Chapter 64: Cashmere St. Cloud

The District 1 tribute-Victors and mentors stagger into Floor 1 of the Training Center a little shell-shocked. District 12 is going to win the whole damn thing again, aren't they? And all they had to do was to get Everdeen to twirl around like a simpering little schoolgirl and Mellark to lie through his silver-tongued teeth about a pregnancy.

Naturally, Cashmere isn't exactly in the best mood when Augustus asks if he can speak with her privately. She would have thought he might need to speak with Gloss one last time, seeing as how her brother is his tribute. Allana Trump, her own mentor, just gives a halfhearted wave to the group before staggering off to bed.

Augustus and Cashmere steal into a little alcove to talk alone, the former waiting until he hears the TV blaring in the next room when Gloss turns it on. He takes Cashmere's hand in his.

"I need to tell you something!" The Victor of the 67th Hunger Games gets out before he loses his nerve.

Cashmere's robin's-egg blue eyes blink bemusedly, and she giggles a little. "Ok…."

Augustus takes a deep breath before confessing all. "I love you, Cashmere St. Cloud. I always have. And I can't watch you go into that arena and possibly die without letting you know."

Cashmere's eyes go as big as moons. She certainly wasn't expecting him to tell her this. She's heard confessions of love before from some of her clients, but this is the first one she's been given that actually sounds sincere. She braces herself for him to try and kiss her, and she finds she isn't sure whether or not she would push him away if he did.

But Augustus doesn't try to go for her lips, which she appreciates, instead smiling hopefully, waiting for her answer.

"Oh….." Cashmere gets out, still shocked. The light in Augustus's eyes dim just a bit, and she smiles weakly. "Auggy, I'm truly flattered, I am, but…" His face dips a little more, and her heart breaks to see it. "I… I… if you'll excuse me." And she retreats to her room like a coward to think…. and also to cry. Why now? When she very well may die in the morning?

The dim light from the hallway frames her as it spills past her silhouette and into the rooms of her brother's mentor for the Quell.

"Augustus? Are you asleep?" Cashmere St. Cloud draws forth in a whisper.

No answer. Closing the door discreetly behind her, she pads into the room and tugs back the covers, climbing into bed with Augustus Braun, her colleague who won three years after her. She feels a rustling of the sheets as the man stirs and before she can change her mind, she swings one leg over his hips as she moves to straddle him, settling on top of his chest.

"Wha…? Cashmere…" Augustus mumbles nervously.

"Ssssh…." Cashmere rests a gentle finger over his lips. "I've been thinking about what you said. When you told me you loved me after the interviews. And… Auggy – I think I could love you. If… if things were…"

She doesn't finish, replacing her finger with her lips. Her mouth warm and wet and soft on his, she gasps a little when she registers how quickly Augustus moves to return her kiss, his arms winding about her until he is clutching her close, tugging her flush against his skin.

Cashmere isn't sure yet if she means what she says, or if she eventually could. In the decade she has been a Victor, she has been one of the most desirable commodities on Snow's prostitution ring; one of the reasons she feels jealous of Katniss Everdeen is that she likely will now never know what it is like to be whored out. Even if the Quell twist this year hadn't been what it is, Katniss probably still could have gotten away from being fucked by the highest bidder, just by hiding behind her fake boyfriend. Cashmere secretly wishes she was like her, and Johanna Mason, who allegedly responded to Snow's whoring blackmail by laughing in his face, then watched all her family get killed. Johanna won't ever talk about it.

It is with this in mind that, as Cashmere relaxes into the kiss, that she doesn't think it was ever possible for her to be truly loved by someone, at least romantically. The only person she's certain loves her is her brother.

Cashmere finally, softly breaks the kiss, pausing just long enough to impulsively tug her nightgown over her head and drop it over the side of the bed, so that it pools at the floor with a rustling sound. Augustus is back to gripping her close by her shoulder blades and she sultrily wriggles her hips against the burning evidence of his desire for her. She grips him tight in her fist, lifting her hips a little to shove his pajama bottoms down to his ankles. Lining him up with her slightly damp folds, she sinks down on him with a sigh; Augustus groans beneath her on impact. Physically joined, Cashmere seductively begins to move up and down, bouncing on him, and when she moans as Augustus lifts his upper half off the bed to suck one of the purple buds of her nipple into his mouth, she finds that it is genuine.

"Mmmmmmm….. Ahhhhh….. Ohhhhh, Augustus…."

His fists are now gripping her perfectly toned glutes and he thrusts inside of her with ever-increasing abandon. Cashmere's cries increase in volume and pitch, until she is afraid of waking her brother and alerting him to just what she and his mentor are doing to each other.

When she had made the decision to visit him in the night and sleep with him – give him something to remember her by – she hadn't expected that he would make her cum. So Cashmere is stunned when she does, and a lot sooner than she normally lasts during a round in bed with sponsors. Augustus thrusts up into her with a croak of her name. It sounds like sin on his lips: "Cashmere…. I love you…"

Her eyes fill with tears, the sheen of them catching the moonlight, when she realizes he truly means it. Augustus is still pounding into her, weakening, he's so close, but she wants to make it special for him. So thinking, Cashmere suddenly makes him pull out and then she crawls down the back of the bed, until her face is level with his length.

Lifting her deep blue eyes to smile at Augustus tenderly (really, she has seen worse from men), Cashmere rears forward and takes him deep in her mouth. His fingers tangle into her golden hair so as to better keep her head in place, hard enough to pinch, but Cashmere doesn't mind. Bobbing her head, she sucks him in deeper until his tip is touching the back of her throat. Cashmere lets her eyes flutter shut, rolling into the back of her head in pleasure. He actually tastes really good. "Mmmmmhmmmmm…." Her vocal cords vibrate through the aroused sound, causing Augustus's dick to throb, and he gives a jerk in her mouth. Curling her hand into a fist around the top of his shaft, she renders assistance by pumping him, stroking him. Augustus is bucking his hips off the bed, beautifully fucking her mouth, while she sucks on him like he's a lolly.

At last, Cashmere feels him stiffen inside of her warm, wet cavern. Augustus lets out a curse and releases himself past her parted lips. He pours nearly every last drop of what he can give her into his partner's mouth, and Cashmere nearly chokes on the stuff, but she gamely swallows it all.

Finally unsealing her mouth from around his softening member with a parting lick, Cashmere sits back on her thighs to admire her handiwork. Crawling back up to Augustus, she kisses him once, very gently, so he can feel the taste of himself on her mouth. Curling her sweating and naked body against his, Cashmere sleepily droops her head on his chest.

"Rest now, love. Rest."

He wakes her up again in the middle of the night to have sex, with him on top this time and he pounds her into the mattress until he makes her scream. After they've both cum together, they spend every last minute until dawn holding each other and just talking. Talking about everything and nothing. He tells her how he first fell in love with her when he was 14, watching her on the jumbo screens in the District 1 Square. She tells him about her online degrees in nursing and how she would want to work at the district hospital full time once she gets her PhD in the field; she's been earning credits towards it in the Games off-season.

As the first flecks of grey trickle in, Cashmere silently slips out Augustus's door to head back to her room, before their escort or, Snow forbid, her brother, finds her in someone else's bed. Augustus sees her off, and when he asks to kiss her goodbye like a gentleman, she lets him. She even kisses him back, letting him touch her, and she really doesn't want to go back in, more than she's ever not wanted to since the Reading of the Card was announced.

When they softly break apart, Cashmere tearfully touches his face. "If… If I come back alive," she says softly. "Let's try this. I'm willing to see where this goes and if it works."

His answering smile and the last kiss he steals from her lips could light up the sun, and she doesn't wipe her tears away until the door closes. She feels terrible to have lied to him.

Later, when the only other person she felt something for is killed by stupid Katniss Everdeen with an arrow to the chest and she rushes to defend Gloss, Augustus's face is actually the last one she sees as Johanna drives an axe blade betwixt her perfect cleavage.

As she bleeds out on the beach, Cashmere thinks: she was lying about coming back alive. But even if by some miracle she had, she wasn't lying about wanting to try and be with him.

She just hopes Auggy will understand.