a/n: Sorry for the delay but it's a long chapter so hopefully that makes up for it! Enjoy!

Chapter 10

Well I came home
Like a stone
And I fell heavy into your arms
These days of dust
Which we've known
Will blow away with this new sun

Mumford and Sons- I Will Wait

I slept with the phone in my hand all night in case Peeta called and needed someone to talk to. When I woke in the morning, I was on my side, the phone clutched to my chest with both hands. As soon as my eyes opened, they landed on the bedside digital clock. It was already 9:13. I could never have slept in like that unless…

I lifted my head quickly, swiveling it around the room to try and find him.

"Peeta!" I shrieked when my eyes landed on him. He was sitting in a chair by the end of the bed, his easel and paints laid out in front of him as he painted. I dropped the phone on the floor as I climbed down the bed as fast I could move, Peeta laughing all the while.

I jumped off of the end of the bed, right into his lap making him toss his paint pallet aside. "I missed you." I whispered wrapping my arms around his neck and holding him close. His arms came up slowly around my waist and I smiled when he tugged me closer into his body and rested his head on my shoulder.

"I missed you too, Katniss. So much… I love you so much." He whispered back and I held the back of his head as I pulled away a little to look into his eyes and smiled brightly. He laughed softly while I peppered happy kisses all over his face and hugged him so tightly he joked that I should be careful or his eyes might pop out of his head.

"How are you? Are you…are you okay now?" I asked looking into his eyes for any trace of that hijacked look. Thankfully, all I saw was my Peeta.

"I'm great…even better now that I'm here with you." He said reaching up to hold my face between his hands. "Come on, Sae came over to make breakfast for us all. Pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs…" he rattled off and settled his hands on my hips as I leaned back a little, my arms still loosely around his neck. "Then I thought maybe we could go to the lake and practice swimming for a little…" he smiled. "I could use some airing out after being inside the house for almost 4 days."

I turned and looked at the painting he was working on over my shoulder. It was the lake on the day of one of his first swimming lessons. Peeta was flapping around helplessly in the water and I was holding him up under his back to keep him afloat. Peeta perfectly captured the look on my face in his painting. Equal parts encouragement and exasperation as I tried to teach him to float. I couldn't help but laugh at the painting and Peeta swatted my backside where it rested on his thigh.

"Hey! That was a nice day if I remember correctly! You learned to dog paddle perfectly." I teased and Peeta swatted me again and dug a thumb into the space behind one knee making me squeal.

"Hey, hey!" A raspy grunt came from the bedroom door and we both turned our heads to find Haymitch leaning against the door jam. "Do that stuff at your own house later, now get on downstairs and eat some breakfast." He said with a wink and pushed the door open all the way, signaling for us to follow him.

I climbed off of Peeta's lap carefully and pulled him to his feet. Neither Sae nor Haymitch could hide their smiles when we came bouncing down the back stairs into the kitchen, me riding along piggy back style on Peeta, my arms around his shoulders.

He dropped me into a chair and took one of my hands as he settled into the chair closest to me and we both dug into our food. Haymitch watched us with a small smile as we devoured our food, neither of us really having eaten much in the days prior.

"Where's Gale?" Peeta asked around a mouthful of eggs. Instead of Haymitch, Sae answered from her spot at the stove flipping the pancakes we would eat next.

"Come and gone," she said matter-of-factly. "I fed him early this morning and he was off to the woods." She explained pointing her spatula towards the tree line a little ways down the road from Victor's Village. I looked at Peeta and found him already looking at me asking a silent question with his eyes.

"He take a bow?" I asked around my own mouthful of food then washed it down with almost half a glass of milk. Sae shrugged and flipped the finished pancakes onto a large plate.

"Didn't see one on him." She answered in the simple, straightforward way she always had. I stared out the window at the tree line for another moment, wondering what Gale was up to out there, before I went back to my breakfast.

A little later, our stomach's stuffed with food, we thanked Sae for our breakfast, cleared our plates and headed out into the yard together walking hand in hand toward the forest.

"Feels good to be outside." Peeta said raising his chin into the air as the already hot sun beat down on his face. He stopped a moment to close his eyes and soak it in. I took the opportunity to look him over quickly, making sure he hadn't hurt himself while out of my sight for so many days.

He was wearing a light blue t-shirt, almost the color of his eyes and I could see most of the skin on his arms, neck and face, all of which looked normal. He had on cargo shorts that fell just above his knees and I could see that his good leg was unharmed as well as his ankle which was bare above the dark brown leather moccasins he had slipped on his feet as we went out the door.

"Come on, let's get in the shade before we roast to death." I said tugging him along. The change in temperature was immediate once we were under the cover of the trees but it was no less humid. In fact, it felt a bit like the air in the arena during the Quarter Quell. Already the hair that was free of my braid was sticking to my neck and I pinched the front of my dark green tank top and pulled it away from my torso a few times quickly, trying to let some air in against my body.

"Feels like it's gonna be a scorcher today." Peeta said releasing my hand which was swiftly becoming slick with sweat. I nodded in agreement and continued walking, unconsciously taking us in the direction of one of Gale and my old meeting spots. It wasn't long before we stumbled across him sitting on a fallen tree dressed similarly to Peeta.

"Hey Catnip." Gale said with a genuine smile as he stood from the tree and gave me a swift hug. "Peeta, you're looking a helluva lot better." He said reaching out to shake Peeta's hand.

"Thanks, I'm feeling much better. Thought a walk in the woods might be nice as long as we don't melt before we get back." Peeta quipped and Gale nodded, looking up towards the sun poking through the trees.

"Yeah, I was just heading back to the Village myself, I didn't think to bring a canteen with me." He said bashfully and scratched the back of his head. "I guess I've been too long away from forest life." He said with a smile but all I could hear was the sadness in his voice.

"Sure you don't wanna walk with us a while?" I asked gesturing between Peeta and myself.

Gale smiled wider and shook his head. "Nah, you guys go ahead. You haven't seen each other in a few days. I'm sure you have some…catching up to do." He said with a smirk and I rolled my eyes. Peeta took it in stride and reached for my hand again.

"Alright, well we'll see you back there. I made a pot pie for Haymitch for his lunch and dinner. Don't go letting him think he gets it all to himself." Peeta said as we started walking again.

"No, don't worry I won't. Thanks." Gale said starting to walk in the other direction with a little wave. "Have a nice walk." He called over his shoulder and Peeta and walked in the other direction after one last look over our shoulders at Gale.

When I was certain he was out of earshot, I looked over at Peeta who was already huffing and puffing from the exertion of walking in the heat. "So how come that didn't seem as….awkward as some of our previous encounters?" I asked with a grin and Peeta shrugged.

"I think we've come to a sort of…understanding, Gale and I." He said rather evasively and I cut my eyes at him between watching my step as we walked.

"Care to elaborate on that?" I asked and Peeta just smiled and shook his head, the only sound to hear was that of the forest animals voicing their own opinion of the heat. The cicadas rattled louder and louder and birds sang as they hopped from branch to branch, searching for a cool spot to rest.

It wasn't long before we came upon the little concrete house on the lake where my father had taken me when I was a small child. Whenever I went to that spot after he'd died, I always took a moment when I would first arrive to look around. I stared out over the shimmering water to the trees on the other side that seemed to go on and on forever. The bright, hot sun was beating down on the water and warming the smoothened stones that littered the banks of the lake.

I was so occupied taking in the view that it startled me when Peeta's arms came up around my waist and he kissed my neck softly on the side opposite the one my braid was resting.

"Hey…what are you thinking about?" he whispered and kissed my ear and then my cheek right next to my lips. I smiled and placed my arms over top of his with a smile.

"The doggy paddle." I teased and Peeta tightened his arms around me and started nibbling on my neck to make me laugh. I tried to wiggle out of his grip by reaching for his shoulders to grab onto the sleeves of his shirt only to find that he wasn't wearing it anymore. He let me flip around in his arms so that I was facing him and I got a good look at him for the first time since we arrived at the lake. Not only had he removed his shirt, he'd removed the rest of his clothes along with it.

"Peeta!" I gasped and my eyes swept the surrounding trees for any passers by. "Are you crazy!?" I laughed and wrapped my arms around his torso just under his elbows and pulled him close.

Peeta grinned and leaned in to kiss me deeply, his arms slipping down so that his hands rested on my hips where my shirt met my shorts. He slid his hands slowly up the shirt to rest on my bare back.

"No…" he breathed against my lips between kisses. "I'm freaking roasting hot!" he yelled with a laugh and then scooped me up into his arms with one arm behind my back and the other hooked behind my knees. I screeched when he picked me up and started for the water.

"Peeta Mellark! Don't you DARE!" I cried and struggled to get down out of his arms. He released my legs, letting them fall so that I was standing on the ground again.

"Fine! Then come in yourself!" Peeta said reaching down to unlatch his prosthetic and set it aside on the bank of the lake. He hopped to the edge of the water and then took a few short hops forward and dove into the shallows, surfacing a few seconds later and whipping his hair out of his eyes.

"Come on!" He shouted back to me and I bit my lip, looking around once more to make sure no one was around. How could I possibly resist his infectious joy? Especially after the Hell we'd both been through in the days before.

I kicked off my shoes and shimmied out of my shorts, letting them fall to the ground. I started walking towards the water as Peeta swam around, alternating between floating on his back and practicing some of the basic strokes I taught him. I threw my shirt on top of the shorts and shoes followed by my panties and bra.

I hurried into the chilly water, diving in when I was far enough out and surfacing right behind Peeta.

"Ohhh..this feels so nice.." I moaned feeling gooseflesh spreading all over my body from the cold water. "It's freezing but it feels so good." I said treading water next to Peeta.

"Come here, I'll keep you warm." He grinned and pulled me over into his arms. I wrapped both of my legs around his one and hugged him tightly. Between the cool water lapping over me and the feel of Peeta's skin against mine, I couldn't think of a more perfect way to be spending my day.

"I love you." I whispered with my forehead pressed to his and Peeta cupped his hands on my backside. He tilted his chin and kissed me softly once on the lips and I deepened it, pushing my tongue past his lips and rubbing it softly over his teeth and tongue. Peeta met my passion with his own, his hands moving of their own accord to slide up and down my sides, to my chest where he massaged my breasts. Finally, they moved to my backside again where he kneaded the flesh there in a way similar to how I'd watched him knead dough while he baked.

I was just reaching down between us to touch him when he caught my hand and brought it up to rest against his chest. I pulled back a little and looked into his face confused.

"You okay?" I asked taking the break from kissing to catch my own breath and put my feet down on the sandy mud below.

Peeta worked to catch his own breath and nodded vigorously. "Yeah, yeah, I'm okay just…no nightstand drawer in the lake." He said with a soft huff of a laugh. I cringed and looked around us at the forest, trying to think of a quick way to fix this problem of ours.

No condom trees in the forest, Katniss.

"Oh..well…you could just…maybe we could…" I looked back into Peeta's face and he reached up to push my hair back from my face.

I sometimes forgot how perceptive Peeta could be, especially where I was concerned.

"Let's just swim a little and enjoy the water okay?" He said softly and pushed back from me with a hiss of pain. "I'll be over there in the colder water for a few minutes if you need me." He teased and splashed water at me gently. I rolled my eyes and pushed off the bottom with my toes, floating onto my back a little and doing the backstroke as I moved in a big circle.

Peeta did actually move further out into the water, trying his hardest to do the front stroke the way I taught him and doing it…mostly right. I laughed and rolled to my stomach, swimming over to where he was after watching his technique for a few minutes.

I sidled up to him and swam, letting him watch me and match his movements to mine. Peeta stopped swimming and tread water, watching me swim back and forth for a few turns and then pulled along side me and tried to match his movements to mine as best he could.

"Good…Good job!" I smiled proudly when he seemed to really be getting the hang of it. Peeta's answering smile was a mile wide and the praise seemed to motivate him to keep going. I stopped swimming once Peeta seemed to have a good rhythm going and tread water a little ways off from where he was swimming back and forth.

Just watching him I could see the stress of the last several days melting away with each pass he made through the water. Back and forth, back and forth. His shoulders began to relax, his strokes through the water lengthened and he seemed generally more at ease.

I smiled as I watched him for another minute or so and then let my eyes drift around at the beautiful scenery surrounding us. The trees, the light but humid breeze making the leaves of the oaks and maples sway and cast shadows that danced over the water.

While looking around, I also noticed that we'd strayed quite a distance from the little concrete house.

"Hey!" I called out and Peeta immediately stopped swimming and turned in my direction. "We're kinda far out!" I called over to him, pointing toward the little house. We were almost to the opposite bank of the lake.

"Is that…bad?" Peeta asked clearly not having the foggiest idea of my concerns since he was new to swimming. I shrugged.

"Probably shouldn't get too far away, you're still a beginner..." I said paddling over to him slowly. "Let's head back into the shallows." I suggested and Peeta nodded, paddling up beside me and following me back towards the shore.

I remembered my father telling me to keep the little house in sight when I was a young child and he'd first taught me to swim. Being a stubborn 6 year-old, I pushed the limits, moving myself a little farther out into the deeper water when his back was turned. I'd paddle around, keeping myself up by crawling my hands along through the mud while kicking my feet behind me in the way he'd been showing me in order to move through the water. I'd tilt back my head to keep my mouth and nose above the water line and so that I could hear everything in the forest around me. He'd taught me to always keep my wits about me, even when playing.

I smiled when we reached the point that we could probably touch and went further still until we were in water so shallow that we had to crouch down with our knees almost to our chests to cover ourselves. They were the same shallows I had crawled around in as a child, scooping my hands through the mud to find crayfish and trying my best to mind their painful little pincers.

Peeta crouched down with me and then rolled onto his back, his one leg floating a little above the water and I could see that he was leaning back on his elbows even though everything from his ears down was submerged like he was in a bathtub. I slid over and moved to sit behind him, reaching out and hooking my forearms under his armpits. I tugged him back so that he was lying with his back to my chest, my legs resting around his hips and upper legs.

"Mmm…this is nice." Peeta said as I started massaging his chest and then his neck, working my hands up to his temples and massaged them with my thumbs as I rested my chin on the top of his wet head.

"Shh…" I whispered and continued to rub his temples as I felt his body becoming more and more boneless and he sank back into my arms. Four days away from this boy left me with a lot of time to feel guilty about the state he was in. Peeta would be pissed if he knew this was part of the reason I was caring for him in this way, so instead I shushed him with the excuse that he was disturbing my focus and he snapped his eyes shut obediently.

It only took a few minutes for Peeta to be so relaxed that his arms were floating on the top of the water and his face was so serene with eyes closed, that I thought he might actually be sleeping. I stopped rubbing and laughed when one of his blue eyes peeked open and he turned his head a little to look up at me.

"Hey, what's the big idea?" he murmured and I laughed, wrapping my arms around his neck loosely. As I did so, my arm rubbed against the pearl necklace I'd leant him. I reached out to toy with it and Peeta sat up and removed it from his neck and turned around straddling my thighs as he hooked it back in place around my own neck. I leaned forward to kiss him on the nose and whispered an 'I love you'.

"Love you too." Peeta whispered back and leaned forward as I was pulling away and captured my lips again. He reached up to hold my cheek, deepening the kiss and sliding his other hand up my naked back. He traced the bumps of my spine from where the water line began just above my waist up to the space between my shoulder blades where he laid his palm flat and used it to pull me closer still.

I noted, with a touch of amazement, that I was still able to keep my ears open to the sounds of the forest around us; just like my father had taught me to do in the same water years before.

Peeta used the gentle lapping of the little waves coming in onto the shore just behind us to pull us closer in to the bank. Before I knew it, I was underneath him, my back pressing into the soft mud beneath the water and his hands were all over my body as we kissed and kissed.

I gripped his sides, wrapping my legs around his waist and trying to pull his hips in line with mine.

"No…Katniss, no…" Peeta groaned against my lips. "Let's go home…I want you in our bed, not here." He whispered and then kissed my nose to temper his words and I watched a smile tug at his lips. "Well, sometime I'll want you here I'm sure, but right now I just want to take you home and spend the rest of the day making love with you."

I smiled widely and pulled him down for one more kiss. "Wow," I chuckled against his lips. "Sometimes I forget how much I love your straightforwardness and then you go and say something like…that and I fall in love with that part of you all over again." I whispered and sat up, dipped my hair back into the water once more to smooth it out and stood up so that the water hit me just at my knees. I held a hand out to Peeta who was sitting with his good leg bent so that his knee was poking out of the water as he leaned back on his hands once again.

"You go ahead and get dried off, I'll be there in a minute." He said still trying to calm his breathing. I nodded and gave one last little slap of the water, splashing him in the face playfully before I waded back onto the shore and stretched out on a big flat rock to let the hot sun dry my skin.

I didn't think I'd been there long but I must have started to doze, because the next thing I knew Peeta was stroking my cheek to wake me and I held an arm above my head to block the sun.

"As much as I'm enjoying the view…if your new skin is as sensitive as mine, you shouldn't be laying out like that too much longer." He said holding onto the rock to steady himself and then sitting down beside me. "Ouch! Hot..hot!" he screeched adjusting his position so that only his backside and heel were touching the surface of the rock and brushed his damp hair out of his eyes with one hand. "How have you been laying here for more than a minute?! It's like laying on a coal right out of the fire!" He laughed and I smiled and stretched my arms above my head and pointed my toes like I'd sometimes seen Prim's cat Buttercup do when lying in a sunny spot by a window.

"It feels good after being in the cold water." I replied simply and sat up beside him, resting my chin on my tented knees. "Everything under control now?" I asked trying to peek into his lap and Peeta gave me a good natured shove before I hopped up from the rock and walked around to the side he was on.

"Yes, I'm fine for now, but if you don't take me home soon, I might take you up on that offer you were making over in the shallows a few minutes ago." He teased and held a hand up to me so that I could pull him up to standing. He looped an arm around my shoulders easily and hopped in synch with my steps until we reached the spot where we'd left our clothes.

We dressed in companionable silence and then blindly reached out for the other's hand as we headed back into the woods. I had taken the tie out of my hair and re-braided it to keep it off my neck while Peeta was strapping his prosthetic back on, but it was still just as hot now that the sun was high overhead indicating it was passing noon.

By the time we got back to where the old fence had been, we were both completely dry. I allowed myself a satisfied smile as I realized any evidence of our late-morning swim would go unnoticed by anyone who might see us emerging from the woods. To the untrained eye, we were just a young couple taking a stroll on a sticky summer day.

As we passed Haymitch's yard, he called to us from the porch. "Hey! You comin' in for lunch?"

I could tell just by looking at him that he was in between his morning blackout and his afternoon one.

"For what? The stimulating conversation?" I called back and Peeta shook his head.

"We'll stop in later tonight, Haymitch. I baked some banana bread this morning before I came over to get Katniss, I'll bring it for dessert!" he hollered and Haymitch nodded and threw us a quick wave.

"Sounds divine!" he called back with a smirk and folded his arms behind his head as he leaned back in the rocking chair he was in. "Now you two behave you hear? I don't want to be woken up from my afternoon nap!" I knew he must have been really proud of himself for that one. Probably worked on it all morning just waiting for the right time that we would pass by, refuse his invitation to lunch, and he could hurl it our way with the intent to embarrass us both.

We had just gotten to the steps up to our front porch when I started climbing them backwards, pulling Peeta along with me by the hand. I stopped as I grabbed the door knob, not able to let him get the last word in.

"Well then you better turn that stereo of yours up good and loud!" I shot back and tugged a laughing Peeta into the house behind me. Peeta pushed the door closed and pulled off his shoes in the foyer. I was already moving around the downstairs, shutting windows so that the air conditioning would kick in.

"I'm gonna grab some things from the kitchen in case we get hungry and I'll meet you upstairs in 5 minutes." I said giving Peeta a quick kiss at the bottom of the stairs. He nodded but grabbed my chin and deepened the kiss to the point that I went weak in the knees.

When we finally pulled away from each other, I almost said screw the food and knocked him over right there on the stairs to have my way with him, but I restrained myself.

"F..food." I stuttered and pointed towards the kitchen. Peeta looked me over once, bit his bottom lip and then nodded slowly and started walking up the steps backwards so that he could hold my gaze.

"Go!" I laughed and ran for the kitchen to grab an assortment of snack foods for us. On my way through the upstairs hall to our room, I couldn't help but stop outside of Peeta's painting room which used to be my mother's old bedroom. I knew he didn't really want me to see the painting he'd done of me the day before, but I had to see it. I set the snacks down gently on the hall floor and looked at our bedroom door for a long few moments. I heard Peeta in the shower and knew he'd be a few minutes still. I pushed the painting room door open slowly and slipped inside.

Typically Peeta propped his paintings around the room wherever he could find space. There was some method to the madness though as I realized he often put the finished paintings to one side and ordered them by what he planned to do with them. Some he sold in town, others were designated to go in different rooms of our home or given to close friends like Haymitch or Greasy Sae.

The more violent images from the Games or his nightmares that he knew I found upsetting, he kept in the large walk-in closet in the back of the room so that I wouldn't see them unless I went looking for them. I suspected that this painting he'd done of me the day before might be in there too. I stood in the middle of the room for a minute, kicking at the corner of a large drop cloth that had been spread across the floor to protect the hardwood from paint, mulling over whether it was worth the likelihood of bringing on some nightmares of my own to go in there and look for it.

"Oh, what the hell." I growled and marched over to the door and pulled it open. I stood there another full minute before I got up the nerve to reach in around the door for the light switch. When I flipped it on, I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath before I could step in. Peeta was and still is an extremely gifted artist. Looking at those paintings was for me like being right back in the arena. The good, the bad and the ugly of each of our two trips there staring at me in living color from every corner of the relatively small space. I fought a shudder and wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts before quickly scanning the room for…

And suddenly, there it was. The canvas was about 3 feet tall by 2 feet wide. I don't know what I was expecting it to look like, maybe like the tasteless, tawdry pornography I'd seen occasionally in the Capitol when I was there for the games. Knowing Peeta the way I did, I should have known better because what I saw on this canvas was truly art.

I didn't know exactly what memory of our first night together he had captured because in the painting, I was sound asleep. During his bashful confession over the phone, Peeta had left out the little detail that he too was in the painting and equally undressed. The only difference was that most of Peeta was covered by my body as I lay draped over him on the bed. We must have become too hot under the covers sometime during the night and pushed them off of us but I was still tucked close into Peeta's side, one arm tucked up between us, my hand curled against his chest and my cheek resting against my own knuckles.

My hair was fanned out on the pillow behind me and the pearl necklace placed (purposefully, I'm sure) in the center of the painting, was hanging just above one partially visible breast whose nipple was pressing into Peeta's ribs. My leg directly touching the mattress was held straight, the toes of its foot pointing down towards the end of the bed and my other leg was bent at the knee strategically covering Peeta's crotch as I had it thrown casually over his lower body.

He'd clearly paid particular attention to the curve of my backside as I noticed the detail with which he'd painted the soft, feminine taper of the curves I was beginning to regain since returning to 12. I smiled when I noticed that the hand belonging to the arm he had beneath me was resting gently on the curve of one butt cheek, the way the fingers were splayed indicating he had likely been stroking my backside in this memory. His other hand rested at my neck, his four fingers disappearing from between the first and second knuckle down into the hair resting on the pillow just behind my neck, and his thumb resting gently against the line of my jaw.

The part that finally made me blush though wasn't the nudity, but the look of complete adoration and love on Peeta's face as he looked down into my face where it rested against his shoulder.

How had I ever doubted this boy's feelings for even a moment? I'll admit that now, all these years later, when we've had a particularly heated disagreement or I find myself focusing too much on his faults, I think of his face in that painting and it helps me to get over it all that more quickly.

I was so focused on the painting that I didn't hear Peeta enter the room until he stepped on a floorboard directly behind me in the closet doorway. I snapped my head around to find him standing with his hands holding onto either side of the doorway just above his shoulders, staring at me with a lopsided smile. He looked fresh and clean from the shower standing there in just a pair of thin, dark blue sleep pants.

"Hey. You found it huh?" he asked with a soft nervous laugh and I walked over to him, wrapping my arms around his torso as I stood to one side. We both looked at the painting together for a quiet moment and then I turned my head and kissed his chest over his heart lightly.

"It's perfect…I love it." I whispered and then tilted my head a little to one side. "There's something though…that I just can't figure out." When Peeta didn't immediately respond I went on. "Something about the angle of it that just seems…" He cut me off with a chuckle.

"You're so observant about some things, Katniss that it makes me laugh to think that you never noticed me watching you in school or when you stopped in the bakery to trade squirrels." He said quietly and continued when I lifted my head and looked up at him confused. "It seems off because it's backwards." He explained with a nod. "We slept in opposite positions on the bed that night but THIS view, is what I saw in the reflection of that full length standing floor mirror by your dresser." He said sounding quite pleased with either himself for the explanation or me for noticing something was off with the point of view, I wasn't sure which.

"Oh!" I said in surprise and looped my arms around his waist. "That's it!" I laughed and kissed his chest again. "Really though, Peeta. I love it."

I hadn't realized just how hard he'd been sweating the idea of me seeing it until I felt him let out a long breath and the muscles in his upper body relaxed visibly. "Actually…" I said moving around to stand in front of him more, my arms still wrapped tightly around his torso so that I had to tilt my head back to look up into his face. "If you'd like you can paint me like that sometime when I'm awake." I offered and Peeta leaned in to kiss me tenderly. When he pulled back, the look in his eyes had intensified and I recognized it immediately from that first night we'd been together earlier in the week.

"That's good news." He whispered and kissed my lips again and then my cheek and my ear. "Because I was thinking I'd really like to…paint you right now…" he breathed and his hot breath tickled the inside of my ear, making me flinch.

"Right now?" I asked in that squeaky voice that only happened when I was nervous and trying, but failing miserably, to hide it. Peeta nodded slowly and lowered his hands from the doorway to settle them on my upper arms.

"But not the way you're probably thinking." He said with a smile and slid his hands down my arms until he was grasping my finger tips. "Come here." He urged quietly with a tug on each hand as he backed out of the closet.

"Peeta I…" He cut me off with a 'shush' and asked me if I trusted him. I responded without hesitation in the affirmative.

"Good, then shush and stand right here." He said leaving me standing in the middle of that drop cloth I had been kicking at when I first walked into the room. I watched with open curiosity as he moved around the room, gathering up small jars of paint and examining different sized paint brushes before he found one he liked and grabbed a handful of similar brushes on his way back over to me.

He smiled as he sat down on a stool at a small worktable and laid out the paints, mixing and pouring them into smaller jars lined up in a thin plastic box and then stuck a brush in each. At this point, I was too curious and had too many questions to even ask what was going to happen and I felt my heartbeat increase slightly in anticipation.

When he seemed to have everything he needed, Peeta walked back over to me and set the little box of paints down on the floor beside his feet and stepped forward into my personal space.

"Trust me?" he asked again when I looked up into his face with wide, anxious eyes and again, I nodded.

"Always." I said firmly and dropped my arms which had been crossed over my chest, to my sides.

Seeming pleased with that answer, Peeta reached out and lifted my chin with one finger and pressed his lips to mine. I closed my eyes and melted into the kiss, my hands moving of their own accord up to wrap around the back of Peeta's neck.

"Love you." I breathed against his lips and Peeta dropped his hands to my lower back, pulling me in closer to his body and slipping his hands up the back of my shirt slowly. He peeled the tank top over my head and slid his hands up my belly to massage my breasts. I moaned deep in the back of my throat and pressed into his hands as our kisses became more heated.

"Love you too." He sighed into my mouth when we came up briefly for air. "So much Katniss…always…" he murmured as he kissed his way down to my neck and back up to my lips while reaching behind me to unhook my bra. He tossed it aside with my shirt and went immediately to my shorts, unbuttoning the top button and sliding the zipper down slowly before tugging me forward so that I stepped out of them. I felt him kick them aside as well right before he scooped me up into his arms and gently laid me down on my back on the drop cloth.

He kissed his way down between my breasts, circling each one with feather light kisses before laving each nipple in turn. I moaned and gripped his hair tightly, holding him there to let him know that it was exactly where I wanted him. "Oh Peeta.." I gasped and he settled himself between my legs which had been squirming together since he first laid me down on the floor.

I reached down for the edges of my panties only to have Peeta stop my hands at my belly with a shake of his head.

"Just lie back." He said with a nod and I watched his eyes for a moment before I complied. I watched as he reached over for the paints I had forgotten in my passion and set the little box of jars on the edge of the drop cloth. He took a brush out of one of the jars as he moved toward me.

Oh. Paint me. I guess to be fair, he DID tell me that he wanted to paint me, I just didn't realize at the time that he meant for me to be the canvas. As weird as it sounds, I found it to be one of the sexiest things I had ever heard.

I tried to be as still as possible when I felt the first touch of the brush to my skin when he set it against my upper left arm. The cool, slippery feeling of the paint felt odd at first, but changed quickly from odd to sensuous as he moved it down to my elbow and gently swept the brush back and forth across my skin from shoulder to elbow. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the sensation, feeling both aroused and deliciously wicked at the same time.

When he'd finished my arm, I opened my eyes to find he'd painted a loaf of bread there. The same type of bread that he'd thrown to me that awful day in the rain. My eyes welled up briefly with tears which I bit back. I watched as he moved on to my lower arm, using the scar from where Johanna had dug the tracker out to paint a rather fierce looking mockingjay in flight, the scar acting as one of the bird's eyes.

I smiled, enjoying the creativity with which he was going about this. I closed my eyes again, letting him work, until there was a brief pause and I knew he was switching brushes again. I felt my breathing speed up a little as my mind considered all of the places he could go next. Left in just my panties, the possibilities were many.

I grinned when I felt the brush beginning to stroke softly back and forth over my lower abdomen and even around my navel. I could only imagine what he was painting there.

"You okay?" he asked and I could hear the smile in his voice.

"Uh huh…it tickles a little though right there." I admitted, still grinning.

"Not as much as here I bet…" he whispered and I jumped when I felt the brush circle first one and then the other knee. I couldn't help squirming as he lifted my knees so that they were tented off of the floor and ran the brush once lightly over the inside of each making me giggle.

"Hold still!" Peeta laughed and I squeezed my eyes shut more tightly and bit my lip to try and fight the urge to move and laugh.

I felt the brush leave my body and slowly slid my legs back down to lay them flat as I waited for the next brush. I gasped softly when I felt him slowly dabbing the center of my left nipple with the brush and then circling around and around it, moving back a little at a time until it had covered my entire breast.

Next, I felt a new brush on the other breast and concentrated on the feel of it as he did the same on this side but made more of a crescent shape around this one. Whatever the case, it was no less stimulating for him to paint half of a breast than a full one, so I wasn't going to complain. I felt yet another new brush working on the area between my breasts and down to just below my sternum.

By this point, I was squirming from even the slightest touch of the brush and I rubbed my knees together slowly and felt that there was already a great deal of wetness between my legs.

Judging by where I could hear Peeta's soft breathing as he worked on my chest, I chanced an 'accidental' reach and wasn't surprised to find him nearly busting out of his sleep pants with excitement.

"Peeta please, I need you." I begged and then groaned when he pulled his hips out of my reach.

"Just a minute, Sweetheart," he said using his best imitation of Haymitch's voice. "I'm about done here and then you can take a look at it." He said in such a way that I knew he was having as difficult a time as me holding off.

"Okay, there." He said and I felt him sit back from me so I opened my eyes. Peeta was looking me over with a look that said he either wanted to frame me and hang me on the wall or he wanted to climb on top of me and get covered in paint himself.

I sat up slowly, stretching out my muscles from forcing myself to lie still for so long and then slowly climbed to my feet and helped Peeta up from the floor. He held my hand as we walked over to the full length mirror on the back of the door and I gasped when I finally saw the finished product.

The loaf of bread and the mockingjay were still perched on my left arm but the rest of me looked almost like I was wearing a skin tight suit of paint except for where my simple panties still could still be seen.

I smiled as I looked at the trail of lady bugs climbing up my leg like a tree and tried to resist reaching out to touch the beautiful wildflowers that covered my abdomen. I giggled when I noticed he'd used my navel to create a large sunflower in the middle of the bunch.

When my eyes reached my upper body, I couldn't help the wave of emotions that overcame me, knowing the meaning of what he'd drawn right away. On one breast was painted the moon, a perfect crescent like it had been on that first night we'd made love. On the other, the bright yellow sun. I could almost feel the heat of it and knew this was his way of thanking me for the adventure we went on that morning to the lake. Between the sun and the moon was a dark night sky dotted with stars, the brightest one having been painted over my heart.

The north star. The way for him to always find his way back to me, no matter how lost he got.

"Peeta…it's….I don't know what to say I just…it's beautiful." I said gaping at what I saw in the mirror.

"Anything on you looks beautiful." He said moving to stand behind me and kissing the back of my neck. "Though nothing has its perks too." He teased and stroked a hand down my side from the outer curve of my breast to the flare of my hip.

I turned around after one last look in the mirror and wrapped my arms around his neck and stood up on tiptoes to kiss him with a passion he hadn't yet seen. I heard him groan as the paint began to quickly smear from my body onto his and he pulled me closer in his arms and started walking us backwards toward the drop cloth on the floor where I'd just been lying.

There was no way we could go to our bed right now and so I just let Peeta guide me back down onto the cloth with one hand as he reached between us to tug down my panties and push them aside.

"Your turn." I said against his throat and reached to push his sleep pants down as well. By this point, all of the touching and rubbing against one another had left us both equally covered in paint.

I couldn't help chucking a little at the feel of the slimy paint between our bodies and the soft sucking sound it made when our bodies pulled apart. Once Peeta's pants had been kicked aside, there was no stopping us. I pulled him over so that he was on top of me and he cut a glance towards the door.

"I have to run in the bedroom for a second, I forgot a condom." He whispered against my jaw and I shook my head, knowing that him being out of my sight for even a moment was not going to work for me.

"No, don't go." I whispered reaching up to hold his face in my hands. "Just pull out of me before you finish." Apparently Peeta was in no mood to argue because he slid forward, pushed my legs open and thrust inside me in under 5 seconds.

I hissed at the initial feel of him entering me and smiled up into his eyes appreciatively when he held still, letting me adjust before he began to move. When I gave him a slight nod, he leaned down to kiss me again just as he was pulling out, and slipped his tongue in between my lips as he was thrusting back in.

"Oh shit, Katniss!" He cried out. "It…you feel amazing this way." He almost whimpered and I realized this session wasn't going to be long, but it had been damned memorable.

I nodded and arched my back a little to give him a better angle of penetration. "I know, I know it's…perfect." I moaned back and before I knew it, our hips were snapping into each other feverishly and I felt the tightness not only of the paint drying on my skin, but of my orgasm building fast and furious in the pit of my belly.

"Peeta!" I cried out as I came and continues to pant his name as I came back to earth. I brought my hands down onto his backside, guiding him to the rhythm I liked best and that would bring him relief as well. It wasn't more than a few seconds later that Peeta suddenly pulled back from my body with a grunt and grabbed onto himself pumping his hand furiously until he came on the drop cloth beside us.

"Oh my…that was…wow." I said feeling like a redundant idiot as I had been throwing wow around a lot lately.

I settled into Peeta's arms as he brought them up around my body and I snuggled in close to him.

"Well, I do believe another shower is in order for both of us." I chuckled and looked down at our bodies in the bright afternoon light coming in through the windows.

"Sounds like some good clean fun to me." Peeta smiled and blew a big raspberry on my neck to make me smile. "Though that would require getting up and moving huh?" he teased and I rolled onto him suddenly and kissed him hard.

"Come on, I'll race ya there and then we'll go for round 2 back in the bedroom." Peeta grinned and stood slowly, looking over his body covered in second hand paint.

"Sounds like fun to me." I said letting him help me to my feet and taking his hand as we headed out the door and over to the master bedroom and bath.

While Peeta was warming up the water in the shower, I had time to think more about that painting and how in love we had seemed. I made a wish, or perhaps a silent promise to myself that whenever I had any doubts about how much Peeta loved me, I would need only to think of his face in that painting to remember how much he cared for me. That even when the red X was hanging on the door, my Peeta was still in there somewhere, trying his damndest to find his way back to me.