Chapter 11

A/N Thanks for sticking with me this far. I hope you're enjoying the story. Thanks for the reviews and follows! I really appreciate it. I do not own the Hunger Games!

"This must be where you learned to swim."

It surprises me that he remembers this. "It just came back to me. During the Quarter Quell, we used to sit on the beach and watch the water. I guess that's what triggered the memory. I couldn't believe you knew how to swim. You told me about how your father taught you here, and then you taught me how. Real or not real?"

I tell him real. "We spent a lot of time on that beach, fishing, keeping watch. It was safer there than in the woods."

"I gave you the locket on the beach, and you said you needed me."

I turn so that I can look at him. "I did. I still do."

He cups my cheek in his hand and strokes it softly with his thumb. "You kissed me that night," he whispers and leans toward me.

"Real. Like this." An ache builds inside me as I bridge the remaining distance and bring his lips to mine. My hands go up into his hair, pulling him closer to me. I open my mouth in invitation and he accepts, sliding his tongue against mine. My hands fall from his hair so I can wrap my arms around his neck while his slide up my back, crushing me against him. We linger that way, his lips moving over mine. Finally, he takes me by my shoulders and breaks the kiss. He puts his forehead to mine as he tries to catch his breath. "Wow. Just give me a minute, ok? I just need to… cool off a bit, I think."

I kiss him quickly and pull away, remembering my promise to let him think things through. I walk down to the edge of the lake where the water looks cool and inviting.

"Hey, where are you going?"

"Swimming. We're at the lake, aren't we?" I reach for the buttons of my shirt. "Turn around, Peeta."

"Why?" His voice sounds strangled.

"Well, I'm not planning on getting in the lake fully dressed."

"Katniss, I've seen you in your underwear before."

"You haven't seen the worst of the scars and I'm not sure I want you to. Turn around." He does as I ask and I strip down, and leaving my shorts and shirt with my shoes in a pile by the shore, I wade out to the water until I'm up to my neck. I turn my back to Peeta and tell him to come on out. The water in the spring-fed lake is an icy shock to my hot skin, but it feels good just the same. I tread water to keep my blood moving, and I hear Peeta walking into the water behind me.

I feel a tap on my left shoulder and I turn to Peeta, but he's not there. He snatches me by my middle from the right and pulls me under the water with him.

I come up sputtering and splashing. "You rat! I can't believe you did that!"

He grins at me. "You dropped your guard, Soldier Everdeen."

I splash him as hard as I can. He splashes back and soon we're laughing and screaming as the water flies between us. Peeta charges forward, closing the distance between us. Certain he's going to dunk me again, I splash harder.

"Hey, hey! Truce! Truce," he calls. Without thinking, he wraps his arms around me to prevent me from splashing him again. We're unexpectedly pressed up against each other, skin to skin for the very first time, and I feel a jolt of energy in my stomach that races right down to my toes. Peeta runs his fingers along one side of my neck and shoulders and places a kiss on my collarbone. "Don't worry about the scars," he says, his voice husky. "Not with me. Not ever. You've earned every one of them and mine are just as bad." He tilts my chin, and I look into eyes as serene and blue as the lake we're standing in. "You're beautiful, Katniss, and you always will be to me."

He brings his lips to mine then, and I reach up to wrap my arms around his neck. He probes the line of my lips with his tongue and I grant him entry. My tongue meets his in an intimate dance that goes on for a long time. My hands slide up into his hair and he pulls me to him even more tightly before kissing his way along my jaw and then nibbling my ear. My body starts to heat up, in spite of the cold water. I recognize this hunger now, the power of the two of us together, and I want more of it.

I can hear him breathing rapidly as his lips make a journey down my neck towards my collarbone. He finds a spot I particularly like, causing me to moan and provide him with better access.

"I love the feeling of your skin under my hands," he whispers in my ear. "I didn't think I'd ever get to touch you like this." He slides one of his hands from my back until it spans my side and then begins to follow a new path from my hip to the underside of my breast and back down again. My heart skips a beat and begins to gallop. My nipples harden in anticipation as each pass brings his hand closer to its goal before finally closing over me.

We gasp and his lips return to mine. I need to touch him too. My hands journey from his hair, along his neck to his back. He shudders with the contact and it emboldens me. I explore his naked shoulders and firmness of his bare chest. Peeta's thumbs are tracing circles around both of my nipples now, sending a charge directly between my legs where a pulse is building. My breath is coming in short bursts. I need to be closer. I put my hands back up on his shoulders and push off the bottom of the lake so that I can wrap my legs around him.

The shock of our most intimate places pressed together pulls a moan from Peeta. His hands move from my breasts to cup my bottom and hold me against him. He rains kisses along my breasts at the edge of my bra. We are eye to eye now. I bring my hand to his cheek and kiss him deeply, and then pull back to look him in the eyes. The usually calm lakes are full of fire again, and I shiver.

"You're cold."

"No, that's not it. I'm OK," I say, reluctant to bring an end to this moment.

He laughs. "Believe me, I feel the same way, but it's for the best… I think." I laugh and put my legs down. "Come on." He pulls me from the water. We grab our clothes, and throwing them down beside the blanket, stretch out side by side to warm up and dry off.

The warm of the afternoon sun feels amazing against my skin. I close my eyes for a minute and soak it in. Peeta rolls over to his side and strokes my face softly. I open my eyes and his face is hovering above me, serious now. "I've been thinking – a lot – about the other day in the kitchen. I wanted you, Katniss, more than I've ever wanted anything. Well, until now." It amazes me that Peeta can speak so frankly about what's happening between us and I can't even take off my shorts without making him turn around.

"It's just that, we've never had the chance to get to know each other normally. We've always been thrown into one disaster after the next. I wish we'd had the chance for me to finally work up the nerve to ask you out on a date, to be silly and laugh and kiss you like we did the other day. Like we're doing today. I want that with you. I want new memories of the two of us together so that I don't have to ask you if they're real. I want the chance to kiss you until we're both ready to tear each other's clothes off. I want to fall in love with you all over again - the real you and not some ideal I've made up from a distance or someone I have to sort out from a nightmare created by Snow."

I am quiet for a minute. I look up into the sky and I wonder if that's why I've always held back a bit from Peeta. How could I be sure of my feelings when we have never been able to have a normal relationship? Then again, we have so much healing to do. Is normal even possible for us? I know that I owe it to both of us to try.

Peeta is used to me taking my time before I answer an important question, but he seems worried about my reply. He leans over me again, rubbing his thumb across my cheek, looking for some clue of what I'm thinking in my eyes. He seems reassured by what he finds there and he moves his hand from my cheek to stroke his knuckles along the bare skin between my bra and my underwear. He plants a kiss in the valley between my breasts and then nibbles his way along my belly before kissing me again, just above my navel. I feel my muscles clench and tingle not far below it.

"So…" I say, finally. "Are we on our first date?"

His chuckle brings a coy smile to my face. "Hmm…," I feel his gaze on my half-naked body. I feel his gaze move back up slowly, over my legs and hip, along my belly, lingering over my breasts and lips before finally settling on my eyes. "Well, maybe not the first." He grins. "Even in my best fantasies, I've never managed to get Katniss Everdeen down to her underwear on a first date."

I toss a laugh toward the sky. He reaches down and kisses that spot near my collarbone that makes my toes curl. I stop laughing and press my hand against his cheek in invitation. Then he bends down to kiss me again and we don't say anything else for a long time.

We start for home mid-afternoon. The summer sun is still high in the sky when we arrive back at the house hand-in-hand. We eat a light supper and then sit out on the front porch, watching the sun set behind my old house. Peeta sketches his first impressions of the lake from memory while I curl up beside him with my head on his shoulder, drowsy from the fresh air and exercise today. We spend the evening comparing the plants we collected with the ones in the plant book. We are both surprised to discover they need very few changes at all.

Finally, we head upstairs to bed. Shyness overtakes us and we become exceedingly polite. Peeta lets me take the bathroom first, so I take my sleeping clothes in with me, brush my teeth and freshen up. When I come out, he has turned the blankets down and has a lamp on beside the bed. Another lamp burns on the fireplace mantel.

"I hope you don't mind that," he says, nodding toward the lamp on the mantel. "I haven't slept up here without a light since we've been back. I'm not sure if I'll need it or not. I can turn it off if you think it will…"

I cut him off. "It's fine, Peeta, really."

When he comes back out in just his boxers, he's got a nervous look on his face. "I need to get this artificial leg off. I don't usually sleep with it on and it's getting sore after the hike today."

I just nod and climb into bed. It seems important to him that I don't make a big deal about this. He sits on the edge of the bed with his back to me and removes the stump of his leg from the prosthesis and then pulls off the rubber sock that encloses it, protecting his leg from the metal connection. He swings himself around, pulling up the blanket to cover it quickly before sliding down under the blanket himself.

He flicks off the bedside lamp, but doesn't slide over towards me the way I expect and I realize that he's embarrassed and afraid of my reaction to the leg.

"Hold me?" I ask him.

"Always," he says, and wiggles over to spoon his body against mine. Cuddling up in our usual position relaxes us both and we're quiet for a few minutes.

"I still can't quite believe that you're finally here," he whispers. "I can't tell you the number of nights I've laid here looking over at your window and wishing you were here with me."

"Me too," I tell him.

This seems to surprise him. "I didn't think you thought about me at all," he says.

"Not real. Before the war, I was over there trying not to think about you, and that's not the same thing at all."

He's quiet again. "Why didn't you want to think about me?"

I turn this over in my mind for a few minutes. "I was really confused. We were being forced together and I didn't like not having a choice in the matter. And I didn't think I could be what you needed. You deserved better than me. You still do."

He laughs at that, but there's a sardonic edge to it that I haven't heard before. "You've said that before. Whatever gave you that crazy idea?"

"I'm scarred and mentally disturbed. I'm recovering from a nervous breakdown. I'm self-centred. I'm cynical. I'm violent and volatile…"

He rolls me onto my back and puts his hand over my mouth.

"Stop. Katniss. You're beautiful. You're smart, fiercely protective of the people you care about and, yes, you're cynical. You're braver than anyone I've ever met. You saved your family from starvation. You were a mother to your sister. You've saved my life half a dozen times. You led a revolution and overthrew a corrupt government that had turned us all into slaves for generations. I'm just the son of a baker. My mother was difficult at best. I'm scarred and way more mentally disturbed than you are. I can be violent and unpredictable. I've only got one leg. I suffer from flashbacks."

I pull his hand off my mouth. "And that's all my fault," I whisper.

"No. Not a bit of it. I'd be dead if it wasn't for you. I would never have fought this hard to get better if I wasn't trying to get back to you. So don't say I don't deserve you, because I will never, ever be good enough for you."

I'm speechless.

"And just so you know, when I was watching you in my kitchen this morning – in our kitchen this morning, my heart fell right at your feet all over again, just like it did when we were five years old. I'm in love with you Katniss Everdeen, and this time, we're going to make it work."