Chapter 6: What All the Fuss is About

I shuffle off the train before it has even slowed to a stop in Lucy Gray Baird station. I have my suitcase with me, somehow having the presence of mind to take it when I was drawn – more like driven – from my mother's house.

Oddly, as I once again enter Town proper, I find my posture becoming more erect with confidence. There is a brave, determined march to my step as with every one, I draw closer and closer to where I left my heart.

Enola's bedroom window is the first part of the Bakery that comes into view as I near the rear alley leading to the back loading dock. The shutter is raised, the sash tossed back, allowing me a clear view of a young girl looking absolutely as miserable as the day I met her in the district schoolyard.

When I'm nearly on top of the corner to turn into the alley, Enola and I finally lock eyes.

At first, my responsibility, who has become a huge part of my world, remains frozen at the window. She must imagine she is in a dream. I smile weakly, sheepishly, apologetically, and it is like a trigger for her to tear away from the window.

I ascend the back loading ramp with purpose, reaching the top just in time for the clatterings from inside to cease, as the heavy metal door is yanked open and a blur barrels into my middle.

Enola nuzzles her face into my stomach. "I knew you'd come back," she whispers hoarsely, as if she has been crying. Choking up, I hug her back, kneeling down to her level.

"Thank you. And I'm sorry. I never should have left you…"

"Enola…." The call of her name makes me glance up, rise slowly, deliberately. Peeta is all but drinking me in. I show no fear when I stare right back. Still in my arms, Enola turns, watching her father expectantly. Peeta at last smiles down at his daughter. "Why don't you head down the road and see to your grandfather? Miss Katniss and I have things to discuss regarding her reinstatement as your governess."

Enola beams, squeezes me one last time, then scampers off down the alley. I smile at Peeta shakily.

"Your father?"

"No, Abner. Cartwright."

"The cobbler?" Growing up, I would purchase second-hand shoes from the Cartwrights for Prim and myself once in a blue moon. Delly's papa was an older father, but he's aged well, I hear; he's still in demand to play his fiddle at Toastings.

Peeta nods. He is still gazing at me as though he's never seen me before. "You left without saying goodbye…." My heart constricts at the hurt lacing his voice. "Not even to Enola. We only learned because Prim came by and showed us your note. She was worried sick as we were…"

Now I am very glad that when writing to my sister, I had kept my reasons for departing vague. Peeta does not deserve the same mistreatment, as I hear him ask me:

"Why did you come back?"

I smile weakly, taking a step towards him. "Well…." I sound breathless, and when I lift my eyes to his, my lashes flutter. "I learned you can't run away from your problems – you have to face them!"

Peeta's eyes make a sweep of my body, and I feel my nipples pebble under my dress. "And have those problems been resolved?"

I take a deep breath. "They will be. Soon." My gaze is hard, determined, no nonsense. Peeta accepts it and my answer for what they are for now.

But I can at least clear the air in one respect, in this moment. "I never should have left you. It was wrong." I nearly get emotional when I realize how my actions must have affected him.

To his credit, Peeta holds no malice as he almost croons, "You're forgiven."

I can already feel goosebumps alighting my skin as I descend the stair following singing Enola to sleep that night. I find Peeta where I found him last time, hovering by the counter.

"She's asleep," I murmur softly.

"Good," he clips, not taking his eyes off me. I feel a flush seep down to my chest, and a prey's instinct of flight-or-fight overtakes me. I lurch for the back door.

"I have to go."

Peeta blocks me, boxes me in as he crowds me by the door, obstructing my access to it.

"I want to see you again."

"…. I can't…." I protest weakly.

"Please, don't leave… Not again."

"I'm sorry…."

We both freeze. I can feel his hands bracing my hips, how he's placed them just where he did the time before, only now his touch burns more than it ever did. I tremble at the feel of his fingers tracing circles into my hips in a way that is far too intimate.

"Peeta… what are you doing…?"

He silences me by dipping his lips into the soft, sweaty curve of my neck and I let out a stunned gasp. I shift my gaze down to where my hands are back to bracing his chest.

Then:

"I love you."

I suck in a breath sharply as his words wash over me, eyes huge and sparkling in astonishment in the moonlight, and I shake my head through a moan. "Peeta…" Without even being fully aware of it, my arms glide up his expansive chest to loop sensuously about his broad shoulders. My fingers ease into his curly blonde hair.

"Katty! Katty…."

I wait, heart pounding, hardly daring to breathe. Peeta's one hand sweeps up my lower back to my head, holding my skull in place, as if he's still afraid I'll run away.

Only I have no intention of running.

"… May I please kiss you?"

I drink him in lovingly, proud that he is a man who understands his grammar enough to correctly ask to kiss me like a gentleman, and on the first try. Our lips drift ever closer. I feel my eyelids drooping.

I leap. I exhale my permission in a sigh.

"Yes, you m – Mmmmmm…."

His lips crash down on mine sensuously and the Baker kisses me the way those old Capitol stars kiss their women in the movies. Twirling my fingers into his hair until my nails pinch the strands, I kiss him back languorously and I swoon, swaying into him while I moan like one of Cray's whores. "Mmmmmmhmmmmmmmm….."

I feel Peeta's hand at my waist dip dangerously lower and my body thrums in delight. When his fingers find a strong grip in the curved flesh of my buttocks, my gasp parts my lips sharply, granting Peeta's tongue entrance and we are soon engaged in a fierce pattern dance. I mewl in aroused surprise as Peeta then gets a grip on the underside of my thigh and assertively raises my leg to his waist, hooking it about his torso at the knee so that my frock's skirts ride high up my creamy leg. I allow it in one fluid motion.

We have to come up for air in that moment, gasping; my breasts are heaving under my bodice. Peeta dives in and kisses me again, and I melt for just a tick, forgetting myself. Rationality revisits me when I feel Peeta start to lift me clean off my feet so he can carry me off, but my leg not curved about him is dangling at an awkward straight angle. I wriggle in his arms until my feet touch the floor and then gently push him away.

My pupils dilated, my grey eyes darkened nearly to black with lust, I wordlessly, bravely hold out my hand. Peeta seems to understand me implicitly, instantly. Slipping my palm into his, he leads me with purpose towards the stairs….

We make love in the bakery storeroom, surrounded by yeast and stores of flour. Hands clench fabric and shrug it away to grip the skin underneath as tongues push through, swimming in each other's mouths as we kiss frenetically, our breathing coming in heavy, rough pants.

Backing me up into a table speckled with a white dusting of powder, Peeta roughly bunches up the skirts of my frock, pushing them up over my hips. Wrenching my bodice and then my bra cup loose so that my left breast is freed, his hand cups me there, at its swell before he swoops in and kisses me roughly on my tingling lips. My arms winding about him sinuously, drawing him close, I kiss him back with equal fervor, a challenge in our liplock.

Peeta squeezes my bare breast, tweaking the nipple, and I hiss. Boldly, I take his skull and tug it down to my cleavage, mashing his face in between my voluptuous breasts.

"I want you to taste them, Snowdamnit!" I'm still hissing at him like an angry mother goose, but Peeta obeys me submissively. I loll back my head and let out a groan. Peeta flicks his tongue out over my hardened nipple, the one now exposed to the cool night air. He appears to be almost in awe, at the size of my assets. I admit, I filled out as I grew into womanhood, even past puberty. A memory falls into my head just then about a silly argument I got into with Prim, in the midst of her pregnancy with Aspen. The spat culminated in us yelling at each other over whose boobs were bigger. I chuckle at the reminder only to then cry out as I suddenly feel a bloated… thing brush up against my sopping wet folds, now also exposed to the subterranean breeze. Between our heated kissing, our entwined bodies, I catch a flash of peach skin near the space between my legs, and my eyes nearly pop.

"Oh….. Oh, God….. Oh, Snow's Roses, you can't be serious… Mr. Mellark, you bad, bad, ba-ahhhhhh….. Ahhhhhhhhh….. AHHHHHHHHHHHH… AHHHHHHHHHHH!" The sounds which are now being abruptly torn from me crescendo in an almost operatic way as Peeta takes me in one clean thrust, shattering my virginity forevermore. He grunts as my limbs noodily curve about him to draw him closer, bring him in deeper, and he pumps into me madly. My hands manage to find purchase, nails clawing into the toned flesh of his buttocks and I furiously lift my hips, rutting against him in return and steely matching him pound for every pound.

"Ugggh…. Huhhhh….. Uhhhh…. Faster…. Faster…." I rasp. Peeta snarls and does as I bid. "Harder…" I coax him. Then, born of frustration: "HARDER, PEETA, FUCK ME HARDER!"

Peeta growls and bears down. He's panting into the soft curve of my neck, sending a love bite into my skin, and I cry out, but I like it.

"Sing…. Sing for me, sweetheart…. Sing for me!"

I let out a wail as I cum all around him, at almost precisely the same moment that he empties his seed deep inside of me.

I'm quivering, my breath coming to me in rough gasps. I feel lightheaded, dizzy, so when Peeta sharply tears himself away from me, I whine at the loss of contact. My frock's skirts are still folded into themselves and by now surely utterly ruined, but Peeta does not seem bothered as he suddenly drops to his knees and shifts the skirts of my dress to tumble over him like a curtain, concealing him from view.

And then his mouth is on the petals of my sex, and I let out a happy scream, twerking my hips into his face. I can feel his tongue lick up the swollen, baby-pink skin.

"Ohhh….. Ohhhhhhhh… Oh, the State preserve us, have mercy! Mercy…." I begin to sob from the pleasure. "Please, Peeta…. Peeta….."

He makes me cum again faster than I would have expected and, with a whimper, I feel my juices stream down my thighs. Peeta ducks back out from under my skirts, rising off his knees to his full height.

He pulls me close, and for one titillating moment, I think he is going to kiss me yet again, but then the world is spinning and I suddenly straddle him, his toned body lying under me, flat on the tabletop against which we've been braced as we've fucked.

"Ride me, you little vixen!" I'm rapidly becoming accustomed to the tone of that voice, and I daren't defy it. Still, body glowing red all over, I tremble, a bundle of nerves and inadequacy.

"I… I don't know how…."

Peeta grips my hipbones and shifts me so his erection is directly under my entrance. "I'll guide you, sweetheart. Just bounce on me!" Something in my face must still appear unsure, for his forcefulness dims just a bit. "But if you're not sure you want to do this…"

"No!" I cry, swinging my one thigh over the rest of the way, shifting to ensure I am properly astride him. "I want this. I need this. I do." And sinking low, I sheathe him inside me.

My hands bracing his bare chest, I begin to slowly bounce and undulate on him, my hips swaying. With every meeting of our pelvises, I grow in confidence, and soon I am riding him like he is my mount in one of the horse races I've seen on the holoTV out in Ten. Peeta makes an odd little noise in the back of his throat when he geysers up into me; I'm not long following him over the edge.

I swoon, listing over my paramour like a tree caught in a harsh breeze, and nearly collapse on top of him, just about spent. I settle for bending over him and kissing him greedily, moving my lips down to pepper along his chest.

"Lower!" Peeta gasps out when I've neared his bellybutton.

I pause, lifting my head to blink at him dolefully, innocently, and Peeta growls.

"Put your mouth on me, Katty girl!"

I hold his stare bravely, before shifting my body down the length of his until my eyes behold a length of a very different kind. I've never seen a man's penis before; the stalk is angry and red. I shakily reach out a hand, fingers trembling, before retracting it, then finally willing myself to touch him. Curl my palm around the base of his shaft.

"You're…. you're huge!" I breathe in astonishment. Was this part of him really just inside me, cleaving me damn near in two?

"You will fit all of me in that pretty little mouth of yours," Peeta commands, and I nod in a trance, his member looking like a snake charmer about to be put under the spell of its master. "Kiss it!"

I press a tender kiss to the tip. Then, breathing deeply, I rear forward and take him in my mouth. His foreskin glides in deeper between my puckered lips and I suck, drawing him in further still, until he is well down my throat. When his tip touches the back of my esophagus, I have to inhale deeply through my nose to catch a breath.

Eyes rolling into the back of my head, I loll my tongue out to lick the upper reaches of his shaft. By now, Peeta is writhing beneath me, practically shouting as he humps my face. His jiggling allows me to bob my head as I methodically work, bob it enough so that I am able to hungrily tuck his balls past my bottom lip. My mouth massages them, fondles them.

We must have been leaning too far to one side for all at once, we both are thrown, capsized off the tabletop, to land half-braced against a pile of sacks of flour. Remarkably, I keep all of him in me, and I shift onto my knees, resuming my sucking him off almost seamlessly.

Swaying above me, Peeta pants out a warning and when he cums, I swallow every last drop of what he offers me.

I extract myself teasingly from his member, dropping back onto my heels to admire my handiwork. This time, when Peeta grabs me roughly and manhandles me into a position on all fours, I am ready. Though a jolt of exhilarating fear courses through me as Peeta emphatically jerks my hipbones up so that my ass is sticking straight up in the air.

"Stay on your knees, love," Peeta whispers, his voice soft as velvet. By now, I understand that Peeta is neither a gentle nor a domineering lover. He vacillates easily between both, and I am hot for it!

If not necessarily ready for the moment now, when he frantically rubs himself along the crack of my buttocks before sharply plunging in between my ass cheeks.

"AHHHHHHH!" I throw back my head with a shriek, canting my tight little ass back into his pelvis. As my lover begins to move about inside me, he fucks me raw and deep, his balls slapping against my arse cheeks and making the most delicious squelching sound. I moan and try to ride through the pain, match the jerky motions of his hips and mine.

I used to despise the thought of sex. I never understood what all the fuss was about. Now I know, and understand that there are much better Games to play than the ones the Capitol forces us to ingest for their amusement. Games of the most intimate nature, as Peeta and I play the Beast with Two Backs.

"Who do you belong to?" Peeta hollers over our combined shouting as we shag like rabbits.

"Y-you…" I hiss with need.

"Are you my Seam slut?!"

"…YES!" I shriek through another debilitating slam.

"Then SAY it!"

I lift my head from where I've been made to stare into the dirt floor of this cellar, my nails now caked with the stuff as they dig into the earth; it's all I can do just to hold on. My teeth grind, and I growl, "I'm your fucking Seam slut!"

Peeta howls and rubs against me faster, pumping into me like a piston. Fingers twine into my hair, yanking my skull back, and I yelp. Then he's turning my face and kissing me rather indecently, and I breathe through the high, melting against him.

We break the kiss roughly and Peeta claps his free hand over the mouth he just claimed as his; he's jerking inside me frenetically now.

"Hmmmm…. MMMMMM! HMMMM! MMMMM-HMMMMMM!" I viciously squeal into the palm of his hand as I feel wetness crash like a wave between my quivering legs. Peeta is right behind, pulsing his seed directly into my arse.

My knees give out and I fall forward, sprawling into the dirt in exhaustion. Peeta bellyflops on top of me, panting, and nearly crushes me.

After a few moments in which we calm our racing hearts, I squirm beneath him, whining, begging to be let up. He rolls off of me, and I flip onto my back, past the point of fighting as he tucks me possessively into his side.

"That was…. I…. I've never…." I'm babbling, speechless.

Cupping my cheek with astonishing gentleness considering the dirty deed we just concluded, Peeta kisses my lips lovingly. "I know," his blue eyes smile, smoldering.

I beam at him adoringly. And in this moment of bliss, I speak aloud the words I've carried for some time in my heart:

"I love you too."

When I wake up, however, sweaty and half-dressed and sprawled on Peeta's chest, I have a very different reaction to spending hours upon hours making wild love with the father of my charge. I feel the terror once again, as old as life itself.

The moon is still high in the basement window. Quietly redressing, and wincing at how this old frock of Mother's is now just about ruined beyond repair – ripped in some places – I embark upon the walk of shame to my sister's house. I can feel the copper tang of dried blood on my inner thighs.

I must accidentally close the door too hard, for within moments, a light glows on the stair, and Prim appears, carrying a candle.

"Katty, by the State! Where have you been?! We've been worried sick!"

I'm still dazed, so I think I speak outside of myself when I state, rather blandly, "I was with the Baker."

Prim draws back, taking me in: the ripped frock, my tousled hair. How my sore and very kissed lips are flushed with color and swollen.

Her own mouth falling open slightly, prettily, my baby sister lifts a clarifying finger: "When you say 'with,' do you mean with in the innocent sense or 'with' as in…?"

I squeak, and Prim draws her free hand to her mouth to hold in a gasp. And then a bizarre sound of true elation explodes from my sister and she is wrestling me into the nearest chair.

"Oh, dear Snow! How did it…? What happened?!"

I turn almost absently to her, my stare nearly vacant, as I breathe, still stunned: "He kissed me as I was about to leave and…. I kissed him back."

Prim makes a strangled noise and scoots closer. "And then?"

"…. He led me down into the basement and we made love against a table – and then on the table."

Prim looks gobsmacked. Her smile is broadening with every passing second. "And then?!"

"I rode him on the table. And he told me to put my mouth on him, so I did…."

"Katniss Magenta…" Prim breathes. She must not have believed it of me. "And then?!"

"He went under my skirts and licked me there – no, wait, that was before I rode him and went down on him…"

"Semantics," Prim waves away. "And THEN?!"

"He… he took me in the arse. He ravaged me over a sack of flour. And I enjoyed it!"

By the end of my steamy tale, Prim is practically cheering. Eyes wild and darting about, I have to shush her.

"Oh, Katty, how wonderful! I've seen the way you look at him. I knew it, I knew it! But seriously, how many rounds can he go in one night?"

"Prim!" I gasp at her, mortified.

"Well, can you blame me for asking? To hear you tell it, he had you in every position, and you him!"

I moan, burying my face in my palms. "We did," I mumble between my fingers. "And we did it all while he was taking me over a sack of flour!"

"He fucked you over a sack of flour?" Prim doesn't seem to quite know what to do with her face. "Well…. that's not exactly something Rory and I would do…"

"I don't want to know what you and Rory do…"

"I'm just trying to compare notes to how Peeta is as a lover – your lover," she nudges me playfully, eyes sparkling. "He's clearly adventurous. Rory sometimes gets that way, when he's really randy. For example, there's this wonderful thing he does with his teeth…."

"Oh, for the love of Panem, please STOP!" I yell, aghast beyond belief.

Silence finally reigns. When Prim speaks again, her voice is gentle.

"Katniss…. did you like all those things Peeta did to you?"

I numbly nod my head, face burning.

"Are you in love with him?"

I hide my face in my palms again. "The State have pity on me, yes!" To my astonishment, I am now suddenly crying. "I love him," I warble. "And I love Enola." And with the name of the little girl I adore, the terror, the shame is back. "Oh, Enola…. What am I going to tell Enola?!"

"Nothing, of course!" Prim states emphatically. I lift my head to her, sniffling. "You are going to go to Peeta and you are going to tell him exactly how you feel, and you both will work this out as a couple. How to broach it with Enola. But I'm warning you now: be patient. Take as much time as you need." My baby sister leaps to her feet, practically dancing. "Ohhhhh….. I'm so happy for you, I could burst!" And hugging me fiercely, she dashes up the stairs with a hurried and whispered goodnight.

Mind and body utterly spent, I can only curl my sore body into the chair and fall into a deep sleep.