Chapter 3: Squirrels for Kisses
The more I think about Peeta Mellark's and my hurried embrace, our desperate kiss, the more enraged I become. With one kiss, the Baker's son has ruined me. With one kiss, he scuttled my last chance to find happiness in the more preferable embrace death would have brought to me.
But in my heart of hearts, I know he has ruined me in another way as well. For in kissing him back ever so briefly, I betrayed my own principles in admitting that, Snow's Roses, I liked it!
Still, in my stewing, I don't find the nerve to confront him until a few nights after the Reaping. I come round the back of the loading dock late, after making some evening rounds in the Hob, my feet and a few pieces of game leftover from my sales pulling me there.
I have to give Peeta credit for how he looks a little wary to find me on his back stoop, long past dusk and with the Bakery closed for the night, his family retired to bed in their upstairs loft, asleep. when Peeta asks me what I'm doing here, I mutter something about rabbits, throwing my game bag into the kitchen.
He offers me a loaf, and I shake my head. My movements are jerky and my eyes dart around wildly. I actually trip over a sack of flour and cry out in agitation, falling right to the ground like I've been shot by an invisible arrow.
Peeta drops the sieve he's been handling in his rush to get to me and help me up. He quickly finds a long cut on my palm from the floor and stares in anguish at the tear tracks running down my face.
"It'll be OK," he says, helping me up, taking me to the sink, pressing a damp cloth to my palm, holding my small hand carefully in his big square one.
"I'm sorry. I don't know why I came here," I say, suddenly avoiding looking at him, embarrassed.
"It's OK," Peeta says again. He sounds desperate in his search to say the right thing in this moment. What he thinks I want to hear.
"It's always a pleasure to see you," he offers a hesitant smile.
I smile wetly back. "Likewise." Something is nagging at me, and I shake my head. "Don't you ever get tired of being nice to me?" I look up, frowning, genuinely curious.
"No," he answers honestly.
"I don't deserve it," I watch as he returns to rolling out the dough, wielding the wooden rolling pin in his large hands.
I can feel him staring intently at me. "Yes, you do," he croons.
I have to glance away, picking at the cloth on my palm. "You're so charming. Kind. Disarming." A pause and then, I say almost in a whisper:
"Why don't you have a girlfriend?" I say this, even though he and I have been stuck in a will-we-or-won't we détente for the better part of three months… and maybe even longer.
"I've had girlfriends," he answers quickly, a little defiant.
"Why didn't you marry any of them?" Madge Undersee's face taunts me in my head.
Peeta goes quiet. Looks intently at his bread.
"You know why," he mumbles.
I lock eyes with him. My mouth is agape. When he first told me he loved me a few weeks ago, I hadn't believed him. Or at least, hadn't known whether or not to believe him. From the shock and fear in his eyes, he must be terrified of scaring me off. That I'll leave. Clearly, that was too big of a reveal, for him. And though my heart is leaping, though I'm scared too, I come closer and start tracing patterns in the flour on the table.
"You don't want me," I mutter, try to deny. "I'm not built to love like that."
"You don't know what I want." Is he really saying this out loud to me? "You haven't tried loving me yet. Maybe you could."
Though I desperately want to say that a part of me already does, an image of my mother, depressed and emotionally lifeless in my mind's eye makes me shake my head. Draw more in the flour with my fingers.
"Even if I could…. I won't," I sigh, and my heart secretly howls at the blasphemy. "That's the price we pay for independence."
Peeta watches me as I trace patterns unseeingly in the flour.
"I want to be free. The Capitol already has too much control over me. I don't want to belong to a husband too," I shudder at the thought of Peeta being disowned for loving me. Of him going into the mines, only to be blown to bits and leave me a widow, like my mother before me.
"To be in love is to be helpless—look what good it did my mother. I won't ever choose to give someone that control over me," I look at Peeta intently. Tears spring to my eyes.
"Doesn't it feel awful?" I ask softly.
"Sometimes," he whispers, caught between holding my blazing gaze and hiding his eyes in his dough."When I think about how hopeless it is. How you—I mean, how the person you love—will probably never feel that way about you." He smiles sadly, and my chest tightens painfully. "But the good feeling makes it worth it," his smile grows involuntarily. He is so easy to talk to, so free with his words and uncomplicated with his thoughts. "When the whole day gets better because you spend a few minutes with the person you love, or when a look or smile from her can make your afternoon…"
I start to get nervous as I remember he is talking about me. I still can't believe this is real. Peeta loves me. Me! I'm not used to having that kind of power over someone.
"But what's the point of it?" I interrupt angrily. I can't let myself be swept away, get caught up in the light feeling Peeta provokes in me. "Love doesn't feed you. Love doesn't buy you clothes."
"True," Peeta concedes quietly. "But it does make the hunger and the cold easier to bear."
I stare, gaze at him for a moment, before shaking my head ruefully. "At best I'd eventually loose control of my body to babies and spend the rest of my life worrying about them. I have enough to worry about now."
Peeta doesn't say anything. He starts to sieve flour for the next batch. My fingers' patterns in the flour on the table become more frantic until I break the silence,
"Sometimes I think: What am I going to do now that I'm the only one left?" my floury fingers tremble, "I'm…"
"You won't be alone," Peeta's voice comes out harsher than he must have intended, with the conviction in it. He reaches for my flour-covered hand. "You won't ever be alone."
I don't need a mirror to know how vulnerable I look, how unguarded my face is, so close to his.
And then, before I know what I am doing, I lean up and kiss him. Before Peeta can realize it's happening, I'm kissing him. Slowly, experimentally at first, but then I grab his shirt collar to pull him in closer. Draw him into me. My mouth bursts into full bloom as it petals open for him.
He kisses me back, dazed with wonder. Peeta tastes like yeast from his baking; it makes me dizzy. He is all warm and it thrills me.
My mouth is wet and grows increasingly urgent, clumsily pressing against his. He welcomes me hungrily, too dazed to think straight. His arms go around me, lifting me easily and my strong legs wrap around his waist, blue dress riding up my thighs where his hands now squeeze.
Peeta sweeps tomorrow's buns off the worktable, setting me down on top of it, and I nestle him between my thighs, the buckles of my hunting boots pressing against his legs. I am burning with a passion long pent up and he meets me kiss for kiss, gives me access as I fumble with the ties of his apron.
"Peeta," his name on my breath against his lips stirs something huge and primal inside me.
His kisses move along my jaw, down my neck, my skin salty with a day's sweat. He runs his lips reverently over my shoulders. Blue straps fall out of his way, revealing my alabaster skin.
I pull his mouth back to mine hungrily, maneuvering so one of his legs is between mine and I rub up against his thigh, trying to gain friction. Already, I can feel he is painfully hard in his desire for me. Surprisingly, this makes me grin eagerly, as I pop the button on his pants.
But Peeta seems to want to take his time. He lays me out on the worktable, worshipping every part of my body he can reach with soft kisses. It appears he wants to be gentle, tender, explore me; wants me to feel his kisses not just on my skin but in my soul. Let me feel his love in every pore with each kiss.
Large hands trace tenderly down the top of my spine, feathery kisses along my collar bone, his lips seal promises on the soft flesh of each wrist…but I don't want to be worshipped. I want to be fucked. A fire is burning in me that I need him to put out, and I need him to put it out now. My heels are at his back and they dig in sharply.
"Peeta, hurry up," I urge, a frustrated frown between my eyebrows.
He tries to kiss it away but I am already slipping my hand into his pants.
"Come on," I urge, sucking on his neck, stroking his erection, cupping him in my fist.
He stills my hand with his own, and I frown harder. Why the hell is he fighting this?
"Kat…Katniss, slow down," he begs, stuttering to regain control as I try to stroke him again.
He is trying to figure out how to slow me down, relax my frantic mood, when I lift my legs so my dress rides up around my waist, and his focus is drawn to the new areas revealed for his attention. His hand slides reverently along my smooth, muscular calf, holding just above my knee, his mouth following with kisses ever so softly.
I get agitated again, groaning in frustration, unbuttoning my bodice and pushing the top of my dress down to expose small pert breasts, my nipples already hard. I want him to taste them.
"Peeta," I draw his face to my chest, guiding his mouth to me, "I need..."
"Katniss, I…" he turns his head away like it's the hardest thing he's ever had to do, kissing my ribcage instead, over my heart.
He looks up at me earnestly,
"I want to do this right…I want you to feel…" He is so nervous, I can hear it in his voice.
Damn it all.
Growling in frustration, I yank his face down into my cleavage and seal his lips to my nipple. Peeta lets out a choked squeak along my boob, but then his lips and tongue slather my breast. When he takes my nipple between his teeth and begins to suck, I let out a gasp, lifting, pushing my hips against his as I arch my back, nearly levitating off the counter.
"I want you to taste them, Snowdamn it!" I hiss along his cheek, my voice strangely hoarse. Purposefully, I take both of his hands and lead them to me – one palm to cup and attend my right breast, his other hand to plunge beneath my underwear and grope my damp sex. "I want you…. to touch me!"
Peeta moans around my nipple, kissing, licking his way in between my glistening cleavage and then working his way up my collarbone, before his lips capture mine in another, bruising kiss.
"Hmmmmm….. Mmmmmm….." I begin to buck my hips, rutting helplessly along his pelvis and thighs, needing the friction of our undulating bodies like I need air to breathe. "P-Peeta….. Please…..!"
"Please what, Katty girl?" Peeta grunts, his voice husky, and I whimper. Seizing his glutes in my fists so that my nails dig into his skin, I hump him frantically.
"Please…. please fuck me. I want you to fuck me!"
At the sound of my begging for him, Peeta finally stops acting like a perfect gentleman.
He takes me with one, fierce plunge and I cry out in pain, but also in triumph.
"Did…. hmmm…. did I hurt you?" Peeta gasps between our frantic kisses.
"N-no…." I croak. "Mother taught us how the first time always hurts for women. Just… just go slow for now…"
We begin to bounce against each other, my giggles turning into gasps and breathy groans as Peeta starts to thrust into me faster and faster.
"Huhhhh….. Uhhhhh….. Ermmmmmm… Mmmmmhmmmmmm…" I kiss him deeply, closing my eyes as I rock against him, an extreme, tingling pleasure replacing my initial discomfort. " That's it - Harder…. Harder….! HARDER!" I'm wailing now. "Peeta, fuck me harder!"
Peeta grunts into my shoulder, the soft curve of my neck, and bears down. I choke on the air, my hands have moved up to splay and claw around his rippling shoulder muscles.
"Make love to me! Finish me now, or I'll scream! I mean it, I'll scream, I will! I'll…. Ohhhh…. Ohhhhhh my goodness….. Ohhhh Snow's Roses, I…. I….I'm gonna cum…. I…. Ahhhhhh….. AHHHHHH….. AHHHHHHHHH!"
My core is overloading. A wave is cresting there, and I can't even begin to turn back the tide.
Peeta's face is still buried in my neck, suckling on my pulse point. Kissing my lips deeply once again so that I can only sigh around his tongue, he hisses along the seam:
"I love you….."
Clamping my thigh muscles tight around him, melting into his kiss, I scream. "MMMMMM-HMMMMMMMM!" I squeal and scream and scream and squeal as my body writhes with my first orgasm. I'm quite impressed that he made me cum my first time. Hell, I am thoroughly amazed with myself that we had to the gall to do the dirty deed on the night of his brother's wedding.
Peeta jerks against me several more times, before he finally succumbs, orgasming inside me and then finishing his spurting along my spread, quivering legs. My thighs, my body are singing. And then I'm singing, dazed with amazement as the wave crashes over me. My arms loop about his neck, my fingernails digging into the skin of his rippling shoulder blades:
"Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you! Oh, at last I know the secret of it all!..."
He rolls off me, and I stagger off the counter in a daze, wordlessly smoothing down my rumpled blue skirts. I'm breathless, lightheaded, but it is only as I gaze into the deep, smoldering, awestruck eyes of… of my lover that I realize what I have just done. What we have just done.
I can't face him again. These feelings now swirling inside me, feelings I once categorically disavowed, terrify me. It is only by accident that a few mornings later that I try to pass in a hurry by the back alley of the Bakery, only for my traitorous eyes to look and get trapped in his blue ones.
Peeta is on me even before I try to run, and despite my weak protestations, he drags me into the alley. "Wait. Wait, please, wait..."
I'm frantically looking around for any escape and find none, causing me to hyperventilate a little. Lashes fluttering, I have no choice but to lift my eyes and stare leery at the man to whom I gave my virginity. I had sex with this man and Snow's Roses, I liked it as much as I liked kissing him, damn me to hell!
"I know you probably don't want to see me again, but I need to say this: I've been in love with you since we were five years old on our first day of school. I heard you sing in Music Assembly and when every mockingjay outside the window fell silent, I knew I was a goner. I think you're beautiful, kissing you was the most amazing I've felt in my entire life, and I want to spend the rest of my life making love to you the way we did last night. And someday, I'm going to ask you to marry me; I can only hope that you would say Yes, or at least consider it."He lurches to the end of this spiel very fast, flushing a little and giving me a bashful grin as my grey eyes bulge huge in astonishment.
"I... I..." I splutter. "I don't know if I could. Marry you, I mean," I at last manage to stammer.
Peeta just nods. "I can wait for you."
I gaze up at him, pained, tears glistening. "Peeta, please don't ask me," I whisper brokenly.
I relax a little when he backs off, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "What's in the bag?"
I feel my face grow hot. "Two squirrels," I mumble.
"And you weren't going to trade them to me? I'm wounded!" Peeta claps a facetious hand over his heart, and I laugh, in spite of myself.
I pass the squirrels to him, and he puts on his usual little show of inspecting them. "These are fantastic, as usual. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to trade."
I blink at him. "No bread?"
He grins sheepishly. "We're waiting on a new stock of yeast, due from the Capitol tomorrow. Usually it means just a day of selling the leftover pasties until we can get out hands on the stuff and start prepping dough again."
I feel my lips upturn, bemused and amused. "Then how do you expect to pay for my wares?"
Peeta takes a critical step into me. "I was hoping to arrange a new trade: squirrels for a kiss. Or kisses."
I stare at him in wonder. "A kiss? As payment for squirrels." He must know how dubious I find this arrangement, despite my heart lurching ectopically.
"Yeah," he shrugs. There is a very pregnant pause. "So... would it be all right with you?"
"If you kiss me?" I lift an eyebrow, skeptical that this is even a fair trade. I appraise him, sizing him up, unsure. Clearly seeing how wary I am, Peeta tries again:
"Katniss... can I kiss you?"
"May I kiss you... please?" I loftily correct his grammar. I take a moment to think about it. I know my practicality is telling me I shouldn't be doing this, but my heart... my heart yearns to hold him again.
So, despite my deep reservations, I leap.
"Yes. Yes, you may."
Peeta grins, before taking my hand and leading me, baffled, off the loading dock and deeper into the alley, around the corner of the Bakery. Ensuring that we are alone, he takes me into his arms and crowds me against the brick wall of the building. His lips find, capture mine hungrily, in a deep and earnest kiss. The ardor of it knocks the breath out of my lungs.
But then my limbs are growing limp and water-soft in his embrace, reaching up to wind around his neck, my fingers sinking and weaving into his blonde locks as I kiss him back. My lashes flutter shut, my eyelids droop as they close and I don't care if I ever open them again.
It is many, many minutes before we disentangle from the embrace and come up for air.
Courting doesn't change much. But even after the yeast shipment comes in and Peeta starts offering breads again, we still both agree to barter in stolen kisses as well as loaves filled with raisins and nuts. Our hands soon end up conducting less trading then our tongues do.
On his shifts off from the Bakery, I take Peeta out into the Meadow and we sit and talk for hours, gradually learning about each other, our intimacy gradually building. Before long, he and I are doing more than just talking out beyond the fence.
"Errrm….. Huhhhh….. Uhhhhh…. Mmmmm….. Hmmmm... Faster…. Faster…."
As Peeta moves between my legs, I try to muffle my moans by biting into my hand, though I'm not sure it matters. We are in the Meadow, where I've rarely if ever seen anyone else venture, the tall grass and flowers surrounding us helping to conceal our frenzied movements. My blue skirts have been shoved up around my hips, and his pants are around his knees, open just enough to free his cock, which he is driving into me mercilessly. My shirt is pushed up as well, and he had wrenched my bra cup out of the way so he could lavish my left breast with his tongue and his teeth.
On one particular stroke of my clit with his fingers, I yelp loudly – "OHHHH!" - my attempt at relative silence forgotten. He hastily covers my lips with his, licking his way into my mouth. He swallows my moans as I frantically buck my hips in time with his thrusts, forcing his hand to bear down harder between my thighs. I feel the momentum of my orgasm barreling through me, and I can't fucking stand it any longer—I wrench my mouth from his to dip my head back and cry out as I cum.
When Peeta finishes, he rests his head on my chest as he catches his breath. Then, groaning, he crawls out from between my legs and pushes the hem of my blue dress back down for me, smoothing the skirt down. I feel boneless, relishing in the euphoria of my orgasm, trying not to think about anything other than the satiation of my body. Peeta flops down on his back beside me, his breathing labored, and I watch as he removes the condom and dumps the contents on the ground, stuffing it back into its pouch. His arms drop to the ground after he's buttoned his pants up, and he lets out a huff, staring up at the sky.
"Fuck," he mutters, and I sigh, turning my gaze to the sky.
"Fuck," I agree. I'm still not sure why I seem to lose all rational thought in his presence, why I can't stop. Why I am seeing him, kissing him, fucking him. All I know is that, at least in this moment, it feels right, like being with Peeta is what I am meant to do, that's where I'm supposed to be.
Today is the first time we've made love since that fateful evening in the Bakery. We had tried to resist, meeting in the Meadow just to talk, then, just to kiss, then, just to touch, to reduce each other to quivering messes with our hands, as if somehow that wrong is less egregious—but ultimately, we were just delaying the inevitable. We both knew where it was heading; we both knew we wanted more (why else had he brought the condom?). So, when his hand had danced teasingly between my legs, under my panties, I realized what I wanted was his cock filling me up, not his fingers, so I pulled him on top of me and freed him of his trousers. Peeta quickly got the hint.
We're both quiet for a moment, and a cool breeze rustles my hair, cooling my face. I close my eyes. It's starting to get colder these days. With how busy he is in the Bakery, we will have less time for secret rendezvouses in the Meadow.
I can stop seeing him then, I tell myself, cut all ties. I just want a little more time with him until then, just another taste of the happiness I've found, writhing underneath him, before I have to let him go again.
Fingers smooth over my brow, and I open my eyes to find Peeta watching me. He has rolled onto his side, and he is caressing my forehead, my cheek. I can't help herself; I smile. The corner of his mouth curls up, though his eyes are a cloudy blue. He shifts closer to press a kiss to my temple, but he rests his forehead on mine, his mouth brushing my ear. I can feel his warm breath, and it makes me shiver.
"I know I shouldn't say this," he starts, his voice low, "but what I wouldn't give to be able to strip you naked and worship your body the way you deserve so you can scream as loud as you want."
No, he mustn't say that. But I love to hear it all the same. Biting my lip, I curl against his chest and tuck my head under his chin. "Me too," I whisper, and he wraps his arm around me to hold me close.
One evening, I finally find the courage to take Peeta up Victors' Hill, where we steal into the Victors' Village and approach the Graveyard of Tributes, a hundred and fifty headstones chronicling Twelve's fallen children, including my sister. I show my lover Prim's grave and I am moved to tears when he lays a bouquet of dandelions on her headstone.
I take him to the Hob where I make many of my trades, and try to hide my blush at how curiously, knowingly Greasy Sae looks between me and my handsome baker man. The last known case of inter-class courtship actually resulted in the marriage of my own parents. But if any of my neighbors have any qualms about a Merchant man courting me, they don't voice.
I try to teach Peeta how to hunt, and quickly come to the conclusion that it is a rather fruitless endeavor. Though we do make a trip out to Daddy's hunting cabin by the lake, where Peeta and I once again make love. Our coupling culminates in my taking Peeta deep into my mouth and sucking him to painful hardness, licking his shaft until he cums on my tongue. Then I spread my legs and let him fuck me again, allowing him to bury his face between my thighs and taste me once he's brought me to completion.
Overtime, I feel less and less bothered about taking a lover, letting a man have me like this. But to take, have him as a husband? No. So I'm at least relieved that Peeta doesn't bring up the prospect of marriage again, and I don't float it. Having him inside me, having him kiss me, is enough for now. Enough for me to believe in the promise that life can go on. Enough to make me feel... happy again.
