Chapter 1: Make Love To Your Tribute

Katniss's POV

It is late at night, and the penthouse twelfth floor is quiet when Peeta Mellark and I exit the hotel. Haymitch Abernathy and Effie Trinket went upstairs and retired to bed ahead of us, after the interviews. Now the preparations are all complete. There is no more delaying the inevitable. Tomorrow, I will be going into the arena as the female tribute for the 76th Annual Hunger Games.

For decades and decades, being a tribute from District 12 has been tantamount to a death sentence. Until recently, only two people from District 12 in about three-quarters of a century had gotten out of the arena alive. One of them died before I was born; the other, Haymitch, is a drunk and has (until recently) been viewed as comedic fodder.

But now there are three Victors from District 12. Not two, but three.

Peeta Mellark, the Merchant Baker's youngest son, was Reaped for the arena two years ago, when we were both 16. Every day that he survived, every tribute that he outlasted, made District 12 become more and more excited. He made it to the Top Two opposite a Career tribute from District 2 and defeated him in a climactic battle on top of the Cornucopia.

Now, in my very last Reaping, I have been selected for the annual fight to the death. But at least Peeta's survival gives me hope - and hope to tributes after me for probably several more years to come. If it was only Haymitch still alive, I would write off any chance I have and declare I am as good as dead.

But in mentoring me, Peeta has done his level-best to ensure that that will not happen. He has played up my skills as a huntress to the media, amplifying the thread when I ran the table in Training Scores and generated for myself a good bit of Capitol buzz. He has shared some of the burden in coaching me for my interview, because he knows as well as I that one can only take so many hours of guidance from Effie Trinket. Haymitch has been happy to relegate himself to the back seat and let his so-far only successful protégé take the reins.

Peeta walks me to my bedroom door and we pause in front of it to bid our goodbyes. They aren't final (the truly last adieus will come in the morning), but something about these exchanges feels final. Peeta must sense the solemnity in my voice as I bid him goodnight, for he tells me: "You'll win, Katniss. We'll see each other tomorrow and we'll see each other again when you walk out alive in two weeks, give or take."

I take his hand and squeeze it. "Thank you, Peeta. But you don't have to pretend or be optimistic for me..."

"No!" he says flatly. "I can't watch you die! I won't let you die!" He actually sounds emotional. "Katniss... I love you!"

My mouth drops open in amazement. My mind is a fog, so that I have no wits about me to prepare for Peeta bracing me up against the door, dipping his head and kissing me full on my open mouth.

A startled gasp passes from my parted lips to his, and soon Peeta's mouth swims into mine and begins to massage and caress me. I have never in my life had a man kiss me, nor had a man's tongue in my mouth. "Mmmm..." I let out something of a whimper, hovering in the back of my throat, and soon I feel Peeta's calloused palms cradle my face, tilting my head up and back as he deepens the kiss.

My brain has melted into mush. I surrender to my own seduction. I close my eyes.

I feel myself kiss Peeta back.

Peeta's deft fingers have now woven themselves into my brown hair. I feel them undo the signature braid running down my back, so that my hair cascades down my shoulders in waves. I sense my arms encircle Peeta's back as I pull him closer. Soon, his ravishing of my mouth slows into flurries of desperate pecks, with his lips quickly moving down my face, my cheeks, my chin, my neck. My eyelids flutter but don't open, my vision hooded as my breath is drawn forth from me in rough gasps, as though Peeta's lips remain firmly pressed against my own and are drawing the air out of my body.

Peeta's hands dip lower, dancing along my arms, the dip of my swelling breasts, my hips. I moan long and low, and instinctively spread my legs wide, laying myself open against him. My one hand has curled into a fist and is resting over my heart, as I turn my skull from side to side, anxiously awaiting for something I have not yet been able to name, but I know it is coming.

It comes when I feel my lace panties peeled back along my thighs and down to my ankles, exposing my femininity to the humid summer air. The petals of my sex are slick with arousal, the want running down my legs... I squirm with want when I feel what seems to be Peeta's nose brushing up against my folds as he smells.

And then... I cry out as Peeta rears his head forward and takes me in his mouth. He quite literally buries his face between my legs, his magical tongue plundering deep into my core, lapping and licking and suckling whatever my womanliness can give him.

"Hmmmmm... Uhhhhh... Uhhhhhhh... Uh, Oh, uh!" I whimper plaintively, sweetly as Peeta ravishes my maiden nether regions. I buck, slap my pelvis pleadingly into his face. My legs quiver with every spasm of pleasure that Peeta's tongue gives me. Pretty soon, I am wobbling; only the wall is keeping me from tumbling over dead away. Peeta's hands, at present left idle with nothing to do, come up to cup and squeeze my breasts. I feel my womanly curves rise like yeast in an oven to meet his touch and I shudder like a small rabbit.

"I love you!" Peeta's breath is hot and husky on my vagina, and the sound of his voice causes me to tremble.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh..." I wail, the sound sighing from me, and I tremble. "Peeta... I'm gonna..." My walls clench around him, trapping his face in between my thighs. "OHHHHHH!" My orgasm crashes over me like a wave; I float down back to Earth in the arms of an invisible parachute as Peeta finally emerges from me. I let out a whine at the loss of contact, and the suddenly chillier air makes me shiver. And then I am in Peeta's arms again, the taste of my arousal on my own mouth as he conquers my lips one final time. The kiss leaves me breathless. At long last, we break apart.

"Good night, Katniss," he murmurs. Then, he disappears into his own quarters across the hall. In an absolute daze, I quietly enter my own room and stagger on unsteady legs into bed. I am asleep before my head hits the pillow.


Peeta's bestowing of oral sex on me must bring me some kind of good luck, I decide, for I find myself surviving the Bloodbath... then Gamemaker traps... then one Feast... then another. I make the Final Eight... the Last Four... the Top Two. One of the Careers dies by my hand after the rest have turned on each other. My remaining opponent at the very end turns out to be a crafty girl from District 5, who is more into fleeing than attacking. She is smaller than me, so I take her down with an arrow like I do most deers on my hunts. Thus, I am crowned the Victor of the 76th Annual Hunger Games.

I hold my final interview, am awarded the Victor's Crown, and depart home on the train with Peeta and Haymitch. My younger mentor seems to want to discuss our stolen kisses and lovemaking from that magical night, but seems unsure how to bring it up. For my part, although I have always been averse to romance and sexual relations, I cannot deny that I enjoyed the pleasure Peeta brought me. He knows how to attend to and please a woman. A sexual dalliance, to fill a primal need and nothing more, is something I would not be opposed to, and I prove it by taking Peeta into my bed every night on the train. We have wild sex, make passionate love, with highs that make me scream.

But it always Peeta's panting voice, his breath heavy on my ear and filled with "I love you's," that give me cause for great concern. My mind begins to whirl.

What if the Capitol discovered a romantic relationship between to of their newest Victors, and from such a backwater shithole like District 12? Knowing the Capitol as I now do, I imagine that the media would gush over the love story, and perhaps even pressure Peeta and I to marry. And suppose that we did get married. Would children be involved? The Capitol would insist on it. Peeta might want them too. And if there is one thing I am not ready to be, even less than a wife, it is to be a mother. I once vowed that I am would never let a man's seed fill me or my womb, that I would never go through the pains of labor only to fall in love with those fruits and then see them ripped from my arms and into the Reaping Bowl. Into the arena.

And if there is one thing I know about the Games, it is that the child of a Victor (rare though they are) - never mind two - are guaranteed for the arena. Always a favorite for the Reaping. And no child of a Victor has ever become a Victor in his or her own right.

And I would have to go through with it, if Peeta and I ever did get pregnant. Under District 12 and greater Panemian law, it is very difficult to get an abortion. Though it is technically not illegal, the stigma is high enough that it might as well be. I refuse to put myself in a situation for which there is no escape.

And so, by the end of the journey, there are no more illicit trysts in my bed. I have become wary and distant towards Peeta. He is enough of a gentleman to leave me alone, but I can see the hurt in his eyes. When the train pulls into the District 12 station, we three Victors almost slump off the train in exhaustion, despite the celebrations for my win.

I might be able to fuck Peeta Mellark every day for the rest of my life and enjoy it, but I could never give my heart to him. Risk a relationship with him that includes love as well as sex. Our diametrically opposed upbringings - and the animosity that comes with it - would foil our love anyway.

And so, when my hunting partner Gale Hawthorne, kisses me right on the mouth one day after our hunt and asks me for my hand in marriage, I quietly and solemnly say Yes. Gale is consistent. We have known each other since we were children. I am 18, he is 20 - certainly old enough to marry. Many people in the Seam - Mother included - have expected us to marry anyway, so we do.

I don my mother's white wedding dress and we hold the wedding ceremony right in the living room of my new mansion in Victor's Village. Gale Toasts the bread over the fireplace, as is custom, and in the presence of my mother, sister, Haymitch and Peeta, I say I do. I try not to look at my fellow Victor as tilting my head, I permit my new husband to kiss me passionately.

My husband makes sweet love to me in our bed that night, and though his talents are far different from Peeta, he makes me cum and it is pleasing enough.