"Come on Kitty Kat – wake up."
The warm whisper across my face roused me before I could notice the feather-light kisses being placed on my temple. Where am I? This wasn't Johanna's traditional wake-up call, nor was it Prim's.
I opened my eyes cautiously and looked up into deep green.
"Finnick?"
He smiled at me. "I've been laying here for an hour, waiting for you to wake up so I could see those eyes."
I groaned. "Now that you've seen them, can I go back to sleep?" I closed my eyes and rolled away from him, curling up around myself and snuggling into a pillow.
He rolled me back. "Nope! It's dinner time, and it's my job to keep you fed. So get up before I make you."
Groaning again, I pulled myself from the comfort of the bed and sat there as I watched Finnick's gloriously naked body move to his closet and pull out a pair of pants.
"Enjoying the view?" he smirked.
"On the contrary, I was just wondering what I was doing in bed with the likes of you."
He laughed before turning his attention to the wrinkled and soaked dress that lay adjacent to his shower. "I'm afraid I may have ruined your dress earlier…"
"It's ok, it isn't mine – it's Jo's. I'll get her a new one."
"While that's all good, I was more concerned about what you're going to wear to dinner now." He stares down at my naked body for a moment, making me giggle at his pensive gaze. "I must admit – that first time we spoke in my office, I couldn't help but admire how sexy you looked in my clothes. We may just have to make that happen again."
He rummaged through his closet until he found a relatively small t-shirt displaying the words "Oxygen is overrated" and a pair of basketball shorts.
"I wish I could find something more your style, but this seems to be all I have in my closet that has even the slightest chance of fitting you. I'm sure you'll make it look sexy as hell, though – you always do."
I blushed at the obvious compliment and slid into the clothes. By the time I was done, he was as well, and we left the apartment for his car.
"Where would you like to eat?" he asked as he laced our fingers together between the seats.
I thought for a moment. "Ice cream."
Finnick laughed. "Ice cream? For dinner?"
"Yes – Haagen Dazs, if you can manage it." I tried to keep a straight face, but I couldn't. An impossibly wide grin stretched across my features.
"That sounds like a very unhealthy meal, Kitty Kat." He looked at me reproachfully, though his lips twitched, giving away his smile.
"Well, I think we can manage to burn off the calories when we get back to your place afterwards." I winked at him and bit my lip, just in case he didn't understand my meaning.
The car lurched forward as he shouted, "Haagen Dazs, here we come!"
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting on a bench near the ice cream shop, cones in hand, playing with each other's fingers.
"How can you eat that fruity shit?" Finnick asked, nodding at my pineapple coconut.
I laughed. "Better than rum raisin – eww."
"What? It's a nice, manly flavor."
"Not everything has to be manly, Finn."
"Well, you are what you eat…"
I shoved him lightly in the side and he took my nearness as an opportunity – locking his lips to mine. I sighed into the kiss and opened my mouth to let him in.
"Katniss!?"
I broke away from Finnick and looked up to see a very shocked-looking Peeta stopped dead in the middle of the street, glaring at Finnick.
Could your timing be any worse?
"What's up, Peeta?" Please go away now.
But Peeta wasn't paying attention to me. His eyes were fixed on Finnick, and his entire body trembled.
"You bastard." Peeta finally said. "You fucking bastard! How dare you steal my girl!"
He lunged at Finnick, fists raised, and began to repeatedly attack my man's beautiful face. I grabbed onto Peeta's arms and pulled as hard as I could to get him to stop, and eventually succeeded in putting some distance between the two boys. The one thing I couldn't stop, though, was Peeta's mouth.
"You fucking pedophile, hooking up with a student. You could screw any girl on the planet and you had to choose a student! She deserves so much better! Katniss Everdeen is a goddess among women, and she deserves someone better than some swim-teacher slut like you!"
"You're right."
Finnick's reply had been so soft that I'd barely heard it. But I did. And so did Peeta.
Finnick continued, "She does deserve better. I wish I could be better – be what she deserves – and it kills me that I'm not. But through some miracle, she's decided that she wants to be with me, and there's now that that's happened, there's no way I'm going to let her get away from me."
Peeta shook his head and turned to me. "No, Katniss…you don't want this. He's fucking his student – what does that say about his moral integrity? Come on Katniss, you know you don't want that. But you and I…we make so much sense. Think about it, we've known each other for years, not days. Leave this guy and so we can be us. We can be together like it's supposed to be. Just think about how great we would be Katniss. Just you and me. Us. It's all I've wanted ever since freshman year. Johanna's gonna be out of the picture soon and everything can be as it's supposed to be." And then his mouth is on mine – hard and uninvited. I push against his shoulders, but his grip is too strong. He held me to him for what seemed like hours, until finally, a fist connected with his temple and he was forced to stumble away from me.
A positively livid-looking Finnick wrapped one arm around my waist and tugged me to his side. "Don't you ever touch her again," he growled before pulling my back towards his car. Our ice-cream cones now laid splattered and half-eaten on the sidewalk.
And I had a feeling we wouldn't be sticking around for more.
