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The First Kiss Since the Return
I wake screaming with his arms around me, telling me it’s okay, I’m safe. But it isn’t my safety I’m concerned about, it’s his.
My hands search him for injury. He shudders as I roam down his body, but stays silent as I feel the ridges of his scars, the spot on his leg where it turns to hard metal and plastic, the broad planes of his chest, and finally, his face.
I search his eyes for any signs of mental distress, but see only concern for me. He truly is unharmed.
“Katniss?” Peeta asks. I’m trembling, the emotions of the last few moments catching up with me.
“I dreamed I lost you,” I whisper. My hands fist in his hair and I hold him close, our cheeks pressed together. His arms tighten around me as he rushes to reassure me what’s real.
“I’m here. It’s alright.” He kisses my cheek and I loosen my hold on him as he pulls back to kiss my other cheek. He presses his lips to my forehead, my closed eyelids, the tip of my nose. Yes, even with my eyes closed I can tell it’s his lips. This is more soothing than any words of comfort. And just when I think he’s covered every inch of my face in kisses, he presses one more to my lips.
My eyes fly open. This is the first time he’s kissed me since he returned.
“We should get some sleep,” he says. I get the feeling that he was going to say something else, but I let it pass.
We lay down again on the bed, my head in its usual spot on his chest. His hand strokes my hair gently, his heart beats steadily beneath my ear, and the light summer breeze coming through the window tickles the bare skin of my feet that poke out of the blankets. I feel almost perfectly relaxed.
“Thank you, Peeta,” I whisper, “for staying with me.”
His heart beats faster. “Always.”
The First Kiss Just Because
It was a good day for the both of us. The cool fall air felt good against our skin and we spent the day harvesting vegetables from our garden, chopping them up and putting them in a stew.
Haymitch joined us for dinner but didn’t stay to clean up, so now we’re alone again, Peeta washing the dishes while I dry.
The setting sun through the window over the sink bathes Peeta in a golden light that has me so distracted, I end up drying already dry dishes. Twice Peeta catches me staring and asks if I’m alright. I blush furiously and refuse to look at him anymore, focusing instead on the task in front of me.
Just a few dishes remain when Peeta firmly places his soapy hands on my hips, turning me in his arms to face him.
“Hey!” I say in protest, but any further indignation on my part is stopped when his lips meet mine.
Oh. I make a muffled noise of surprise into his mouth and throw my arms around his neck, the damp dishtowel still held tightly in one hand.
His lips move against mine in a way that feels both familiar and new. Something stirs deep inside me, something I thought might be long dead. It’s not enough to wake it, but I’m full of joy at this proof of its continued existence. My body still wants his.
We’re both breathless when he pulls away.
“Was that--was that okay?” He asks.
“You can kiss me anytime you feel like it,” I say, echoing what he once said to me.
His smile makes my stomach flutter. “I’ll have to take you up on that.”
The First Kiss That Leads to More
We sit side by side, drinking hot chocolate in front of the fire on a cold winter night, wrapped in the blanket Peeta grabbed off the back of the couch when we sat down. I feel so warm from the top of my head snuggled against Peeta’s shoulder to the tips of my toes stretched out before me to be closer to the fire.
Peeta has been running his bakery out of our house for months, but has finally started making plans to build his own bakery. We’re doing it together. I was surprised he asked me at first, but I’m glad he did. I’m good at making trades, and while I’m not as good at baking as Peeta, I’ve finally started to master the basics. I kissed him hard when I made my first loaf of bread and didn’t burn it. He liked that. I smile at the memory.
“What are you smiling about?” Peeta asks.
“I’m just...happy,” I say. Doctor Aurelius tells me over and over that I’m allowed to feel happy, and the good feelings are so few and far between anyway, that I don’t push away the feeling, I revel in it.
I set my mug down by the fireplace and I grab Peeta’s from his hands--“Hey!” says Peeta--and set it by mine. I climb onto his lap, kissing his nose, his cheeks, and his lips. And while normally, we pull away after a few moments, this time, I don’t. I sink deeper into the kiss, his mouth eagerly accepting my greedy tongue. He tastes like chocolate and I’ve never loved the flavor more.
I don’t notice my hips are rocking against his until he stills them with his hands. Embarrassment courses through me and I pull back from the kiss, but Peeta chases my lips and I forget feeling ashamed. My hands run down his back, feeling the smooth muscle and rough skin and I feel a moan vibrate our lips but I can’t say which one of us it was.
My back hits the floor and I look up in surprise to see Peeta’s head descending on my neck. Oh. I remember the feeling of his lips there, but this is new. My hips start rocking against his again and this time, he doesn’t stop me.
I feel that thing again, the one I felt on the beach, when each kiss made my need for him greater, making me hunger for him. I almost thought it wouldn’t return.
I slide my hands beneath his shirt to touch his chest and he gasps, pulling back from my neck.
“Should we…” Peeta’s blushing and panting, and I hold my breath, hoping I know what he’s going to ask. “Go upstairs?”
I nod. I feel butterflies in my stomach, but while I’m nervous, I’m not scared.
Peeta stands up so quickly I laugh. He helps me up and then we walk upstairs to our room, hand in hand. It’s the same path we’ve taken a hundred times before, but it’s an entirely new journey now.
He hesitates at the door, and I pull him into the room, guiding him onto the bed and climbing on top of him.
“Are you sure--”
“Yes,” he answers before I have the complete question out. “I just…” He tucks my hair back behind my ears. “This is a big moment.”
I nod. “I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone but you.” His eyes widen and I lean down to kiss him again. It seems that’s all Peeta needed to get his confidence back.
He picks me up in his arms and sets me down gently on the pillows, staring at me tenderly for a moment before joining me.
“I’ve imagined this a thousand times,” Peeta whispers against my skin. His hands run beneath my shirt and I sit up, lifting my arms so he can take it off. He does, tossing it onto the floor when he’s done. We’ve seen each other naked plenty of times before--when we help each other put on the Capitol-grade lotion for our scarred skin--but he’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before. I shiver at the sight, and want to cover myself, but I don’t. I gesture that he should take his shirt off too and then our bare chests are touching. We’ve never had this much skin contact before. A pleasurable shiver shakes me.
“Tell me what you imagined,” I whisper. I haven’t had the foresight to imagine anything really, but I want to know what he thought of.
“This,” he says and puts his mouth on my breast.
“Oh,” I say. I fist my hand in his hair to hold him there. He sucks and nibbles and licks and I can’t imagine anything feeling this good.
“What else?” I whisper. He kisses down my stomach and unbuttons my pants. I lift my hips for him and he removes them along with my underwear. Did he mean that he imagined undressing me?
“And this,” he says. He hesitates a moment with his head hovering just over the spot between my legs.
“Show me.” And he does.
Sweet fire which had already been kindling in my body turns into a blaze under his tongue’s touch. He follows the same pattern he did with my breast: alternating tongueing rhythmically and sucking. The pleasure rises in me in a great wave and I find my hips impossible to keep still and my breath impossible to catch.
“Peeta,” I gasp out. “Come here.”
He stops immediately and comes back to hover over me. “Did I do something wrong?” His brow furrows adorably.
“No!” I rush to reassure him. “I liked it! I just want you now.”
“Oh,” he relaxes. “Okay.” He quickly removes his pants and undershorts and reaches over to the nightstand, grabbing a box I’ve never seen before out of the drawer.
Is that what I think it is? And it is. Peeta tells me he got them at the grocery store in town. They just got their first shipment in from the Capitol and they’ve been selling like hotcakes.
“Did you...know?” I ask. Did he predict this would happen?
“No,” he ducks his head, embarrassed, but then looks me straight in the eye. “But I hoped.”
“Me too,” I admit. I hadn’t wanted to, but I did. And with that statement, Peeta puts the prophylactic on and after checking to make sure I’m ready, he sheathes himself inside me.
It hurts, but not much, and nowhere near what my mother and Greasy Sae told me to expect. Overwhelmingly, I feel love for this boy above me and inside me, and I know this was always meant to happen. I can’t survive without my dandelion in the spring. My boy with the bread. My Peeta.
It takes a while for our inexperienced bodies to find a rhythm, making us both laugh at our clumsiness. The laughs quickly turn to gasps as we move together for the first time.
“Oh, Peeta,” I say breathily. My hand cups the back of his neck and brings his lips down to mine. We can’t kiss properly for long, but Peeta’s face stays close to mine, his eyes on mine, his lips every so often brushing kisses on different parts of my face. My hand stays on the back of his neck, playing with the hair there, while my other hand grips his back, pulling our chests closer together. My nipples brush his chest as we move and the pleasure inside me intensifies.
I feel our bodies delighting in the sounds that slip from our mouths: sharp intakes of breath, quiet cries of pleasure, rumbling moans, whispers of the other’s name; in the unexpected movements: Peeta’s grab of my thigh, the arch of my back, a nibble of his ear; and in the sight of each other’s faces: for surely I have never seen Peeta so utterly lost in pleasure and love for me before, and he’s experiencing something similar too. When I throw my head back, my mouth opening wider than I thought it could, I feel Peeta’s thrusts speed up in response.
The quicker pace ignites the heat in my belly further, and I have to remind myself to breathe. My hips move desperately against Peeta’s, yearning, searching, and then--it happens. My limbs grow taut and I shudder and shake as waves of pleasure course through me. Oh. My arms fly out across the bed and I fist my hands in the sheets as my hips continue to gyrate, prolonging the feeling.
Peeta curses quietly, and I feel him pulsing inside me as he shakes above me, his mouth open and eyes closed in pleasure. My hands stroke his back gently, and when he opens his eyes again, they’re full of wonder. My heart swells, each beat pulsing more love for him through my veins.
After a moment, Peeta rolls off of me and I lie there, staring at the ceiling and smiling. I’d ask if I were dreaming, but I don’t have good dreams anymore. This was real. I turn toward Peeta as he does the same, and I study every inch of his smiling face: committing it to memory.
His panted breath warms my face and he brushes my hair back behind my ear. “You love me,” he whispers. “Real or not real?”
I smile. “Real.”