Snap.
I jerked awake. Something had moved in the jungle and broken the uneasy sleep I had unwittingly nodded into. I pulled myself up against the tree, bending my head from side to side to fix the pain shooting through my neck. Sleeping in our old house in District Twelve had never been comfortable, but accidental jungle naps were terrible.
I winced at the sting in my muscles and slowly looked around to make sure that everyone else slept soundly, that we were safe, and that nobody had seen my potentially fatal snooze. Peeta lay nearest to me, his head curled into his arms and the trace of a frown across his face. He hadn't slept soundly since our first games. None of us ever did. Finnick was close by on Peeta's other side, hands clasped lightly around his trident as if it were a soft toy. I knew that if the slightest thing awoke him, that grip would become death tight and he would be ready for the fight immediately; one of the only plus sides of arena trauma. Down by my feet, against a thick tree, Beetee sat with his head lolling on one side and the wires entwined in his fingers. I understood Finnick and the trident but why on earth Beetee needed that wire was beyond me. He was too weak to strangle anyone with it and aside from the bombs in our entrance podiums, no electricals anywhere inside the arena.
While I pondered this, I became slowly aware of a glint of light to my right. Gradually I let my gaze turn so as not to draw attention to my movement, and my eyes locked with Johanna's. It seemed I had not gone unnoticed in my sleep.
"You looked tired earlier." She breathed in the barest whisper. "So I stayed awake to make sure you got rest." This puzzled me a little. Johanna had struck me at first as the type to put her own needs first. Maybe staying awake was as much for her sake as mine.
"Thanks." I murmured. "I guess I needed it more than I thought."
"You've been very busy today." She said in the same hushed tone, still watching me. "Finnick filled me in about the monkeys and birds. Sounds disturbing." She glanced at Finnick. "I know it was for him, at least. Poor Annie."
Not wanting to pry, I didn't ask who Annie was, but had nothing else to say. She was right, the jabberjays had been terrifying and hearing Prim's voice making those terrible noises was far worse than not hearing her at all. Johanna seemed to realise she had thrown me into dark thoughts because she spoke again.
"So I saw you were very handy with a bow in your first games. How did you learn that? I don't hear anything about District 12 being big on weapons training."
"Suppose I'm just a natural." I shrugged, not wanting to get Gale or my family into trouble by spilling my secrets on camera. They were always watching me.
"Yeah, sure," Johnanna scoffed, "as if that is possible, you're a kid from the mining district, you don't just get good at something that skilled. Swinging a pick axe maybe, but archery?" She looked up at the sky where we knew the forcefield to be. "Nothing you can say can do anything more to us now. Our lives are already in their hands."
"My dad taught me." I found myself saying. "He was killed in a mining accident when I was younger, but before that we used to sneak out the back fence and kill game to eat. Nobody else knew, we always told them that they were weak strays that had come over the fence for easy scraps." This last part was a lie but I wanted to distance my mother and Prim from any blame. "After he died, I just sort of carried on. I mean I could risk my life out there or starve to death." There, that ought to give the game makers a bit of a dig. Johanna, far from being saddened by the morbid sentiment, gave me a sly grin and said
"So you've been an archer since you were a kid? That explains the gifted fingers. You must have quite strong arms as well, pulling bows that long."
I'd never really thought about this. I had always just seen myself as one of the thousands of malnourished District 12 civilians. Looking down at my arm I realised that being a well fed and rich victor had indeed helped develop my physique into something that you might expect from a seasoned archer. Whilst I was studying myself I was caught off guard by Johnanna who had come to be standing next to the tree beside me. She took hold of my forearm and pulled me silently into a standing position, not looking at my face but at my arms. I complied and allowed her to move me out of site of the others, supposedly so we would not disturb them with further conversation.
Just the other side of my tree, we stopped in the nook created by the growing of several trunks and Johanna made me spread my arms to take a proper look.
"Impressive." She said lightly, running her delicate fingers across the contours of my right bicep and tricep. She allowed her hands to continue roaming until they reached mine, then she took hold of my right hand and put the tips of her fingers in between the bases of mine, so as to spread them out. "Which fingers do you use to pull the bow?"
I curled three digits around her hand, leaving my first two fingers pointing upwards so she could see them. She took a step closer, leaning next to my ear and whispered.
"Those are the ones I use too."
Before I knew what was happening, her hands were at my sides and her lips at my mouth. I had had many surprise kisses from Peeta and Gale in the past year but this one was so different. There was fire in my mouth. Even Capitol food couldn't create the wonderful hot sensation of her tongue pressing into mine. Her tongue. Her tongue was in my mouth, that had never happened before. I yielded to the kiss and she took that as an opportunity to push herself more firmly against me, forcing me to lean into the tree, the bark shrouding us from the sight of our allies.
The kiss was ferocious. As powerful as you would expect from the woman who had stripped in the elevator. Her hands clutched onto my waist, then one of them burrowed it's way into my plaited and sweaty hair. I found myself wanting to touch her and soon my own hands were wrapped around her back, her soft yet well toned back. I could feel the zip on the back of her suit and wondered if she, like me, was wearing nothing beneath it.
Her lips found their way to my neck, biting at the muscle there and sucking on it as if she were trying to draw more depth from the taste of me. God, I must have been salty in the jungle heat and it was getting even hotter, but I didn't stop.
I knew they were watching. I knew the Capitol was supposed to believe in my undying love for Peeta, in our baby, in our doomed marriage. I didn't care. All I cared about was the fingers tracing down the small of my back and across my bum. I gave a small gasp as they grasped the majority of my muscle.
"You've worked out for these games." Johnanna breathed into my ear. "That will come in useful for me."
And suddenly she had turned me round so I was facing the tree with her lips still at my neck. One hand reaching for my breast. The other my zip. I dug my hand into the moss on the tree and screwed up my eyes as she expertly drew her thumb over my nipple. Back and forth, round and round. It was almost unbearable. Almost. Then I discovered it could get worse when the zip started coming down and her lips followed it.
Planting desperately laboured kisses on the length of my spine, she slipped the hand that had worked the zip under the fabric and onto my skin. I let out an stuttering breath as her fingers made contact with my back. This was more than anyone had ever done to me before but I desperately wanted it to go on.
As I tried to muffle my interrupted breathing by biting my lips, her hand progressed around to my breast underneath my suit. Without even taking the fabric off my shoulders she proceded to fondle and gentle pinch with more speed than before. Soon the other hand had joined on my other breast and small squeaks were escaping through my nose.
"They might hear you if you carry on." The voice at my ear was triumphant and teasing. "I don't want to stop and I don't think you do either." I shook my head, eyes closed.
"Don't stop." I breathed. "Don't... don't. Oh god, Johnanna." She chuckled in an unbearable way.
"I'm not a god. But for you, I will create a world you will never again experience."
And then it happened. The two fingers identical to the ones I had indicated were sliding there way down. Down, under the wet fabric of my suit. What was moisture from the jungle air and what was sweat I could not tell but I knew that the substance that met her fingers at their goal was definitely something different.
I dug my fingers into the side of her thigh as she grazed hers across the warmth between my legs. I was wimpering now. I could not stop. I needed her to touch me again.
"Please," I gasped, in the barest hint of speech. "Oh please. Oh!"
With the last word her middle finger slid easly into the space in my vulva, the roughened edge of her palm resting on my clit. She moved so slowly at first I thought I might explode from pure impatience. But a rhythm formed and she pulled her finger back and forth over me, faster and faster, drawing more and more of the warm liquid from inside me. I wanted her. She knew it. She went in.
The finger that went inside me was the only thing I cared about. I could still feel her lips and teeth on my neck, her thumb and forefinger at my nipple but they were nothing, nothing compared to the slight curl of her middle finger as it pull on a place inside me that made me want to scream in ecstasy. I wasn't even sure what ecstasy was until this moment.
I could feel myself enveloping her finger, drawing her in, trying to get her reach ever last desperate part of a place I had not even thought about until now. She pushed her hand against my vulva and I convulsed as her finger thrust deeper into me. She wrapped the other arm around my waist to stop me falling against the tree as she pumped and I started to rock in time with her.
I turned my head to kiss her but could hardly control my mouth as the sensation below grew more and more intense. Instead all I managed was to breath shallowly and quickly against her ear which only made her go faster.
At the moment when I thought I could not take anymore, her thumb pressed down upon my clit and I felt my insides implode.
I came in a glorious moment of muscle tensions, juices flowing down my leg and over her hand, and one long breath which might have come out as a scream had Johanna not covered my mouth just in time. I threw my head back over her shoulder as a rode the sensation to its wonderful, exhausting end.
My body relaxed all at once and she again took the hand from my mouth in order to hold me up. As I calmed, she gently turned me back against the tree, pulling her hand from beneath my clothing - making me gasp - and kissed me slowly on the mouth, quite unlike the first kiss. Leaning back, breaking the embrace, she looked into my eyes.
"That was probably my one chance, Girl on Fire." She said. Not sadly, but with almost a sense of loss. "At least the fire means something different to me now." And she planted one final kiss on my sweat streaked cheek before edging silently around the tree back to out companions.
I breathed out heavily.
Girl on Fire. I mused. And smiled, as lightening lit the sky.
