Chapter 10: Tell Me You Feel Nothing

The sun is high in the sky by the time I enter the bakery's back alley after hunting one morning. The amount of fresh game has been plentiful, my hauls becoming larger and larger as the months become warmer. It only makes me worry if my illegal dealings will be caught by the Peacekeepers.

This concern only makes me appreciate that I married a baker. Whenever I come home with extra meat that I need to get rid of or otherwise hide, he and his family have been more than willing to take it off my hands. Today is no different, as he greets me in the alley and admires all I have brought.

"I'll bake some of this into our pies - make meat pies! And the squirrels can go into our personal stock for meals!" he expresses, loading the extra trappings into one of our freezer lockers.

I throw my arms around him. "Oh, thank you, Peeta!" After a long moment, we disentangle from the embrace. Peeta is blushing.

I don't know what makes me say it now, when he's obviously so vulnerable. I bite my lip. "I'm not going to deny that I have feelings for you."

Peeta's eyes whip up to mine, shocked. "Katniss, I... I don't think this is an appropriate conversation..." Though I have a sneaking suspicion that his feelings are very much the same.

"Look me in the eyes, and tell me you feel nothing!" I counter almost angrily.

Peeta refuses to meet my gaze. "This is extremely inappropriate..."

I have him. Smiling seductively, I drift closer. "Tell me you feel nothing, and I'll never mention it again."

"I would not be able to act on these... feelings... even if they existed..." Peeta almost growls the words.

What is he going on about? We're married, for Panem's sake! Pulling him to me, I kiss him, my one hand brushing his jawline. With the other, I grope for his balls, and I fondle them in my hand. Peeta pushes me away.

"No!" he croaks, his eyes wide. "We cannot do this!"

"Please!" I beg. "I need this! I care for you. I feel safe with you. When I'm with you, I don't feel afraid..."

He turns away from me, so I literally throw myself at him, trying to make him understand through my kisses.

"Katniss... we need to stop..."

"Why are you resisting?"

"It's not... we just need to stop..." He pulls back.

"What are you talking about...?"

Peeta whirls back around. "I don't have a leg, okay?!" he yells, his face red.

I jerk back, my mouth clamping shut momentarily as I digest his words. "Huh?" I wonder out loud almost stupidly. He angrily lifts up his left pant leg.

Revealing a steel-gray prosthetic that extends from his shoe and disappears beneath the cuff of his pants.

I have never noticed it before, the way his pants pucker around his left leg just barely, hanging limply in the extra space where his calf and shin should be. But I do know where it probably came from. A few years ago, the bakery suffered a terrible fire. The whole Mellark family got out OK, but Peeta missed some school due to being in the hospital. At the time, I suspected he had suffered some burns, but I never knew just how badly and far-reaching they were. I blink at his prosthetic a few times, swallowing thickly, before I turn my eyes to his face. "So?"

With a huff, Peeta drops his pants leg. "Don't pretend to be so flip, Katniss," he says in agitation.

I curl my lip into an exasperated snarl. "What does your leg have to do with anything? With you and me—"

"Girls don't want to have sex with an amputee," he answers, his voice tight. "I've dealt with this since I was a kid, okay? The looks of disgust, of pity, anytime they see it, God forbid if they have to touch it."

I blink as I suddenly flashback to the one time we have had sex. "Is that why you didn't want me to sleep with you on our wedding night? Because of your leg?" Peeta does not respond one way or the other, but he doesn't need to. I can see it in his eyes.

I harrumph. "Well, I'm not like other girls, Peeta. I don't have high standards like that, because until I met you, no other man even made me interested, much less wet. In fact, I am impressed by your leg; it shows you're a survivor. And it doesn't take much to impress me."

He exhales raggedly, running both his hands through his curls and tugging. "I'm doing you a favor, okay? I'm tired of seeing the same look on every girl's face before she suddenly remembers she has somewhere to be or has to be up early. I'm giving you an out now so you don't have to be the bad guy."

I glare at him before I shake my head violently. He still doesn't get it. And what's all this about giving me an out? Again: we're married! He's stuck with me. And the shocking thing is, maybe I am beginning to want him to be stuck with me. "You know, the only unattractive thing about you, Peeta, is this whole martyr act." He sighs, and the sound is tinged with frustration, but I don't give him the chance to respond.

I kiss him again.

I consume him, really. All lips and tongue and teeth. I must catch him off-guard because he stumbles slightly, back into the alley wall, taking me with him. It is all he can do to sit on a trashcan. I sink to my knees, kneeling between his parted legs, and I have to break the kiss as I reach for his pants.

"What are you—what are you doing?" he gapes at me as I unfasten his pants and work the zipper down.

"Showing you you're wrong," I growl, slipping a hand into the slit of his boxer-briefs to pull his cock out. He gasps, his shaft thickening as blood rushes to his groin with the quick pumps of my hand. I rub him faster, willing him to grow to me. Even if he is not compelled for me to have relations with him, his manhood certainly will.

"I told you I don't want pity—"

I pause only briefly to glare up at him. "It's not pity." And I mean it. Peeta is the first person I will have willingly fucked with. At least willingly fucked with when I didn't posses my own hidden agenda. And even if I was more ambitious in my sexual aspirations, I would not just fuck any guy out of pity. I would fuck a guy because I want to fuck him.

His eyes are wide and disbelieving, his mouth parted but silent, and he just watches me as I take him into my mouth as deep as I can. I inhale his penis so much, in fact, that I gag slightly and have to pull back.

"God—Katniss," he chokes out. "Someone—someone could—what if someone sees?"

The alley is deserted save for us. Besides, most of our sexually active peers go to the Slag Heap across town for a quick screw. Whether others appear or not, whether others see me sucking Peeta Mellark's dick like a baby would a bottle, I don't care either way. I'll work fast.

I let my saliva pool in my mouth before I begin sucking earnestly, bobbing my head up and down. I only know as much as I have heard from girls in the Hob, whispering over liquor. I try to be efficient without being clumsy or rough. How successful I am in this endeavor is unclear, as Peeta's only response is a guttural groan that he must try to stifle with his hand because the sound stops suddenly, his hard, pained breathing drowned out by the slurping noises of my mouth moving on his dick. I wrap my hand around his base to pump him, pulling back on his cock with my mouth so I can look up at him through my eyelashes. He's watching me, his face red, his nostrils flared, his black pupils swallowing his irises.

"Ohmmmmmmm..." I moan and slide him farther into my mouth. My eyes flutter shut, and I tenderly cup his balls with my free hand.

I swirl my tongue around his head, even lolling it out to lick the upper reaches of his shaft, before teasingly catching my bottom teeth on the underside, scraping there. I hear Peeta inhale sharply and pant out a curse. I nearly choke on him as I let out a gargled squeal, at the feel of his fingers weaving into my hair, digging into my scalp. Peeta is holding me in place as he frantically humps his center full into my face, jiggling his cock further into my mouth, down my throat - so deep that the head is touching the back of my esophagus. With my lips completely sealed around his entire shaft, my other hand is now free, and I snake it around him. I pet his backside, caress it before giving each cheek a squeeze. All the while, my right palm flexes, compresses, molds his balls.

I don't realize he's cumming until the first spurt of semen hits my uvula without warning. My mouth quickly floods with his juices, even overflowing as some dribbles out of whatever remaining space is between my lips and his penis. I cough up spittle around him but tighten my grip, pushing my tongue up to stop the passage of his cum before I can swallow it just yet. I need to prepare my gullet, to gulp down every last drop of the semen he surrenders to me.

There is a lot of cum. I dutifully swallow it with each pulse of his cock, my hand now off his balls and curled into a fist, pressed to my lips to catch any errant semen that my mouth can't on its own. Once his cock begins to soften, sag in my mouth, spent, I finally release him, running my tongue down his shaft with a parting lick, then around my lips and wiping the back of my hand across my mouth. I lean back on my thighs to look at him, observe my handiwork. For someone who had heretofore had no oral interactions with any manhood, I feel quite proud of myself. Even if Peeta didn't warn me about when he was going to explode in my throat. The baker's son is staring at me wide-eyed, flustered and reeling, like he's not sure what has just happened.

There's amazement layered in there too. Awe.

My face and body soften, relax and I tenderly tuck him back into his pants. "Next time, let me know when you're about to cum."

He breathes hard, his eyebrows lifting weakly. "Next—next time?"

I climb to my feet. "Next time we do this."

Licking his lips, he swallows thickly but eventually nods. "When...?"

I straighten up. "You'll know when it happens."

I gasp when I suddenly feel Peeta's hands take me by my waist and pull me flush against him. My eyes grow wide, but I don't have time to make a sound before he crushes his lips to mine in a deep kiss.

"Ughmmmmmmm..." I let out a muffled croak, which soon turns into a moan. "Mmmmmmm..." Peeta's lips slant over mine, and I open them to him. Soon he is kissing me with tongue, teeth, pushing nearly both into my mouth and down my throat. It's as if he means to swallow my lips, my face, whole.

I feel his hands wander, heavily sliding down my butt as he pets it, caresses it. He cups one cheek, then the other in each palm, before brazenly scooping my one thigh as he brazenly raises me leg to his waist. Peeta lifts me off my feet, and - still kissing - we half-stumble, half-slam into the opposite wall. I feel something violently hump my center.

"Mmmm! Mmmm!" I squeal at the hard organ jerking up against me. He wants me. He wants to have sex with me!

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" he cries.

I just bite my lip and shake my head. "Don't be..."

"Were you afraid? Of me? Just then?"

"No... not of you! It's stupid..." I can't explain it, really. How he makes me feel. How his every smile and movement has driven me up a wall, and not in an angry way.

And yet Peeta seems to understand everything that I cannot find the words to express. "It's not stupid; it's natural. Let me take away your fears..."

And sweeping me into his arms, he carries me bridal-style upstairs above the bakery and takes me to bed this time...

A/N: And, I think we'll pause there for the moment. Wow! That enough of a teaser for you? I made the executive decision to streamline several of the chapters in my outline, as well as what was originally Chapters 8 and 9. We're now two-fifths of the way through. REVIEW! Thanks for your devotion!