim has a chance to
look our way.  
“I was hoping you’d get the hint that I liked you when I asked you to show me
how you masturbate,” Katniss says. She tries to sound serious, but soon she
falls into a fit of laughter, covering her face with her hand. “Oh, God. I
can’t believe I actually asked you to do that. After I got home that night, the
only thing I could keep replaying in my head was how stupid I probably
sounded.”
“You didn’t sound stupid. It worked, didn’t it?” I remind her, catching the
tail end of her braid between my fingers. “It took a couple of months, but it
worked.”
“It has been a nice couple of months, too,” Katniss adds.
“I’m hoping that the next couple will be even better,” I smile.
It’s nice being able to say these things out loud, but I’d be lying if I said I
wasn’t still a little nervous about it. Katniss can be unpredictable,
sometimes. From hour to hour, I often don’t know if something I say will result
in a kiss or a punch in the arm. This time, I’m met with a timid smile.
“So am I,” she replies, reaching into the grass and grabbing hold of my hand
again.
                                      XXX
Katniss pulls into my driveway and puts her car in park just behind Rye’s.
Turning to face me in the passenger’s seat, she smiles.
“Thanks for coming with us today,” Katniss says.
“Yeah, Peeta,” Prim chimes in from the back seat. “Thanks for keeping Katniss
out of my hair for the afternoon.”
“You’re welcome,” I laugh, turning my attention back to Katniss. “I’ll see you
tomorrow? Before your shift at work?”
“Yeah,” Katniss says tenderly. “Tomorrow.”
Her stare feels as though it will seer a hole right through me. She licks her
lips and sighs, knowing she can’t kiss me right now. As though sensing the
tension, Prim clears her throat.
“You can kiss him if you want, Katniss. I won’t look.”
“Prim!” Katniss snaps. I can’t help but laugh, shielding my smile behind my
hand.
“You’re so transparent,” Prim says. I can almost hear her rolling her eyes just
from her tone. “I know you want to kiss him, so just do it.”
I look back then to see that Prim has turned her head and is staring out the
window, keeping her promise not to look.
“May as well,” I shrug.
Katniss glowers at me for just a second before leaning in and placing a soft
kiss to my waiting lips.
The urge to deepen the kiss is almost overwhelming, but I remember Prim sitting
in the backseat, so I pull away reluctantly, taking Katniss’s hand in mine and
squeezing.
“Text me later?” Katniss asks after I’ve opened the car door.
“You bet,” I say, trying to keep the mischief from my voice. We text every
night before bed, but tonight, I have a little something different in mind to
text her after I slip into bed.
I wave as Katniss pulls out of the driveway and make my way into the house,
stopping dead in my tracks when I see my parents sitting in the living room.
It’s not unusual to see my father home in the middle of a business day, he is
almost always home by mid-afternoon. My mother on the other hand is a different
story.
Since we moved here, I hardly see my mother. It was her idea to have the bakery
open seven days a week. She is out of the house and there before I even wake up
in the morning, and she doesn’t come home until after closing time at night. I
see her at dinner, but I usually retreat to my bedroom immediately afterward.
“Hey,” I say in greeting. I can sense something is wrong. “What’s going on?”
"Was Katniss here today?" My father asks. There's something in his voice that I
can't decipher. Something like a mix between interrogating and skepticism.
"Yeah, and then we took her sister to the park," I reply.
"And what about before that?"
“Dad, I --”
“Peeta,” my father interrupts sounding exasperated. “Just answer the question.”
“We just hung out, like always,” I reply.
“Are you two having sex?” he asks then.
“No,” I say quickly. Too quickly for my mother, who scoffs and shakes her head.
“He’s lying, Tim,” my mother says accusingly.
I stand in front of my parents at a loss for words. I can’t put my head around
how in less than a minute, they have started a round of questioning that
threatens to ruin everything. Anger has begun to steadily build in response to
my mother’s cold tone and the disapproving look that now stares back at me.
“Your mother has reason to believe otherwise,” my father says, almost
indifferently.
“Well then maybe my mother should talk to me about this herself instead of
going through a third party,” I spit back.  
“He’s your father!” my mother retorts.
“Only when you want him to do your dirty work,” I mumble angrily.
My mother begins to push herself up from the couch but is stopped when my
father’s hand pushes down on her shoulder, keeping her in place.
“Peeta,” he begins sternly. “We asked you a question. Are you and Katniss
having sex?”
“I already told you no!” I yell.
“And that is a lie!” My mother yells back.
When Rye’s bedroom door opens and he pokes his head out, my anger reaches a
whole new level. He told them. He must have. How else would they know?
“What’s going on? Who’s yelling?” Rye asks.
My feet are moving and carrying me down the hall before I even realize it. I
make it to Rye’s door quickly and push it open angrily.
“You told them!” I snarl, pushing him into the wall. “You fucking told them!”
“What the hell are you talking about?!” Rye growls. He grabs my arms and pushes
me away just in time for my father to catch me by the shoulders.
“You told them about me and Katniss!” I hiss in Rye’s direction.
“I didn’t tell them anything!”
I attempt to go after Rye a second time, but my father’s grip on me is too
strong to break out of.
“Peeta!” my father yells, gripping my shoulders harder and spinning me around
to face him. “Rye didn’t tell us anything.” He sighs and clenches his jaw. “If
I let go of you, can you not go after your brother again?”
“Fine,” I snap.
My father’s hands drop from my shoulders and I look at him expectantly.
“Why did you lie?” he asks.
“I didn’t lie,” I shrug. “We’re not having sex.”
“That’s not what your mother claims to have heard this morning.”
“What?” I ask, horrified.
“Come on,” my father says unhappily. He grabs my shoulder again and leads me
back into the living room where my mother still sits on the couch, chewing on
the inside of her cheek, her eyes trained on the wall.
“Rhoda? Tell him,” my father instructs.
I watch my mother steel herself and swallow her anger before looking at me, but
when her eyes land on me, they are still cold and unforgiving.
“I had to stop home this morning,” she begins cooly. “And when I did, I heard..
you two in your bedroom.” She finishes her sentence with a disgusted scoff,
causing me to break eye contact and drop my gaze to the floor guiltily. “Do you
have anything to say?” she asks bitingly.
I keep my eyes on the floor as I try to think of something I could say. Any
excuse to get them to believe that something else was happening, but I can’t
think of anything. I remember how loud we were this morning. Our careless moans
must have pierced through the hall, unmistakable to recognize.
“No,” I finally answer, shame and embarrassment coursing through my body.
“I don’t want her here anymore.” I open my mouth to argue, but my mother puts
her hand up to silence me. “And I already called her mother and informed her of
what you two have been up to.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I say scathingly. This time, without my father to stop
her, my mother jumps up from the couch and steps toward me.
“Peeta! Go to your room!” My father bellows. “Now!”
“Gladly,” I hiss through gritted teeth, plodding out of the living room and
down the hall.
Slamming my bedroom door behind me, I stand in front of it and listen to the
shouting match that has started between my parents since I left the living
room.
“Why would you tell her mother?!”
“She has a right to know what her daughter has been doing!”
My mother’s tone is icy, but there’s something in it that also sounds
satisfied.
“Are you trying to keep them apart? Rhoda, he is seventeen years old! If he
wants a girlfriend, he should be allowed to have a girlfriend!”
“He can have a girlfriend, but she won’t be in my house. Not after they both
defied our rules right in our own home, and then helied to us!”
I hear my father groan exasperatedly seconds before another door slams. I can’t
make out the direction it came from, but I’m willing to bet that my mother is
on her way back to the bakery and will probably be there through the night.
It’s the typical pattern when they fight.
My thoughts immediately drift to Katniss. Did she experience the same
embarrassing interrogation as I did? I grab my phone and send a quick text,
knowing better than to call right now.
“Park tomorrow. 10am.”
I ignore my father’s shouts for me to come have dinner and spend the evening
sketching and staring at my phone, waiting for Katniss to text back.
I fall into a restless sleep, waking almost every hour to check my phone for a
reply, but it never comes.
                                      XXX
It’s 9:30 in the morning when I get to the park. Katniss never returned my
text, so I’m here on blind faith, hoping she’ll show up.
I make the mistake of letting my mind wander while I wait. What if she doesn’t
want to see me anymore? What if she thinks what we’ve started and gotten
ourselves into is a mistake and suggests we try to go back to being just
friends -- or worse -- nothing at all?
The sound of a car honking breaks me from my thoughts. I whip around and spot
Katniss’s car pulling into the parking space next to me.
I wave her over to my car and unlock the door, waiting as she situates herself
and exits her car. I heave a sigh of relief. She showed up.
Katniss slips into the passenger seat of my car and looks at me with sad,
nervous eyes.
“My mom said you can’t come over anymore,” she blurts out.
“Mine said the same thing,” I say, starting my car and pulling out of the
parking lot.
“Where are we going?” Katniss asks.
“Away from town for today,” I begin. “To the other park.”
“Why?” Katniss questions. “Are you trying to hide from your mother?”
“Yes,” I admit.
“Peeta...”
“She didn’t say we couldn’t see each other, but I’m afraid that if she were to
catch wind that we were together right now, she’d change her mind,” I explain.
“She wouldn’t do that. Would she?”
“You don’t know my mother,” I say, laughing bitterly.
And she doesn’t. In the three years I’ve known Katniss I can count on one hand
the amount of times she has been around my mother, and just about all of them
have been when Katniss has stayed for dinner. I don’t talk about my mother
much, the same way Katniss doesn’t talk about her father. It’s much easier not
to.
“She’ll need a few days to calm down before it’s safe for us to be seen in town
together,” I add,  ending the conversation..  
The drive to the newer park outside of town is silent. I try to rehearse in my
head what I’ll say when we get there, but when I pull into the parking space
and turn my car off, all of the words seem to leave me and I find myself
fumbling over words, grasping desperately at the few things that are still
floating through my mind.
“I still want to see you,” I say hastily.
“I still want to see you, too,” Katniss replies, though she looks confused. “I
mean, we’ll see each other at school, right?
“I can’t kiss you at school,” I remind her, leaning in to kiss her neck. “Or
taste you. I think I’ll go out of my mind if I can never taste you again,” I
whisper.
Katniss sighs loudly, curling her fingers through my hair and guiding my head
upward toward her lips.
“What are we going to do?” she asks, sadly. “I feel like this is my fault.”
“It’s not,” I assure her, resting my forehead against hers. “We’ll just have to
be clever about where we meet each other, that’s all. We have our cars, we have
our park. It’s almost always just us there.” I kiss a line across her jaw up to
her lips. “Not like here.”
The reminder that we’re surrounded by people makes Katniss pull away from me.
She sets her palm flat against my chest, ensuring I keep my distance.
“This makes it feel wrong,” she mutters.
“Don’t say that,” I plead.
“I can’t help it.” She wraps her arm around the back of my neck and brings my
mouth down to hers again, kissing me with desperate force. “But I need to see
you,” she whispers. “I need you.”
“We’ll figure this out, I promise.” I cup her head in my hands, and Katniss’s
eyes flutter closed when my thumbs come up and brush her cheeks.
“Can you take me back to my car now?” She asks shakily. When she opens her
eyes, I can see tears have begun to gather in the corners.
I want to question her. Ask her why she wants to leave when she doesn’t have to
work until this afternoon, but I can see that wouldn’t be a good idea right
now. I sigh and nod, letting go of her face.
Our ride back to Katniss’s car is mostly silently, only interrupted by the
sound of Katniss’s light sniffling that she tries to keep me from hearing. The
urge to pull the car to the side of the road and comfort her is strong. I need
to promise her again that everything will be ok and that we’ll get through
this, but I know that will only make things worse, so I spend the rest of the
drive keeping my eyes glued to the road, acting as though I don’t hear Katniss
crying right next to me.
“Text me when you finish work?” I ask when I drop Katniss off by her car.
“Okay,” Katniss says, noncommittally. She leaves my car and closes the door
before I get the chance to say goodbye, leaving me to wonder if that text will
ever come.








Chapter End Notes
     Thank you for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated. You can also
     find me on Tumblr -- mellarksloaves.
***** Chapter 4 *****
Chapter Notes
     A/N: I want to take a minute to apologize to everyone who has been
     waiting for an update. It has been getting increasingly difficult to
     write at work, so that takes a lot of the writing time I used to
     having away from me. At the moment, I am only able to write at night
     after work and on the weekends. In addition to that, It Begins In
     Mystery is not the only thing I am working on right now, so my update
     schedule may not be as consistent as it has been in the past. Thank
     you all for your patience and interest in my stories. Hopefully a
     10,000 word chapter will make up for how long it has taken me to get
     this written. Please enjoy!
I can tell I’ve reached my arms out too far before I have time to stop myself.
My legs lift off the ground in a hurry, and the walls of the school gym spin,
causing my vision to blur until my back forcefully comes into contact with the
cold mat and I’m left staring up at the bright, fluorescent lights that buzz
loudly above me.
“Mellark!” Coach Abernathy shouts seconds before he’s looking down angrily at
me. It’s bad enough having to hear him grouse and complain during math class
every day, but it’s even worse now that he has taken over as wrestling coach
and I have to hear him during practice too. “You need to get your head out of
your ass and into practice! Tournaments are soon, and we can’t have one of our
best suddenly off his game.”
“Sorry, Mr. Abernathy. It won’t happen again,” I say apologetically, picking
myself up off the mat.
“Damn right it won’t!” Coach Abernathy barks. “Go again! Remember the strategy
we worked out last week. And it's Coach Abernathy during practices and
matches.”
“Right," I nod, rolling my eyes.  
The temptation to call him an asshole under my breath is strong, but I wouldn’t
be the first to try it, and I am sure I wouldn’t be the first he’d overhear.
Detention is the last thing I need right now.
If he weren't such a good coach, I would question how he even landed this job
in the first place, but he does seem to know what he’s talking about. He has
even come up with strategies and moves that my brother hadn't been familiar
with. Some say he's the only reason we have a chance in these tournaments. Up
until he took over, we've never even been contenders.
I set my feet and ready myself, determined to focus on pinning my opponent this
time, but before Coach Abernathy can even blow his whistle, my mind has
wandered once again to Katniss. I've never had trouble focusing on wrestling
before, and I’m sure the change is noticeable.
Normally, as soon as I walk into this gym after school, wrestling is the only
thing occupying my thoughts. Today, however, it's Katniss. She has not been
acting like herself since I dropped her off at her car yesterday, and it’s that
and my worry over what it could possibly mean that infiltrates my mind.
Her texts last night were brief and nothing at all like what they usually are.
After a handful of short replies, she sent a final text telling me that she was
tired and was going to bed early. I didn't hear from her again until I caught
up with her in math class this morning, and even then she was somewhere else
entirely, so lost in thought that she continually asked me to repeat myself
every time I said something to her. During lunch, she asked me to repeat myself
three different times. Eventually I just stopped talking, too frustrated to
even bother anymore.
I’m brought out of my thoughts quickly when my body is slammed against the mat
for the second time in one practice. I clench my jaw angrily and exhale loudly
through my nose, frustrated with myself for being unable to focus on wrestling
because my mind is too clouded by thoughts of Katniss and my worries that I'll
get a message from her at any time telling me we've been making a big mistake.
"DAMMIT, MELLARK!" Coach Abernathy's bellowing voice echoes through the gym,
causing everyone to stop what they're doing and look in my direction. "Get up
off the mat, go shower, and don't come back for another practice until you're
ready to put in a little effort!"
I push myself off the mat and storm off toward the shower without saying a
word, too afraid of what I may say in frustration to even chance opening my
mouth.
The locker room is dark and quiet when I enter, giving me time to shower and
dress in peace, free of the shouts of the rest of the wrestling team. I take my
time, letting the warm water pelt my shoulders in hopes that the frustration
I’m feeling because of Katniss and Coach Abernathy will lessen.
I don't even realize how much time I’ve wasted until I begin to hear the
yelling and chattering of everyone else growing closer and closer, indicating
that practice has finished and they're filing into the locker room to shower
and change as well. I shut the water off quickly and wrap my towel around my
waist, eager to get out of the way.
With my head down, I navigate through the crowd, hoping that nobody will try to
talk to me. All I want to do is get dressed so I can get the hell out of here.
"Hey Mellark!" The sound of my friend Finnick's voice stops me in my tracks.
"Odair," I reply, sighing audibly.
"What was going on out there today, man?" Finnick asks. "You looked about as
interested in wrestling as I am, and I know that isn’t true."
Finnick is actually a swimmer. Up until the beginning of the current school
year, he was the captain of the swim team, but that was before the school
decided to get rid of the swimming program when budget cuts started. Now, to
occupy himself, Finnick joined the wrestling team and spends more time making
it known that he could care less about it than he does actually wrestling, but
also refuses to quit. He says it keeps him out of trouble.
"Just some personal shit, but I don't want to talk about it, ok?" I say
pleadingly.
"Alright, I can respect that," Finnick nods, slapping me on my bare shoulder.
"Just make sure you leave that shit at home tomorrow, I don't want old man
Abernathy's head to explode."
“Yeah.” I attempt a laugh, but it falls flat. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Finnick lets me continue on toward my locker, and to my surprise, nobody else
even bothers to look my way as I move through the crowded locker room.
When I pull my locker open, I spot my phone sitting on top of my clothes and
grab for it. Even though I don't expect to have any message from Katniss, I
have to check anyway.
My stomach drops when I see her name on the screen.
This is it. This is when she tells me that whatever is going on between us is
over.
Against my better judgement, I open the text message right in the middle of the
locker room where anyone can look over my shoulder and read the rejection
themselves, but I can't wait until I'm out of here. I have to read it now.
"At the park. You should stop up after practice if you can."
It isn't what I was expecting, but the relief that floods my body is short
lived. What if she wants to tell me in person that she wants to go back to what
we were before we lost control? I refuse to allow myself to feel happiness when
I may be facing yet another difficult conversation in just over a forty-eight
hour period.
I finish dressing as quickly as I can and run my fingers through my damp hair
before I shove my phone in my pocket, grab my backpack, and jog out of the
locker room in the direction of the school parking lot, ignoring the questions
that are being shouted at me in response to my hurried exit.
Ten minutes later, I’m pulling into the parking lot of the park. I spot Katniss
right away,  propped against the front bumper of her car with her arms crossed
over her chest watching Prim play with Buttercup in the grass. My feet seem to
pound against the asphalt even louder than usual as I make my way toward her.
“Hey,” I say almost cautiously when I reach her. I’m still not sure why she
invited me here. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about what she’ll say
next.
“Hey,” Katniss returns meekly, keeping her eyes straight ahead.
We stand against Katniss’s car as silence quickly falls between us, staring
straight ahead at Prim who appears to be in an entirely different world. She
beams down at the orange cat and cradles him in her arms, just as she did the
last time we were here. A light chuckle escapes my mouth at the sight of it.
“Aren’t you afraid she’s going to bring home fleas?” I ask. “That cat is kind
of mangy.”
At the sound of Katniss’s laugh, I take a chance and glance in her direction.
The smile I am met with sends a warmth through my body that I haven’t felt in
days, and it’s only now that I realize how much I’ve missed it.
“I make her shower as soon as we get home,” Katniss replies, setting her gaze
back on Prim.
“Good thinking,” I deadpan. “I can’t believe he stays when she holds him like
that. It’s like he actually believes he belongs to Prim.”
“I think he does belong to her at this point,” Katniss says with a shrug. “I’ve
never seen anyone else take care of him the way she does. I think she’d die for
that cat.”
When I’ve run out of things to say about Buttercup, the silence returns
immediately and we are back to watching Prim who is now dangling a blade of
grass in front of Buttercup’s face. I’m surprised when the cat reaches his paws
up to swipe at it. Prim’s laughter echoes through the park, causing Katniss to
shake her head.
“The only time I remember that she’s just twelve years old is when she’s
playing with that cat,” she says, breaking the silence.
Curious, I ask the question that has been on my mind since Saturday.
“Does she know what’s going on?”
“Yes,” Katniss sighs. “I don’t know how. I never told her anything about us,
but she knows. She was also quick to remind me that  being unable to get a hold
on my emotions and taking it out on you isn’t very fair.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, furrowing my eyebrows in confusion.
“After we got home from school she came into my room and started questioning me
about you,” Katniss starts. “It was like she knew that something was bothering
me, even though I didn’t say a word to her about any of it. It was her idea to
come here and invite you. She’s keeping herself occupied right now so we can
talk.”
I struggle to grab hold of what I’m feeling. On one hand, I’m grateful for
Prim’s perception and ability to convince Katniss to reach out to me, but on
the other hand I’m hurt to learn that if it weren’t for her, Katniss probably
never would have taken the initiative to invite me here at all.
“Then we should probably start talking,” I say, dispirited. “What was going on
today?”
I watch Katniss’s face contort as she struggles to find her words. Exhaling
loudly, she finally turns to me.
“I know you told me not to say it, and I don’t want to, but I can’t stop
thinking it,” Katniss stammers.
“What?” I ask, urging her to continue.
“I still feel like we did something wrong, Peeta. Like we’re still doing
something wrong.” Her tone is distressed. I’m brought back to our conversation
yesterday and am suddenly overcome with guilt over not letting her talk about
it then. Today could have been avoided if I had just let her talk to me, and if
it weren’t for Prim, who knows how long this could have gone on.
I sigh and run my hand through my hair, knowing that we won’t be able to move
past this unless we’re honest with each other, even though the truth is that I
didn’t want to be honest yesterday.
“Well,” I say reluctantly. “We diddo something wrong.” Katniss’s eyes grow
worried. I don’t think she was expecting me to say that. She opens her mouth to
speak, but put my hand up, cutting her off. I’m not finished. “We broke the
trust of my parents and your mother, sometimes while she and your sister were
right there in the same house. We shouldn’t have done that.”
“Yeah...” Katniss mutters, looking down at her feet.
“We got caught up and got ahead of ourselves, and that was wrong.”
“I think we need to take a few steps back,” Katniss suggests. “Start over
again.”
“I think so too,” I agree, nodding. “That would be good for us.”
Katniss looks up to check on Prim, then focuses her gaze on the trees in the
distance before speaking again.
“I really do love how you make me feel when you touch me,” she admits. “But
maybe sometimes holding hands is all we need.” She looks down and picks up my
hand, quietly lacing our fingers together and squeezing tightly.
“And maybe a walk around the lake,” I add, smiling at her. I push myself off
the car and pull her toward me, gesturing for her to take a walk around the
water with me.
The silence that falls between us this time is comfortable, and I can feel the
tension in my body slowly melting away with each stroke Katniss’s thumb makes
across the top of my hand as we walk.
“Holding hands is nice,” Katniss says, breaking the silence.
“It is,” I admit, swinging our arms between us. “Taking a walk with you is
nice.”
“It is,” Katniss says, mimicking my tone. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want
you to touch me anymore,” Katniss blurts out. "It just doesn't have to always
go there."
I roar with genuine laughter for the first time in days, shaking my head at
Katniss’s blunt approach.
“Good,” I say between chuckles. “I was hoping not.”
We move nearer to the water and sit down in the grass together, keeping our
hands linked. With a quick glance at Prim, Katniss looks me in the eyes, her
expression serious.
“Did you mean it when you said you thought we’d be good together? As more than
friends?” She questions. “Because I think this is more than just fooling
 around now, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I say, attempting to sound nonchalant. “Do you want it to be?”
She doesn’t answer right away. I stare at her, so fixated on the way her
shoulders rise and fall with the labored breaths she is taking that I almost
miss her nod of affirmation.
“Same,” I concur, smiling. I reach out to rub her shoulder, letting my hand
snake up the side of her neck then stop so I can brush my thumb across her
cheek. “I have for a while.” Katniss nods as though she knows what I’m talking
about, catching me by surprise.
“Same,” Katniss repeats assuredly. “Too bad we messed up and I can’t have my
boyfriend over for dinner now.”
Hearing Katniss call me her boyfriend sends a jolt of excitement through my
body that is uncontrollable.
“Is that what you consider me?” I ask, still shocked. “Your boyfriend?”
“You don’t?” Katniss asks nervously.
“No, I do.. I mean..” I stammer, trying to find the best way to approach this.
“I just agree with what you said. This is more than just fooling around. I just
wasn’t sure that you were ready to put a label on what this is just yet.”
“Well,” Katniss says, taking a deep breath. “I’m ready when you are.”
“I’m more than ready.” The smile on my face is probably embarrassing, but I
revel in this moment as long as I can before it’s tamped out when I remember
there’s something else I need to talk to her about.
“I hate to ask, but I have to know,” I say carefully. “How mad was your mother
on Saturday?”
“She didn’t sound mad, really,” Katniss says with a shrug. “She sounded hollow,
like she usually does.” I can hear the anger rising in Katniss’s voice already,
and I begin to regret even asking. “Like she was going through the motions.”
In the last few years, I’ve learned that the topic of Katniss’s mother is a
sensitive one for her. Normally, I wouldn’t even ask about it, but since this
is partly my fault, I felt like I had to.
“I’m not even sure that she truly cares if you come over. I think she said it
because she felt like it was what she was supposed to say,” Katniss explains,
shaking her head and looking away from me. “You know I used to see the school
counselor when I was in junior high, before you moved here?”
“No, I didn’t know,” I admit. “You never told me that.”
“I started going to talk about my father, but most of the time we just ended up
talking about her.”
“What kind of things did you talk about?” I ask gently, silently appreciative
that she's choosing to share this with me right now.
“Most of the time it was about how she could almost forget about her children
at home, but go back to the place she and my father both worked at without
issue. How she could take that same route that killed him every single day, but
she couldn’t seem to gather the strength to come in and say goodnight to her
daughters. That was something she did every single night, but after my father
died? Nothing.”
“That must’ve hurt.” I stop myself in fear that I sound uncaring and let
Katniss continue.
“I just want my father back,” Katniss says numbly. “I wish that things could be
the way they were before he died.”
“I know.” I pull her hands into mine, willing her to look at me.
“And now I have to leave the house to even spend time with you,” Katniss
continues. “Like we committed a crime because we wanted to be together. I hate
being there now. Some days even Prim isn't enough to get me to want to stay
home.”
“We’ll see each other as often as possible, ok?” I promise.
“Ok,” Katniss nods, giving me a sad smile.
“Summer is coming, that’ll give us more time to make plans and go places. Maybe
we can take a trip to the beach,” I suggest.
“That’d be nice, I haven’t been there in a long time.”
“I’ve never been there,” I say.
“You’ve never been to the beach?” Katniss asks, dumbfounded.
“What is this about the beach?” Prim’s voice breaks in, forcing us to turn our
heads in her direction.
“I was just telling Katniss that we should take a trip to the beach this
summer. You could come along, too. We’ll make a day of it,” I explain.
“I can’t swim, though,” Prim says. “Dad never got to teach me like he taught
Katniss.”
“That’s alright, I can’t swim either,” I assure her. “We can just spend the day
making sand castles and eating junk food.”
“So I have to swim alone?” Katniss asks, feigning annoyance.
“Maybe Prim and I can get some floaties to put on our arms,” I smile.
“I like that idea,” Prim says, nodding. She turns to walk away, but stops
abruptly. “So you guys are ok then?”
“Yeah,” Katniss smirks at her sister. “We’re ok.”
“I’m glad.” Prim waves once, and heads off in the direction of Buttercup,
leaving me and Katniss alone once more.
                                     ****
The sounds of yelling wakes me up from a deep sleep. This isn’t unusual. I’m
woken up by my parents fighting at least twice a week, but it doesn’t get any
less jarring. I attempt to drown out their shouts, but when I hear Katniss’s
name, I stop and listen.
“Peeta needs to know who’s in control here. It’s not him. TJ and Rye weren’t
allowed to have girls over, if you recall.”
“This is different, Rhoda, and you know it.”
“Oh, right, because Katniss had to be the first friend he made in a new town,
and I let you talk me into letting her come over here because we had to move
and uproot the family because of me. How many more times are you going to throw
that in my face?!”
“You know if they’re not having sex here they’re going to find somewhere else
to do it.”
I can tell my father is trying hard to keep his voice even and not resort to
shouting like my mother usually does, but he's failing fast.
“Then let them!”
My mother’s words come out in a hiss, and I hear what I can only imagine is my
father’s hand slamming against the kitchen counter, his resolve finally worn
down.
“You couldn't care less about what they’re doing or if they’re being safe,
could you? All of this is because you want to remind everyone in this house
that you make the rules! It has nothing to do with Peeta or Katniss.”
“They broke our trust! And for who knows how long. I won’t allow that girl in
my house again. End of discussion! Now, if you’ll let me leave this house so I
can open up the bakery.Late, mind you, since you wanted to have this
conversationagain.”
I don’t hear my father’s reply before my mother slams the front door so hard
that it causes the house to shake around me.
What I just heard makes me angry all over again. I understand that I did wrong
by my parents and I did break their trust. It’s exactly what Katniss and I
talked about a few days ago, but what my mother is doing has nothing to do with
making sure I understand what I did wrong and that I learned my lesson and
everything to do with her power trips. She’s never around, and I’m sure she
could care less what I do as long as it isn’t under her roof. The only thing
she cares about is making sure that it’s clear that she calls the shots.
When I hear my phone vibrate next to me, I assume it’s Rye texting to ask if I
heard this week’s battle. I’m surprised when I see Katniss’s name on the
screen.
“I miss you,” her message reads.
Despite what I said last Monday about seeing each other as often as possible,
outside of school, we haven’t seen each other in a week. Wrestling has taken
over a huge portion of my free time after school as we prep for tournaments,
and on the days I do get done early, Katniss has been working. It’s like there
is always something preventing us from spending time together.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I send in return.
“I just told you why. What about you? Why aren’t you sleeping?”
“My parents were fighting. It woke me up.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Are you ok?”
“I’m fine. I’m used to it.”
“Oh.”
I’ve never really talked to Katniss about my parent’s marriage, or lack of
marriage, before. I imagine that she is at a loss for words right now, but
before I get a chance to apologize for dumping that information on her, she
sends another message.
“Meet me at the park.”
“What? Right now?”
“Yeah. I want to show you something.”
“What about the cop that patrols the area after dark?”
“Still have your bike?”
“Yes...”
“Meet me at the corner just before the park. By the stop sign.”
I have to laugh at Katniss’s eagerness to sneak out of the house before dawn.
Before I get out of bed to get dressed, I can’t resist asking a question.
“Does this still feel wrong?”
Katniss’s reply comes in faster than I expected.
“No. I want to see my boyfriend. What’s wrong with that?”
I smile down at my phone. She gets it now. I send my last message quickly and
head for my closet.
“Nothing at all.”
I move through my dark room as silently as possible, hoping my father doesn’t
realize that I’m awake at four in the morning. When the sound of the bathroom
fan starts, I sneak quietly down the hallway and slip out the side door. It’s
still completely dark, but I’m just able to make out my bike in the open
garage.
It has been a long time since Katniss and I have gone anywhere on our bikes,
but the familiarity is still there as soon as I start pedaling in the direction
of the park. The stop sign at the corner of the street used to be our meeting
point, and I smile to myself when Katniss comes into view, perched on top of
her bike, leaning against the stop sign while she keeps lookout for the cop
that circles the block. She turns around and points a flashlight in my face
when she hears my bike approaching.
“Careful with that thing!” I laugh, greeting her with a tender kiss. “Thank you
for getting me out of my house.”
“It sounded like you needed it,” Katniss says, running the back of her hand
across my cheek. “Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I’m fine, I promise,” I reply, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear.
“Great now, actually. Since I’m with you. What did you want to show me?”
“Oh, right!” Katniss says grabbing my hand. “Follow me on your bike.”
She begins pedaling as soon as she drops my hand, and I follow behind her
without question. It doesn’t take long before Katniss is slowing down and
pointing to an area of the sidewalk that looks more like a driveway that has
been covered by the overgrowth of the woods.
“Here it is!” She whispers, just loud enough for me to hear. She disappears
with her bike into a patch of bushes that is just a touch thinner than the
rest, and I follow behind, hissing in pain when a branch whips back and smacks
me in the arm.
“What is this?” I ask, confused.
“I found this place last year after I first got my license,” Katniss explains.
“As long as I’ve been coming here, I haven’t seen anyone else in here, but I
think I may have been an old path from back when people used to hike in these
woods.”
I take in my surroundings and notice the paved path underneath us. It’s just
barely wide enough to fit a car, and surrounded by dirt and trees. It is clear
that this used to be some sort of path that is no longer used by anyone.
“You’ve been hiding this from me for almost a year?” I ask, bewildered.
“Sorry,” Katniss says, shrugging apologetically. “Sometimes I just needed a
place to be alone to think. Somewhere that nobody else seemed to know or care
about.”
“What did you come here to think about?” I ask.
“Sometimes my parents, sometimes Prim, but mostly you.”
“You thought about me?” I continue to question. Katniss nods, confirming that
for all the times I sat around alone thinking about her, she was probably here
thinking about me.
“Usually it was about what it would take to get you to realize how I felt about
you,” Katniss confesses, looking away from me in embarrassment.
“That’s funny,” I laugh, bringing Katniss’s gaze back to me. “Because most of
the time I thought about you, it was about how sure I was that you felt nothing
for me at all.”
“That is pretty funny,” Katniss agrees, but she’s shaking her head at me, a
bemused expression painted across her face. “You really had no idea?”
“Not really,” I shrug. “Was I supposed to know?”
“Well, I tried to give you signals,” Katniss says. “You’re usually so good at
noticing stuff like that.”
“I definitely think I missed those.” Katniss looks away, as though she is
embarrassed to learn that her attempts to get my attention went unnoticed. I
can’t let her think that. I may not have picked up on her signals, but I
definitely noticed her. “But maybe that’s because I was too busy trying not to
kiss you.”
“Really?” Katniss asks.
“Really,” I confirm. “A lot of the time, when you’d talk, I’d focus so hard on
your lips and think about how badly I wanted to kiss you that I didn’t hear
what you said, but I couldn’t tell you that. At least I didn’t think I could.”
“You could have,” Katniss murmurs, grabbing my head with both of her hands and
pressing her lips to mine.  The kiss is gentle and unhurried, but still holds
the same hunger as the frantic, secret kisses we’ve been sharing these last few
weeks.
I pull back and look into Katniss’s eyes and am met with a look of contentment.
It’s a far cry from the nervous, sad expression that plagued her a week ago.
Pleased, I smile warmly and run the back of my hand across her cheek.
“Your birthday is soon,” I say. “We should do something.”
“Like a date?” Katniss asks, a smile spreading across her face.
“Yeah, like a date,” I affirm. “Maybe dinner? Where would you want to go?”
“What about here?” Katniss suggests.
“Here?” I repeat.
“That way it can be just us.”
“Alright,” I say reluctantly, thinking things over. “What’s your favorite
food?”
“I don’t know,” Katniss shrugs. “I like subs a lot.”
“Subs?” I ask dryly. “You want to eat subs on your birthday?”
“What did you think I was going to say sushi or some gourmet shit?” Katniss
scoffs. “I like subs.”
“Alright,” I laugh, relieved to see that Katniss seems to be returning to her
old self. “If the birthday girl wants subs, we will get subs. I can pick them
up after school and meet you here. Sound alright?”
Katniss nods, satisfied with the decision.
“Should be an interesting first date,” she jokes. Suddenly, she looks up to the
sky and puts her hand in the air, palm up. “It’s starting to rain,” she says,
sadly. “We should probably go.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Thanks for showing me this place.”
I lean in and press a quick goodbye kiss to her lips before we both turn our
bikes around and leave our new hiding place just as the sky opens up and rain
begins to pour down on us as we go our separate ways, back to our homes.
The rain only seems to get harder as I pedal my bike through the streets as
quickly as I can. It doesn’t keep the rain from soaking through my clothing,
chilling me to the bone.
Even though my father’s car isn’t in the driveway when I finally make it back
home, I still find myself slipping through the front door quietly and pull my
soaked shoes off of my feet, dropping them on the tile floor.
I pad up the hallway as fast as possible, but stop abruptly when I hear Rye
laughing in the kitchen.
“You’re a mess,” he chuckles, shaking his head at me. He leans against the
counter, a bowl of cereal in one hand while he stuffs a spoonful of Frosted
Flakes into his mouth with the other. “Were you with Katniss?”
“I’m cold, I want to go shower,” I say icily, narrowing my eyes at him and
scowling.
“Hey, don’t take this out on me,” he says defensively. “I kept your little
secret. It was youthat couldn’t keep it yourself. Just how loud were you being
that day, anyway?”
“Shut up!” I bark, clenching my fists at my sides. I don’t need to be reminded
of my mistakes right now, not when I’m struggling desperately to keep hold on
the good feelings that came as a result of my time with Katniss. Between the
rain, having to come back home, and now Rye’s ribbing, I’m losing my grip on
those good feelings very quickly.
“What’s going on with you, Peeta?” Rye asks, his voice laced with both anger
and concern. “I saw you fucking up at wrestling practice the other day.”
“I had other things on my mind,” I say shortly, trying to turn to leave the
kitchen.
“Katniss things,” Rye says, stopping me in my tracks. “Look, I know you’re
angry, but don’t take this out on us, Peeta. Dad is actually trying to convince
mom that it’s ok for your girlfriend to come over, even after you were busted
fucking around. I was never allowed to have girls over, so stop acting like the
pampered little shit that you are.”
“I’m not pampered,” I hiss.
“Maybe not, but dad definitely caters to you,” Rye says bitterly.
“Yeah, well maybe if you and TJ...” I stop short, in no mood to have this same
old argument again. “You know what? Forget it,” I say, throwing my hands up.
“I’m not having this conversation with you right now. I need to go get ready
for school.”
Rye shrugs and drains the milk from his cereal bowl, dropping it into the sink
before reaching for his book bag on the floor and hoisting it over his
shoulder.
“Just cut dad some slack, alright?” Rye adds as he makes for the side door.
“And mop the floor before you leave. You made a huge puddle.” Without another
word he turns and leaves.
Maybe part of what Rye was saying was right. I should cut my father some slack.
It’s not his fault that this is happening -- it’s mine. The more I think, the
more I realize that Rye has every right to be bitter that Katniss was even
allowed here in the first place. The only way he and my oldest brother TJ were
able to see girlfriends was by doing the same thing Katniss and I are doing
now, but that’s beside the point, because I know my mother forbidding any of us
from having girls over isn’t because she’s a caring parent who wants the best
for us.
The clap of thunder that blasts through my open window calls my attention to
the fact that it’s still wide open from when I was asleep. Rain water drips
from the windowsill and onto the carpet, soaking the area.
“Shit!” I curse under my breath, running to my closet and grabbing a towel. As
I make my way across the bedroom, I glance at my clock, realizing quickly that
I’m going to be late for school no matter how quickly I get ready.
How could a morning that was made so much better by Katniss get ruined so
quickly? The brief period of relief that I felt when I was with her was short
lived, and now I’m back to reality where finding time to see her outside of
school has become more difficult than I anticipated.
The only thing I have to look forward to is the knowledge that in three days,
Katniss and I will get to spend time together on her birthday.
What I didn't expect, though, was that it would rain for those next three days
and threaten to ruin our plans.
The storms were relentless, with torrential downpours that barely let up and
periods of thunder that were so loud it rattled the windows. This morning, I
was certain that Katniss and I would have to change our date plans, but it
finally stopping around lunch time. Even though the sun still hasn't been able
to break through the clouds, at least things can proceed as planned.
“Thank God it finally stopped,” Katniss says, stepping off the curb as we leave
school for the day. “I thought we were going to have to build an ark.”
“Yes, finally,” I reply, relieved. “So I’ll meet you at the park in an hour?”
“Yeah, I just have to go to the junior high to pick up Prim and get her dinner,
then I’ll be there,” Katniss smiles. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to
wrestling practice first? I could just come back here and we could go to the
park together after it’s over.”
“No,” I shake my head. “It’s just practice, I won’t be missed. Besides, I have
stuff to do before the park.” I smile at her teasingly.
“No presents!” She warns, pointing her finger at my chest. “I already told you
I don’t want a present.”
“No presents,” I repeat, nodding in understanding. We part with a chaste kiss
and I move to my car quickly and duck in, speeding off toward the store before
anyone on the wrestling team has a chance to come looking for me.
An hour later, I pull my car into the small, hidden space Katniss showed me the
other day, cringing when branches fly back against the sides. Katniss is
already here, but all I can see is the back of her head from where she sits
perched on the hood of her car.
When I exit my car, grocery bags in hand, I step right into the mud that
surrounds the small path. My foot sinks in, and I have to pull it out
carefully, hoping my shoe doesn’t get stuck in the process. It’s impossible to
avoid it with our cars parked on the path. There is just enough room for the
car and nothing else. It wouldn’t be so bad if it hadn’t just rained for three
straight days, but if the only thing I have to worry about today is a little
bit of mud, I’ll take it.
“Did you get Prim all situated? I ask, walking carefully on the lip of the path
in attempts to avoid the mud, but my foot slips off and I land right back in it
anyway.
“Yeah,” Katniss says, cringing when she looks down at my feet. “Sorry about
your shoes. I should have warned you it was all mud here after it rains.”
“It’s fine. Your feet don’t look much better,” I observe, laughing at her mud
covered sneakers. “You could have brought Prim, you know.”
The truth is, I’m glad that Prim didn’t come, but part of me still feels guilty
that she’s at home alone right now while Katniss and I spend time together
here. The look Katniss gives me as she shakes her head tells me that she
doesn’t want Prim here either, today. Her hand comes up quickly and fists my t-
shirt, pulling me in for a deep kiss, welcoming my tongue after I drag it along
her bottom lip.
If we don't stop now, we will go too far, too soon. Reluctantly, I pull away
before I begin to unravel, determined to bring the focus back on dinner.
“Are you hungry?” I whisper against Katniss’s lips.
“Mmhmm.” Katniss leans in and rests her forehead against mine. “Where did you
get the subs from?”
I smile widely and give Katniss one last peck on her lips before I move away
and place the grocery bags on the hood of her car.
“Well, I did something a little different,” I begin. “Instead of just going to
Subway or something, I went to the grocery store and bought stuff so we could
make our own subs.”
“No you did not,” Katniss says in disbelief, laughing as she peers inside one
of the bags.
“I did! That bag has the lunchmeat,” I explain, pushing her hand away when she
goes for another bag. “That one is for later, you can’t see what’s in there
yet.”
“I told you no presents, Peeta,” Katniss admonishes.
“It’s not really a present,” I say, smirking. “It’s for both of us, but let’s
eat first. Those ribs they served in the lunchroom today were fucking
disgusting and I'm starving."
I hop up on the hood of Katniss’s car and wait for her to join me, chuckling to
myself at the suspicious look she gives me before she settles in next to me.
“Now you’re going to have me wondering what’s in that bag the whole time we’re
eating,” Katniss says, irritated.
“Good,” I say. “Everything is exactly as it should be. Now, what do you want on
your sub? Turkey? Cheese? Ham? Mayo? You name it, I got you covered.” I shove a
third bag toward her that is full of small packets of condiments.
“Where the hell did you get these?” Katniss laughs.
“Stole them from the bakery,” I shrug. “They have them available to people who
order those bagel sandwiches my dad always talks about at the dinner table.”
In the end, Katniss stuffs her sub full of both ham and buffalo turkey,
provolone cheese, and finishes it off with a packet of mayo. I do the same, but
add horseradish instead of mayo. We stay on the hood of Katniss’s car and eat
our subs in a comfortable silence. Even with all of the mud and awkward
positions we have to sit in to make sure our food doesn’t slide off the car, I
know this is better than any restaurant we could have gone to. I just hope
Katniss feels the same way.
I observe Katniss silently after she pops the last bite of sub into her mouth
and wait, hoping she'll offer some sort of sign that she is enjoying herself.
When she doesn't, I clear my throat to get her attention.
“How was your sub? I ask, nervously, suddenly wondering if I've done enough to
make the day special for her. “If you didn’t like it, there’s still time to go
somewhere...”
“No,” Katniss shakes her head. “I loved it. Thank you for doing this.” She
reaches her hand up and begins to play with her father's necklace, and for the
first time I feel like I have the nerve to ask her about it.
“So what is that on your necklace, exactly?” I question, squinting in attempts
to get a good look at the pendant around her neck.
It’s round and appears to have tree branches nestled inside. From three of the
branches is a small stone that dangles.
“The stones are me, my mother, and Prim’s birthstones,” Katniss explains,
allowing me to get a closer look. “I bought it for my father when I was eight
years old.” She laughs a little to herself. “It’s only now that I see that it
isn’t the most masculine necklace out there, but even so, he wore it every
single day. It was his good luck charm, he said.” She falls silent and looks
down at the pendent, clutching in in her fist. “The one time he didn’t wear it
was the day he died.”
“I’m sorry, Katniss,” I say, swallowing hard.
“It’s ok,” Katniss says, tucking the necklace back into her shirt. “Now I keep
it on as mygood luck charm.”
“How has that been working for you?” I ask.
“Not so bad,” Katniss smiles. “My sister is healthy, happy, and smarter than
I’ll ever be. My mother.. well, she could use a little extra luck, but she
keeps food on the table. And I met this really great guy a few years ago.”
“Really?” I scoot in closer and wrap my arm around her, holding her tight.
“Tell me about him.”
“Well, he’s really funny and very sweet, even if he likes to pretend like he is
some big shot jock wrestler," Katniss says. “He's also the best homework
partner I’ve ever had, I think. There’s just one problem, though.”
“What’s that?” I ask, nerves pooling in the pit of my stomach.
“He gets hard ons watching big cats have sex,” Katniss says, bursting into
laughter.
“That’s not even a little bit fair!” I bark, unable to hold my laughter any
longer. “That had nothing to do with the cats and you know it.”
“Do I?” Katniss mutters.
“You do now,” I admit. “It was because of you, Katniss. I just thought you'd be
mad at me if I told you that then.”
"But you thought it was ok to let me think lions turn you on?" She chuckles.
"It seems silly now," I admit. "But at that moment I was mortified."
"I'm sorry I made you feel like you couldn't tell me. I really need to work on
sending out signals better." Katniss apologize. "Can I tell you a secret,
though?"
"Of course you can," I smile, waiting to hear what she's going to tell me next.
"Well you know how we used to always sit on your living room floor and do our
homework at the coffee table?"
"Yeah..."
"If I positioned my foot just right and sat on it, it would rub against me
perfectly when I moved. It felt good, but I never could figure out how to get
from that point, to telling you I'd rather it be your fingers I felt between my
legs." Katniss's cheeks are stained red with her admission. "So if its any
consolation, I understand why you weren't able to tell me."
"You... did that?" I ask, mouth agape. I stare at her silently and wait for her
to laugh and tell me she was kidding, but she holds my stare and doesn't crack
a smile once.
"It didn't help at all, really," she says with a shrug. "I'd still have to go
home and finish myself off with my fingers, but I always hoped you'd notice..
somehow."
"It's not as easy to tell when a girl is horny," I remind her, thinking back to
all those afternoons sitting around the coffee table with her. "Wait! Is that
why you were always squirming when we worked?"
"Yeah," Katniss laughs. "And you always told me to stop because it made you
nervous."
"Shit. If I had known that's why you were squirming..." I stop, unsure of what
to say next.
Rather than saying anything more, I tilt her head up and meet her lips, running
my tongue between them until she opens her mouth and our tongues meet. As I
secure her bottom lip between my teeth and bite down, my hand travels the the
front of her shirt and kneads her breast through the fabric, eliciting a
muffled moan from Katniss that encourages me to keep going.
Moving my hand over, I begin unbuttoning her shirt slowly, breaking the kiss to
look up at her as I work, searching for signs that I’m moving too quickly. When
I reach the last button, I smooth my hand up her stomach, lingering when I
reach the skin between her breasts.
“Is this ok?” I ask, running the pads of my fingers up and down the soft flesh.
“Yes,” Katniss breathes, grabbing hold of my hand and guiding my fingers over
the front clasp of her bra. I take the hint and bring my free hand up to help
open the front of her bra.
As soon as the tension on the bra is release and the sides fall free, I dip my
head down and kiss a trail from the center of her chest and over the swell of
her breast until my mouth finds her nipple and I take it into my mouth, nipping
at it with my teeth.
“I’ve missed this,” Katniss moans, arching her back and grabbing onto the hair
at the back of my head, running her fingers through it fervently.
She groans in protest when I pull my mouth away from her nipple, but it dies in
her throat when I begin to lick a line up her throat and cover her mouth with
my own, teasing her with a deep kiss.
“You like your nipples teased?” I breathe, pressing lighter kisses to the
corners of her mouth. Now that our feelings for each other are out in the open,
I’m not afraid of scaring her away anymore, and I’m anxious to see how she
responds to all of the things I’ve been wanting to say to her. She nods
hurriedly and tries to push my head back down so I can continue, but I resist.
“I want to show you what I got for us, now.”
Katniss drops her hands to my shoulders and looks up into my eyes searchingly.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Hang on,” I say, running my thumb over her bottom lip. “I need you to do
something for me, first.” I snake my hand down between us and swirl my finger
around her nipple before pinching it. “Take off your clothes, and go lie down
in the backseat of your car.”
I help Katniss slide off the hood of her car and watch her make her way toward
her backseat, laughing when she curses at her feet getting stuck in the mud. I
follow behind her shortly after and notice Katniss’s clothes discarded on the
floor of her car, muddy shoes and all.
“You’re quick,” I say, smirking when my eyes land on her naked form in front of
me. “And beautiful.”
“Shut up,” Katniss says, embarrassed.
I shrug and drop down to my knees, ignoring the cold sensation of the mud as it
begins to saturate my jeans almost instantly. I grab her ankles and pull her
closer to me, throwing her legs over my shoulders and begin to kiss her calves,
working my way up between her thighs.
Sliding my hand up her stomach, I stop when I find her nipple again. Katniss
arches up, pushing herself into my hand eagerly as I begin to roll the hardened
nub between my fingers, listening to the different sounds she makes when I
squeeze it.
The further my mouth moves across the inside of Katniss’s thighs, the more she
squirms underneath me, anticipating the moment when I finally reach her center.
“You’re extra eager today,” I observe, looking up at her and smiling. “Did you
miss this?”
“Yes,” Katniss nods, reaching out to caress my cheek.
“What did you miss?” I ask.
“How you seem to know exactly where to touch me. And when,” Katniss answers,
gasping when my fingers slip between her folds to graze her clit lightly. “Just
like that,” she breathes, still writhing underneath me.
After working her for several minutes, showering the insides of her thighs with
kisses while my fingers tease her clit, I move down and slip my fingers through
her wetness and pull away. Reaching into my pocket, I pull out the small bottle
of lube I bought at the store earlier and hope that she’s ready for what I want
to try.
“Is that what you got for us?” Katniss asks, looking at the bottle.
“It’s a little different than the one you’ve used on me,” I explain, popping
the top open and drizzling a small amount of the liquid onto the tips of my
fingers, making sure they’re fully coated. “Just lie back and let yourself to
stay relaxed,” I murmur, reaching up to rub her thigh with my free hand.
Slowly, I begin to push two fingers into Katniss’s center. Between the lube and
how wet she already is, I am able to slide them in fairly easily, stopping only
once to make sure she’s not uncomfortable.
“How does this feel?” I ask.
“Better than it usually does,” Katniss says.
“What about now?” I curl my fingers and graze the tips against the top of
Katniss’s walls. She sucks in a sharp breath and grinds against the palm of my
hand.
“Even better,” she whimpers. “And warm.”
“That’s the lube,” I say, chuckling. “I bought the warming kind.”
“I like it,” Katniss replies, smiling down at me. "Keep going."
Silently, I move my head back down between her legs and continue to kiss her
thighs while beginning to work up a slow rhythm with my fingers. Pushing them
in, then pulling back while curling my fingers up, making sure that my fingers
stroke her upper wall every time I pull back.
Katniss’s hands tangle in my hair when my mouth finally covers her clit. The
gentle sucking, along with my finger’s ministrations have her producing deep
gasps that start from low within her stomach, replacing the soft mewls that she
was making earlier. I use her noises as guidance, sucking harder on her nerve
and pushing in with my fingers more firmly.
I ignore the chill that is running through my body from kneeling in the cold
mud and circle my tongue around Katniss’s nerve, continuing to pump my fingers
in and out of her. My hair is wrapped so tightly around her fingers, that the
force she is using to keep my head in place begins to hurt, and I have to work
extra hard not to try to break free when she tightens her grip again.
“Peeta,” Katniss gasps, crossing her ankles behind my head to secure me in
place even more. “I’m so close, Peeta. Don’t stop.”
Her words, and the sound of my name on her lips gives me the resolve to keep
going despite the pain in my head and uncomfortable chill that is taking over
my body.
More determined than ever, I take Katniss’s clit into my mouth and suck while
swirling my tongue around it at the same time. I begin to press on her upper
wall harder with the tips of my fingers, and it’s not long before I feel her
legs lock around me as her hips lift from the seat. Her walls pulse around my
fingers forcefully when her orgasm claims her.
She pulls my head away from her as her spasms continue and I watch in awesome
as her body girates, almost as if it's beyond her control.
“Shit,” Katniss says, laughing as she struggles to catch her breath. “How did
you figure out how to make that feel good when I couldn’t?”
“A lot of reading on the internet,” I reply honestly. “I’ve been wanting to try
it for a while now.”
Katniss removes her legs from my shoulders and sits up, cradling my head
against her chest.
“You’re shivering,” she says.
“It’s kind of cold in this mud,” I admit, sheepishly.
“Get out of the mud then and get in here with me!” Katniss bellows, pulling my
head from her chest and forcing me to look at her.
“I’ll get your car all dirty,” I say.
“I don’t care,” Katniss shrugs. “I’m going to dirty it when I drive home,
anyway. Get in here with me.”
I crawl into the backseat with her and she curls up next to me, resting her
head on my shoulder and sighing contentedly.  
“So, how was your birthday?” I ask.
“Way better than last year,” Katniss says. She leans up and kisses me, smiling
when she pulls away. “Thank you. You look like you enjoyed yourself, too.” She
reaches down and cups the front of my jeans, squeezing once before trying to
undo them.
“No, Katniss.” I grab her hand, halting her movement. “It’s your birthday, and
that was for you. You don’t have to do anything in return.”
“But what if I want to?” She asks.
As difficult as it is to refuse, I don’t want to take any of the attention off
of her today.
“It’ll just make next time even better,” I explain. “I just want today to be
for you, ok?”
“Ok,” Katniss nods, planting a kiss on my neck. “I bet that warming lube will
feel good on you, too.”
“I bet it will,” I say, groaning at the thought of it.
“Don’t use it without, ok?” Katniss asks.
I nod in agreement, pulling her even closer to me.
“Happy Birthday, Katniss,” I say, kissing the top of her head.
A few minutes pass, and I almost start to think Katniss is asleep until she
begins to stir, lifting her head up to look at me.
“I don’t want to go home,” she says sadly.
“Either do I,” I sigh, knowing that no matter how badly we don’t want to leave
this place tonight, we’re going to have to -- soon.
                                     ****
When I get home a little while later, I leave my muddy shoes at the door and
begin to walk toward my bedroom in large strides.
“Dinner is soon,” my father says as I pass him.
“Not hungry,” I reply, quickly.
“Peeta, wait!” My dad calls. I stop and turn, waiting for him to speak. “You’re
filthy.”
“I was at the park,” I say shortly, but remember my conversation with Rye
earlier this week. “It’s all mud there from all the rain,” I explain further.
“Did you get to see Katniss today?” My father asks. He sounds genuinely
concerned, and there’s a look on his face that is almost hopeful that I’ll say
yes.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s her birthday today.”
“Oh,” my father says, the tension palpable. He looks down at my muddy clothes
again and clears his throat. “Well tell her I said Happy Birthday.” I start to
move in the direction of my bedroom but stop when my father’s arm grabs my
shoulder.
“What, dad?” I ask, my anger rising. “I’m cold and I’m tired, can I just go get
changed?”
“In a minute, but I feel like I have to say this since your mother doesn't seem
to care,” he starts. The bitterness in his voice shocks me. “Are you two being
safe? Are you protected?”
“Dad,” I grouse. My father looks at me seriously, and I know I have to answer.
“We have condoms.”
“Good,” my father says awkwardly. “Alright, go get dressed. I’ll keep a plate
of food for you in the microwave in case you get hungry later.”
“Thanks dad,” I reply, grateful that he's letting me go so quickly. Finally, I
head to my room to gather fresh clothes before heading to the bathroom.
I peel off my muddy clothes in a hurry and wash myself off quickly in the
shower. The warm water relaxes me more than I thought it would, and I can feel
my eyelids getting heavy. As soon as I fall into bed, I doze off as soon as my
head hits the pillow.
I’m disoriented when I wake up. Glancing at my phone, I notice that it’s after
one in the morning, and there are three texts from Katniss. I have to read them
three times before the sleep has cleared from my brain enough that I can
understand them.
“Thank you again for a nice afternoon.”
“Did you figure out the math homework yet?”
“Nevermind. I got it.”
I completely forgot about homework. I hop off my bed in a hurry and rifle
through my book bag, but my binder is nowhere to be found. I must have been in
such a hurry to leave school before anyone on the wrestling team came looking
for me, that I forgot to take grab my binder with all of my homework in it.
Quickly, I text Katniss back to explain what happened. I hope she doesn’t think
I was ignoring her.
“I am so sorry. I fell asleep as soon as I got home and just woke up. I forgot
all of my homework in my locker, so I won’t get any of it done. Glad you
figured it out, though.”
When my phone goes off less than a minute later, I know instantly that Katniss
was probably waiting for me to answer.
“You can copy my answers down in the morning, that’ll at least take care of
math and keep Mr. Abernathy from blowing a gasket.”
Mr. Abernathy. Shit.With or without homework he was going to blow a gasket as
soon as he saw me anyway because of the way I skipped wrestling practice
without even so much as a bad excuse.
“Thank you :)”
“Hey, you did the same for me once, right?”
The anxiety of knowing I have to walk into school in the morning without any
homework weighs heavily on my shoulders. I certainly won’t be sleeping any more
tonight. After several more texts, I tell Katniss to get some rest and let her
go, wishing more than ever that she were here with me.                         
                                                            
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!