~Peeta~
I lose the battle I've been fighting for days not to jerk off as I'm getting ready for my date with Everdeen. While I shower, I summon the image of her in front of the kickboxing bag, all sweaty and breathless, and allow myself to imagine I'm the reason she's in that state. Lathering up my hand, I wrap it around my rigid shaft and start pumping. My palm glides up and down easily, aided by the soap, and I brace one hand on the wall as my breathing accelerates. I lick my lips and think about flicking my tongue over her nipples, her breasts in my face as she straddles my lap. It doesn't take long before I'm cupping the head of my cock as I come hard. The water quickly washes away the evidence of my orgasm, and I let the tremors of pleasure subside before I finish scrubbing my stomach and upper thighs. I needed that.
It's not like I have any expectations for this evening. I harbor a faint glimmer of hope that Everdeen could be weakening when it comes to admitting she might want me even a fraction as much as I want her, mostly because of the little moment that passed between us in the break room. I think I could have kissed her then. I don't think she would have resisted me, at least not at first. After a few seconds I probably would have gotten slapped, once her brain caught up with the rest of her body.
As I button my shirt and step into my pants, a tiny smile plays on my lips when I consider the agenda for the night. I had agonized over what kind of date to plan, and I had been faced with several options. The first was to go completely casual—take her for pizza or to a movie, both of which scream, 'this is normal and I've done this with a ton of other girls.' So I scratched that. Then I debated making reservations at a five-star restaurant, not only to really spoil her, but also to exploit her love of food. But something tells me Everdeen is not the kind of woman who wants to wear an evening gown as she eats, and with my luck, she'd think I was flaunting my money or something. I know she already thinks I'm some kind of spoiled trust fund brat on account of my BMW.
So I went with the last alternative—the unexpected. The wicker picnic basket is packed to the brim, my miniature Igloo is filled with ice, housing a bottle of champagne and the oysters (the riskiest thing I've planned, because she'll probably side-eye me for including a known aphrodisiac on my menu), and the massive green tartan blanket is neatly folded on my back seat.
I'm technically overdressed for our destination, but I told Everdeen to dress nice, and she could have interpreted that a number of ways. So to play it safe, I'm wearing the same clothes I wear to work daily: a very nice button-down shirt and dress pants. I've left the top two buttons of the shirt open and opted for no tie.
Flowers were another dilemma I faced. I thought about a big showy bouquet, but I hadn't the slightest clue what kind of flowers Everdeen favors, or if she even likes flowers at all. I've never seen them on her desk, not even on her birthday (May 8th, I know that even without the little iPhone reminder). So I bought a single long-stemmed peach rose. Its unique pale orange hue caught my eye, and it seemed a safe bet.
As I pull up to her building, my heartbeat quickens and I feel like a teenager. I'm legitimately nervous and I don't get nervous often.
With a deep breath, I head up to her door, rose in hand, and I ring the bell beside her name. She lives in a large, restored brownstone that's been converted into three apartment units, so I stand on the stoop and wait someone to come open the door.
A pretty blonde woman appears and gives me a knowing smile.
"Hey, you must be Peeta." She extends a hand. "I'm Madge, Katniss's roommate. I've heard sooooo much about you."
"Oh god, that doesn't sound good." I laugh. I can just imagine Everdeen getting home from the station, venting about me to this poor girl for hours.
But she just winks and motions for me to follow her up a flight of stairs.
"Have fun you two," says Madge, and she vanishes immediately, leaving me alone in the tiny foyer with Everdeen.
To say that Everdeen looks beautiful would be a gross understatement. All I can do is stare, because I've never seen her like this. For starters, I can't recall a time when her long dark hair hasn't been swept up in a ponytail or plaited into a braid. Tonight it's coiled into a loose knot at the nape of her neck, a few loose tendrils framing her face. Her silver eyes are like smoldering charcoals under her shimmering eyelids. Her cheeks are dewy and her lips a glossy peach.
And her dress…good fucking lord, her dress…the black halter dress hugs her body in all the right places. The swells of her breasts peek invitingly over the edges of the plunging neckline. Her strappy heels put her a little closer to my height and enhance her toned legs.
She fidgets a little, probably uncomfortable under my blatant stare, because I can't seem to get my mouth to form words or my legs to move on their own accord. Her hands skim her hips, smoothing the dress down, and she tugs at the hem, as if she's trying to make it longer than where it hits mid-thigh.
Beautiful doesn't begin to do her justice. She's fucking breathtaking.
"Hey," she says.
"Hi." I hand her the rose. I want to gush about how sexy she looks and how I've wanted this for so long. But she's watching me a little warily (I think), and so I rein in my reaction. "You look gorgeous."
"This is so not me," she replies, gliding one hand along her hip and thigh again, all but dismissing my compliment. My eyes are drawn to her hand, still caressing her hip. She has no idea how even such a simple gesture from her turns me on. "Thank you for this," she adds, raising the rose. She picks up a small vase from the little table behind her and she walks over to the kitchen. Once she's filled the bud vase with water and stuck the rose inside, she hesitates.
"Do I need a coat?"
"Ah, yeah, it could get cold."
She frowns a little, her nose crinkling as she does. She suddenly looks apprehensive. "Wait…am I dressed…I mean…is this…? I can change."
I step towards her and shake my head. "You're fine. You're more than fine. Don't you dare change." I can hear the lust choking my voice, but I don't give a shit. I think she senses it too, because the bob of her head is imperceptible, like it's taking a great effort to nod, and she takes a deep breath.
"My..uh…coat is in there." She points to the door behind me. I step aside and allow her to grab a long sweater-type thing that doesn't really look like a coat. She drapes it over the crook of her arm, and I say a silent thank-you that she doesn't cover herself up yet. She calls to her roommate and then leads me downstairs.
She stops beside my car and runs a hand along the door panel. "I have to be honest, Mellark, I half expected you to pick me up in one of the squad cars, since you know...I lost. Figured I forfeited the right to be inside your precious ride."
I reach for the door handle, but pause so that we're just centimeters apart. "You really think I'd be like that?" I ask softly. She looks down at her feet, and I crook one finger and tuck it under her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes once more. "Do me a favor. Let me have my victory. Let me pretend for a few hours that you don't mind being with me and this isn't a chore for you to be here. And one more thing—please don't call me Mellark tonight. Okay?"
"Okay," she whispers, her voice tremulous.
"Okay, good." I open her door and as she moves to slide inside, I curve my hand around her hip, pulling her back against me so my mouth is right beside her ear. "You really do look incredible, Katniss."
She turns, our faces now mere centimeters from each other. "Thank you, Peeta," she says softly, her eyes dropping to my mouth for a fleeting second before she settles down in the front seat. I climb in behind the wheel, and I see her eyes roaming around the interior, taking it all in, and I wait for her to make some derogatory comment, but she says nothing.
Initially, we ride in silence. It's not an uncomfortable silence, but there's definitely an unsettled energy in the air. Katniss gazes out the window, her fingers once again playing with the material of her dress, and occasionally the hem shifts up enough that I catch a glimpse of the smooth skin of her upper thigh.
"So, um, that sting you ran—the one that beat me?" she starts.
"Katniss, this is a date. Let's not talk about work, okay?"
She stiffens in her seat a little and those mercury eyes glint. "You don't talk about work on your dates?"
I depress the brake and let the car idle as we come to a red light. "I try not to. Our jobs consume us enough as it is. I like a break from it all once in a while." I can't resist the opportunity to dig a little though. "Why, you like to make work a topic of conversation on your dates?"
She presses her lips together and shrugs. "I don't date much." She avoids my eyes and stares straight ahead.
She's a terrible liar, so I know she's telling me the truth. And as happy as it makes me to hear her say it, as opposed to just hearing Mason claim it, I have to wonder why Everdeen keeps herself so closed off. And she's fucking hot, so I find it hard to believe guys don't ask her out, but maybe she's one of those women who just will never accept her hotness. It seems like it's a touchy subject though, like so much else with her, and I don't want to kill the mood and ruin this night. If it's the only night I'm going to get with her, I need to make every moment count.
~Katniss~
I watch the streetlights go by in staccato blurs as I wait for Mellark to say something. I assume that he's mulling over my comment that I don't date, and I can only imagine the ammunition I've just given him to use against me when we're back at work.
"So, ah…where are you taking me?"
His lips curve into a coy smile, and he takes his eyes off the road for a moment to look at me. "It's a surprise."
"A surprise?" I narrow my eyes at him, but he just gives me that same unnervingly sexy smile and nods. I sit back and gauge our surroundings as he drives. We're going away from downtown, and it seems that, unless he's taking me to the small airport on the edge of the city limits to fulfill one of those ludicrous fantasy dates he had been goading me with, we're heading for the next town over, or beyond. My curiosity is definitely piqued.
"I have to admit, I would have been okay with the football date."
"Football date?"
"Yeah, when you were talking about all the things you could do if you won…you had bragged that you were going to put your victory up on the JumboTron…"
"Oh, I can still do that," he promises, a wicked gleam in his eye. "But I didn't give much real thought to that one." He pauses. "You'd actually like that?"
I shrug. "I love football."
He raises his brows and I can tell I've surprised him. "I…I never would have assumed that." He clears his throat. "That's…cool. Guys love it when a woman knows her sports." He coughs again. "See, this is the kind of stuff that I'd like to know about you, Katniss."
"That I like football?"
"Just…stuff. The little things. I mean, I think I've done a decent job gleaning what I can from simple observation over the years, but we're partners…it's nice to share things."
I close my eyes. This is exactly what I don't want to do. I don't want Peeta Mellark to know things about me. Because okay, yeah, maybe it's not a big deal if he knows my favorite sport, or how I take my coffee, or that I like the plain glazed donuts best, but once I start opening up to him with little things, it won't be long before he wants to know more, like the deep stuff.
"Katniss?" His voice shakes me from my reverie. I glance over. His hands are no longer on the steering wheel, and the car is no longer moving. Wherever he's taking me, we've already arrived. I sit up and peer out the window into the bruised twilight sky.
We are at the airport. What. The. Fuck.
"Trust me on this…I swear I'm not kidnapping you and whisking you away to Paris," he says softly. I guess he does remember some of the outlandish dates, too. He opens his door and the interior lights come on. My confusion must be palpable, and maybe I look a little wary, because instead of getting out of the car, he leans across the console and cups my cheek tenderly. "Katniss, please don't look so horrified." I can see a faint trace of hurt or something in his eyes, and I immediately feel guilty that he thinks this whole night must be akin to torture for me. And it's not that. It's that Mellark keeps surprising me, and every time a new layer of him is revealed to me, it unsettles me more. It would be far easier if he were the cocky womanizer I've always pegged him to be. I can't allow myself to think he's the kind of man I could fall in love with.
"I'm sorry…" I whisper. "I'm—I'll be better."
"Good," he murmurs in reply. His thumb skirts the bottom of my lip, and I have the sudden urge to purse my lips and kiss it. But I don't, and he offers a reassuring smile before breaking away and finally climbing out of the car. I do the same and loiter by my door as he retrieves a massive basket and a small cooler from the tiny trunk.
"Can you grab that blanket?" he asks me, and motions to the back seat of his car.
"Oh…sure."
He waits until I have the blanket and my sweater in my arms, and then he motions for me to follow him across the parking lot, away from the tarmac.
The airport isn't huge; it's just a tiny facility used by local pilots and the occasional flight school. There are two larger commercial airports in the greater metro area, so the air traffic here is minimal. I've only been here twice, as a matter of fact, and both times were on cases where private planes needed to be searched.
"Please tell me that you don't keep your jet here," I joke, as he sets down the basket and cooler reaches for the padlock on the chain-link fence.
"No jet," he says softly, releasing the lock. He pushes open the gate and grabs his things. "And relax, we're not breaking and entering. I can see the cop in you mentally assessing the circumstances."
He's right, of course. I'm beyond curious now as to why he's brought me here, why he has a key.
"I thought about this night a lot," he says, leading me out into a wide field that runs the length of the western edge of the airport. "And it would have been easy to take you to a nice restaurant, and stare into those pretty silver eyes over flickering candlelight, and spend a lot of money on a fancy meal that we'd both enjoy…"
I hold my breath. The intimate tone of his voice has my body erupting in goose bumps, and a delicious shiver runs through me.
"But this is one of my favorite places, and so I wanted to share it with you." He stops in the middle of the field. After setting down the basket and cooler again, he reaches for the blanket in my left arm. I'm still paralyzed, and I barely feel him pluck it from my grasp. He unfolds it and turns away from me, snapping it out in the gentle night breeze. Carefully he spreads it out and then offers me his hand.
"Have a seat."
My legs are stiff and trembling slightly, and I fear my knees will buckle when I try to move. Mellark has thrown me so far off-kilter already that I don't trust where this evening could go, where I could let it go.
Still, I ease myself down without taking his hand, because if he touches me right now, I fear I'll do something I'll regret.
If spurning his hand affects him, he doesn't show it. He kneels down beside me, as I tuck my legs under my body as best I can in the ridiculous dress Madge insisted I wear. I'm so not comfortable in things that show this much skin, and as I shift and try to find a position that won't give Mellark a free peep show, I'm actually mildly irritated that he told me to dress nice if he was planning to have us sitting on a damn blanket in the middle of a field.
So I have to ask, "If you knew you were taking me here, why did you tell me to dress nice?"
His smile is positively carnal as his eyes roam over me. "I still won a bet, Everdeen. Seeing you in that dress is as much a prize as I could have hoped for."
I'm glad that the lights from the airport's lot don't reach very far and therefore it's too dusky for him to see the blush that heats my cheeks.
He begins to unpack the basket, and the first thing he pulls out is several old-fashioned Mason jars, each of which has a tea light votive in its base. He arranges them on the blanket and lights them one by one, their soft glow casting shadows on his face. I have to swallow, because he looks so impossibly sexy, the muted candlelight highlighting the contours of his cheeks and jaw. I chance a peek at the hollow of his throat. I have the sudden impulse to dip my tongue into it.
Then he hands me two champagne flutes and I clutch them while he fiddles with the foil at the top of the bottle he removes from the cooler. There's a pop and a sharp hiss. He holds my gaze while he fills both glasses with the champagne. He rests the bottle back in the ice and takes one glass from me.
"To lost wagers," he says, clinking his glass against mine.
"Cheers," I whisper, gulping down the champagne. Maybe a little alcohol will soothe my frayed nerves. He studies my empty glass, his eyes narrowing pensively, but he doesn't say anything. Instead, he continues to unpack the basket, laying out all sorts of containers and bowls on the blanket. I gape at the spread once he's done.
"Where did you get all this?" I ask, awed.
"I made it," he replies. He grabs one last item from the cooler and shoves it away a short distance.
"You…made everything?" Now I'm dumbstruck. I don't know what lies beneath all the covers and Saran wrap, but I've never had a guy even make me a peanut butter sandwich, let alone go through what appears to be this much trouble.
"Yep." He takes the foil off the plate from the cooler and places it in front of me. "Something wrong with that?"
I shake my head and look him right in those incredible blue eyes. "I think you keep surprising me, Peeta."
He gives me a look that tethers right to my core and his voice is pure eroticism when he whispers, "Oh, I'm just getting started."
Author's Note-Thanks so much for the lovely reviews and comments to Chapter 4. I finished up on a special project this weekend, and did some beta work, not to mention did a ton of school work, and so I thought you'd rather have this update than my replies this go-round. But I appreciate every one of them, and I'm so glad that you're all enjoying this.
iLoVeRynMar…love you. And all mistakes are mine.