Disclaimer: All Hunger Games characters and core personality traits are the property of SC. I own nothing, nor do I plan on profiting from using her work. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter Nine
It was less than a minute—the length of time it took for the chip in the girl’s arm to register a complete lack of pulse—but to Katniss, it felt like a year.
The cannon was so loud to her frayed nerves that she screamed before she could even hope to stop herself and the boy holding her steady looked at her with a touch of confusion. He opened his mouth—no doubt to continue his reign of snark—but was distracted at the two-hundred pounds of muscle that came charging at them through the trees. To her surprise, the blonde angled his body until he was between her and the new comer, his knife out and his posture severe.
“What did you do to her?” Mellark raged, his own weapon at the ready, his eyes darted between Cato’s position and Katniss’ mostly hidden frame.
At the sound of his voice, even in its furious intensity, Katniss’ miserable psyche relaxed. It wasn’t Thresh; a potential bearer of more immediate blood shed.
Cato, however, didn’t straighten from his defensive crouch. “She’s fine,” he said slowly, carefully. His toned was the auditory embodiment of weary irritation. “I’m going to take a step to my left so you can see her and when you do, I better get a fucking apology.”
“She screamed,” Peeta accused, watching Cato’s movements with his blade poised.
Allies or not, The Careers were always one small decision away from anarchy and years of games had proven time and again that high tension, large egos, and misunderstandings, cracked right through the soundest of strategy.
“The girl’s jumpy,” Cato shrugged, “one hell of a shot though. May the Maker’s have mercy on ours souls if she gets this bow back.” He held the confiscated apparatus away from his body as though the object itself was a danger.
Mellark finally dropped his guard to take inventory on his prized companion. His eyes searched her quickly for injury but didn’t look reassured upon examining her. The girl’s pallor was a sickly shade of grey that not even the dark could hide.
“I’m- fine,” Katniss bothered with the lie only to keep the two boys from killing each other. Her voice was flat, even to her own ears, and she couldn’t remember getting to the ground but there she was, half buried in leaf litter.
By Hunger Game Arena standards, being alive and not currently mortally wounded did qualify as fine.
Peeta gestured Cato further away from her and moved very cautiously, like a man hoping to aid an injured animal before it scampered off in fear and ultimately succumbed to it’s stupid animal propensity of not knowing when it was being offered help. She wasn’t going to run. She wasn’t sure she could feel her body any more. Everything felt cold; so cold it was numb.
He picked up the backpack she had earlier placed on the ground and threw the heavy bag to Cato.
“My thanks to you,” he offered the reparation instead of the apology. It held a great deal of desirable things—things that were rightfully his keep as the group’s Alpha—but it was clear Katniss wasn’t in a position to carry it back to the base and Cato had shown a great feat of loyalty in not killing the distracted female.
The District Two competitor pulled the zipper open and let out a long, satisfied whistle, “Any time.”
“I’m going to pick you up, baby,” Peeta told her firmly. She thought to argue, he himself was loaded with enough supplies to keep them alive for weeks and they were miles from their shelter, but nothing in his tone or striking, stern features seemed at all interested in being rejected.
The un-earthly boy pulled her tight into his chest, lifting her like a package full of priceless, poorly packed crystal. Her head tucked into his neck and she hated every moment of contentment his affectionate hold brought her because there was a body fifty yards away that was a little girl five minutes previous and she’d never be held like she was something precious ever again.
Katniss whimpered into the soft leather of her emotional tormentor’s jacket.
“It gets easier,” he whispered into the darkness, not needing to clarify.
The rhythm of his steps lulled her. While her trip into the woods had seemed an endless repetition of nearly twisted ankles and uneven ground, Peeta moved them though the trees as though his feet were floating above the forest floor. Even Glimmer’s constant mutterings about Peeta’s insane treatment of the girl from the degenerate district barely perforated her half conscious contemplations.
Katniss knew that every time she dared to close her eyes in the arena was a barter of her life but right then the possibility of not waking up was almost a comfort.
“I don’t want that to ever get easier,” she decided out loud before sleep took her entirely.
oOoOoOoOo
This time, Katniss knew exactly where she was when she woke up in a nest of warmth and goose down opulence; even though the chamber around her was mostly dim. After sleeping in his arms for the considerable journey, she was also not particularly surprised to find her body nestled so firmly against the Career’s.
Given that she felt as though she had been asleep for a least several hours, she was startled to see his vivid eyes open and fixed on her.
It felt pointless—and unappealing, if she were being honest—to pull away from him entirely but with her slightly damp cheek resting on his bicep, she courteously rolled onto her back to un-sequester his limb. Far from being pleased at the ability to regain his circulation, he countered the lost contact by slipping his large, warm palm into the hem of her shirt and splaying it over the smooth, bare skin of her belly.
The casual, tender way he touched her was something her body seemed to accept with significantly less trepidation than her mind. Trying to distract herself from a new wave of complicated feelings, she focused on her previous set.
“What good would it be to survive all of this if I can’t live with myself?”
He exhaled slowly from his nose, brows knitting, “No good at all. You’d be doing a lot of people a big disservice, getting to go home without proper appreciation.”
She closed her eyes, letting the guilt wash over her while picturing the lives already lost.
“I could kill you now, if you’d prefer,” he offered blandly, his thumb stroking her hip bone as though they were discussing dinner plans.
“How would you do it?” She wondered morbidly.
He snorted, “I’ve never been one to ruin a surprise, Katniss. You’re going to have to wait your turn just like everyone else.”
“This isn’t how I thought I would play the game,” the brunette whispered, “I thought, I would just need to…stay alive. Avoid danger and-“
“You weren’t playing to win,” he interrupted her, “it isn’t bad luck that the lower districts only make it out with the occasional fluke once every decade. If you run like you’re something to kill, you will be chased and killed. That’s just…nature.”
The corners of her eyes stung again but this time she was able to fight off tears. Though she considered it possible that she was just out of them after so much indulging, she hoped she was toughening up.
Mellark sighed and rolled her back into her side, pulling her once more into his firm chest. He pressed his lips against her forehead.
“You did what needed to be done, Katniss. The price of living in here is blood on your hands,” his fingers found hers and he laced them between their bodies, “but they are still perfect, these hands, and they can still do great things if you let them.”
Nothing about her had ever felt perfect and it was difficult to find absolution from murder in the arms of a murderer; even one that appeared as though he had been hand sculpted by some divine power and placed on the planet as a gift to humanity.
In her district, the blonde, blue eyed beauties were upper class and soft—woman like her mother before she had eloped with the “wrong” choice in mate. Katniss had never envied them. She knew more than anyone that they were one small economic tragedy away from a helpless, wasting death. Void of someone to take care of her, the elder Everdeen would have watched her world crumble around her—her young daughters starve and die—because of the weak nature hidden under all of that beauty.
It seemed a horrible injustice of the universe, that Mellark had been given so much physical perfection and power while others had neither. Perhaps, it was the damage to his soul that was his particular cross to bear.
“How do you-” she didn’t know whether she was afraid of offending him or angering him; possibly both.
“Sleep at night?” His lips formed a mischievous grin against her skin, “I don’t do much of that, you’ll find.”
Katniss felt a new stab of shame. As unlikely as he was to admit it, Peeta would be hesitant to surrender to the vulnerability of sleep while she was so close at hand. Though he had faithfully guarded her prone form twice now, he was perhaps not yet sure that drifting off in her presence was a situation compatible with life.
“You’ll need to rest, Peeta,” she insisted, “…You aren’t a machine,” she added with slightly less conviction.
“Not a machine, no,” he reaffirmed with a note of humor, his already smooth tenor lowered into a deep, purr of a pitch that spread tiny bumps along Katniss’ arms, “In hours or days, I could be dead, and I’ll get an eternity of rest.”
He tilted his head and lowered it under the line of her jaw. The heat of his breath and the roughness of his slowly breaching stubble sent of rush of heat to her cheeks that made her grateful for the relative darkness.
“But you, I won’t be able to take with me and I intended to have my fill before we part.”
That his odds of survival were significantly better than anyone else’s, and a laughable amount greater than her own, didn’t seem like a welcomed return of facts at that moment.
The chaste young woman was suddenly very aware that she currently had on less than she had been wearing when she had ventured into the cold woods earlier in the night. She could only imagine Haymitch’s incredulity when his last remaining contender was out so cold that she had been half way undressed and completely unarmed by the most proficient killer in the games.
Her sexually persuasive counterpart had been polite enough to leave her in the modesty of her pants and shirt, removing only her bulky jacket and heavy boots, but he seemed eager to continue where he’d left off now that she was awake to experience the full gauntlet of juvenile insecurity. A fleeting and ridiculous notion of having wished that he had pre-stripped her bare to save her the anticipation sprinted into her mind and left just as quickly.
“I’m not going to ask you if you want this, Katniss,” he murmured without guilt or self doubt, “You’re in my Career’s camp and in my bed…I’m going to assume you want this.”
Want wasn’t a word Katniss was able to let herself use in relation to this part of their indecent proposal; not in the privacy of her own mind. Her body responded to the perfect boy far passed her ability to hide or ignore and it would be a very simple thing, to surrender to the coil of heat that built up in her lower abdomen when his hands touched her skin or when those dangerous blue eyes took her in as though they could see clear through her clothes. Even still, much like the uncomfortable nature of the intense ache Mellark caused her body, her mind held a heady resistance in fulfilling her obligations to him.
Sleeping with the enemy would have felt sordid even in complete, to-the-grave secret; but going willingly to the bed of a Career with the entire Nation watching was not something Katniss would have done even if Peeta Mellark had been the unequivocal love of her life. For decades the parents of her homeland had watched as their children were slaughtered by the Capital’s pet districts—with little effort and even less compassion—and the once trusted member of Twelve’s society had to wonder if accepting Peeta’s advances meant the end to the hard earned respect she had in The Seam.
Haymitch seemed to think this was a trade worth making and his assurance had to be good enough for her. If she was ostracized by the same community that had passively watched her and her tiny sister waste away all those years ago, she would sit in her tall house in Victor’s Village and leave them to their self-righteous scorn.
“I do,” she finally replied to Peeta and Panem, the words soft but sure.
The boy hummed happily into her throat.
“I do want you,” she whispered again, fearful, because it didn’t feel like a lie.
His hands were everywhere; buried in her hair, running up her back, a flurry of desperate movements. Peeta’s lips crashed into hers almost painfully and he held nothing back as his tongue invaded her mouth and engaged her own timid, less experienced equivalent. Frightened but brave, she leaned into the kiss and experienced it as optimistically as her heart possibly could. She kissed the man that was her protector and biggest adversary in qual parts.
When Katniss broke away, his lips moved back to her throat, his teeth grazing flesh both in worship and in threat.
She could feel his need, hardened and insistent, as he strained gently against her body. Peeta snickered in response to her weak whimper.
“I’ve wanted you exactly like this since the moment that camera caught you in the crowd,” his voice vibrated across her skin, “Under me, in my arms…”
His tone turned hostile so quickly that his next words raised every hair on the nape of her neck, even before their meaning settled into her brain, “I wanted to kill him for looking at you like that. That’s how I knew I needed to make you mine.”
Her stomach dropped and twisted. She asked with as much curiosity as she could fake, “Who?”
He rolled his eyes, too near infallible to be patronized, “The boy who carried away your sister and watched the Peace Keepers push you to the stage like he was being burned alive,” he recalled the background scene of Reaping Day most had overlooked, distracted by the novelty of the stupid girl who had been begging to forfeit her life.
Katniss refused to oblige his goading. She didn’t want her gallant best friend’s name on Mellark’s cruel, jealous lips. She remembered Gale’s face as she met his gaze over the crowd, it was a look that was impossible to forget and not far from Peeta’s description.
“Have you let him touch you like this, Katniss?” he taunted her silence. She could feel possession fuel his hands as they dug deeper into muscle, his rough fingers moving until they were under the curve of her breast.
Her breath caught in her throat and her answer came out as forced as her composure, “He’s- that was my cousin,” she snipped softly, growing frustrated.
Peeta smiled wide, an expression that conveyed of the dead opposite of pacification, “It isn’t nice to lie, little girl,” he chastised in a tone that was more mocking than angry but still acidic, “I know what a man looks like when he wants a woman passed rhyme or reason.”
He was a professional in identifying human weakness, but he was wrong about Gale. The tall raven-haired young man from back home was just desperately protective of those he cared for—she’d always tried to convince herself.
“Green is a bad color on you, Mellark,” the dark haired beauty quipped. “You could have just asked if I was seeing anyone, you know?” she mocked back in hopes of shaking his confidence.
His grin reach all the way up to the set of his eyes and his laugh was so genuine that the sound of it startled her. It was a sound too elegant to pair his malice.
“It’s red, actually,” he corrected, stare glinting intensely through the low light, “when I think of his hands on you, anyone’s hands on you, the color I see is…red.”
Without warning, he rolled forward until his large body was fully on top of his small companion, his weight distributed carefully to his thickly muscled arms but his frame dwarfing her in size and strength. His knee forced her legs apart to settle between them and her pervious irritation subdued immediately at his show of dominance. It was nothing to him; manipulating her body until it was exactly as he wanted it.
Katniss gazed up at him with wide, cautious eyes.
“But he’s a coward. He stayed where it was safe and let you face the wolves alone,” the wolf himself snarled, “And I’m going to make you forget he exists.”
He pushed his pelvis into hers and buried his nose in her hair as they both gasped at the sensation the friction caused. Katniss was nearly rendered ill with a visceral desire she seemed to have no control over and how right it felt to have him move against her like that. Having nothing to compare it to, she almost wished she had pursued a sexual encounter with a boy, any boy, back in Twelve. Her head span at the possibility that this career killer could make her body need so desperately and felt an impossibly strong desire to believe that it could be like this with anyone.
He pushed himself up on one arm and pulled his thin shirt up and over his head with an impressively fluid movement. Katniss flushed crimson at the sight of him bare chested-more exposed than ever before. She had never seen a male body so perfectly lined; and as a member of a labor district, that was saying something. Twelve’s men were generally strong but Mellark was the male form perfected—well fed and cared for in way’s the men of her district were not.
“Your turn,” he declared, reaching down to pull her shirt off as well. Katniss held her breath and closed her lids tightly, bracing herself for both the cool of the room and the heat of Peeta’s assessment.
The eldest Everdeen sister had confidence in a great many areas of her life but sexual prowess and vanity weren’t any of them. Her prep team had encased her breasts in an elaborate, elegant black brassiere and she had only thought to questioned the impracticality of the garment for a moment before realizing that they were dressing her for the possibility of her risqué alliance with Peeta. They had prepared her for this encounter in many ways; waxing her bare in areas that nature would dictate she should have hair, and painstakingly contouring the natural lines and curves of her body with Capital bronzers and creams.
No part of this highly anticipated yearly production was overlooked.
At the thought of her purposeful fashioning, Katniss suddenly felt the weight of the small space’s half dozen cameras zoom in on her; their broadcasts spreading the image of her body across huge screens, ready for the Game Marker’s edits.
She hadn’t realized she was trembling until Peeta’s warm hand cupped her face. “Easy, baby, you’re ok.”
“They’re watching us,” she whispered, knowing that it would do nothing to keep her from being over heard by the microphones that she suspected were nearly sensitive enough to pick up each beat of her racing pulse. “They can see me…like this.”
Peeta looked endeared at the cause of her distress, as though the thought of having their bodies televised across the Capital was a paltry inconvenience.
He glanced around them without actually searching.
“The cameras? Of course they are watching you,” he agreed, looking her over with an expression that was surprisingly soft, “You have to understand… no one has ever seen anyone as beautiful as you are, Katniss.”
Peeta stroked at an errant lock that had fallen across her face, pushing it behind her ear and leaving it to join the rest of her long hair that splayed like violent black waves against the white of their bed. “They dye and they curl and they throw down their money to be noticed, to be wanted, but you were born with the kind of hair a man wants to run his hands through,” he murmured, voice reverent.
The male threaded his fingers into the tresses closest to the back of her skull and pulled sharply until it forced her throat and exposed chest to arch off the mattress. Her lips parted with a small, startled cry.
Mellark’s mouth took liberties across her throat as he displayed her for himself; his perfect teeth testing the durability of her flesh from the line of her jaw to the dip between her collar bones.
Katniss couldn’t seem to find her ability to be appropriately ashamed at the involuntary moans she heard escape her. Her nerves flamed at his touch and her body surrendered to an excitement that felt terribly at odds with the company and venue.
“Your skin, Katniss,” he groaned into the crook of her neck ,”they might see every inch of it but they’ll never have any idea how soft it is or how perfect it tastes.”
He moved himself further down the bed and her body protested when the pressure of his hard member shifted away from her own sensitive sex.
Katniss had no time to dwell on the loss, however, as she was blindsided by the sudden exposure of her breasts. Peeta’s fingers plucked the closures of her bra at least three times as quickly as she would have been able to herself and he ripped it off her chest without ceremony.
His groan was deep and unrestrained, “Fuck,” he cursed, cupping her roughly.
Katniss felt herself melting, overtaken by the beautiful boy and his brazen control of her body. Without truly wanting his attentions to cease, her hands went instinctively to cover the parts of herself that had never been shared with another human being but the Career restrained her wrists easily by her sides and resumed his exploration with his mouth.
“Please,” she cried, not knowing at all what she wanted but terrified by the intensity building in her. Katniss wanted him to stop nearly as much as she was desperate for him to continue.
“You’re okay, baby” he crooned again, any comfort negated by the teasing nip he took at the pebbling tip of her nipple. She ached towards him of her own accord this time and he answered with a satisfied hum, “These tits, Katniss,” he mused between kisses, reluctant to take his mouth off of her, “They have surgeons that can try to fake breasts like these, and god knows I’ve seen them try, but the way they’ll bounce when I’m inside of you… a woman like this is born, not built.
I’d make you finish the games without ever covering these again if I weren’t disinclined to let the other tributes covet what belongs to me. It’s a travesty to hide something so perfect.”
“I think your moral code needs reexamining,” Katniss panted, her verbal filter compromised.
The Career glanced up at her from between her breasts and cocked a brow. “If you keep drawing my attention back to that mouth I’m going to lose my train of thought,” he eyed her lips.
Katniss flushed at the insinuation, having spent enough time around others her age to know what he had in mind regarding that part of her anatomy. Needless to say, that was also far out of the realm of her experience and she wondered when, not if, he planned to rectify that.
He smirked handsomely at her visible apprehension, “and as much as that concept appeals to me, I’m rather fond of my current destination.”
Peeta lips scorched their way down the flat plain of the small female’s belly, building Katniss’ anticipation until she felt as unstable as an open flame. Like all other barriers—propriety and physical—the arena’s Alpha made no pause in slipping Katniss’ pants and panties down and off entirely.
She tried her best to close her legs, feeling vulnerable in ways she never knew existed, but his arms barely strained as they forced her to spread for him.
“These legs,” he half laughed, shaking his head incredulously as he moved his hands over the unflawed skin nearest her core. “Every man in The Capital is going to wish he were in between these thighs.”
He kneeled above her on the bed, a proud and incredible predator looming over the hard earned submission of his mate. His eyes burned into the girl spread out before him like having her there was his life’s defining accomplishment. The Career’s hands went to relieve the straining button at the crotch of his pants.
“Those cameras were put there so they could enjoy the show as they watch me kill and be killed,” he said with a voice that rang, impossibly, with pride instead of resentment, “So I’m more than pleased that the only thing they’ll get to see tonight, is me buried inside the most beautiful woman in Panem.”
His sly smile gleamed white in the darkened room.
If Peeta Mellark’s body had any aspect less formidable than the rest of him, it certainly was not his male endowment. His penis jutted out angrily when finally unhindered; swollen and red hued with an air of irritation at having been kept waiting.
The anxiety of anticipated pain cut dully through the haze of new sensations coursing through her but Katniss did all she could to keep it off her face. With as much weakness as she had shown in the arena, she knew now was the time to be strong. If she was to be a participant instead of a captive, the distinction had to be made here.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows and peered at him from beneath her lashes, offering him a look she hoped portrayed invitation. Whether his words were for her or the cameras—meant or fabricated—it seemed impossible for a woman not to feel a small tendril of self-confidence when someone formed as divinely as the District One male looked at them like that.
“Even still, I’m camera shy,” she simpered, “and I would be significantly less exposed right now if you were still on top of me.”
Far be it for a Career to ever oblige a request, Katniss squealed and tried to squirm up the bed when Peeta answered her call to action by lowering his head between her legs instead of positioning himself in the traditional way she had been anticipating.
“Oh god, what are you doing?” she blurted, bucking in vain as he pressed her thighs open with his forearms and kissed the freshly bare skin above her sex.
He tsked at her with feigned disappointment but his eyes glinted up from between her spread legs, “I’m offended that you still don’t see me as a team player. I can be very considerate, Tribute Everdeen.”
Her face felt ten degrees warmer than the rest of her as her cheeks flooded with blood at her mortification. “I assure you that won’t be necess-“
Her throat jammed shut around her retort as his mouth reached her core with startling directness.
His tongue targeted a part of her very seldom explored by young women who’s days are filled with work and who’s nights are spent sharing a bed with their small sibling.
Katniss writhed under his hold, overcome with a feeling similar to being tickled pasted the ability to breathe in order to protest. The nerves between her legs made up for lost time by firing almost agonizingly in response to his skilled flicks.
“Relax, sweet girl,” he soothed with a silver tongue. He ran a palm over her trembling calve where it was connecting against his shoulder, inanimately trying to push him back, “Your body wants to enjoy this, it’s your mind that’s being selfish. I’ve never seen such a wet, needy little cunt.”
She shivered at his crass words but threw herself back onto the pillow. Closing her eyes, she discontinued the fight against a curiosity that her traitorous body was clueing Mellark in to so freely. He pressed a finger inside of her and she gasped at the feeling but didn’t let herself resist the intrusion.
“Good,” he praised, hooking his finger against a spot inside her that made her belly coil and tighten.
“Poor little thing, at the mercy of a Career,” Peeta goaded. He pressed his thumb into her clit and worked it in a lazy circle until she clawed at the sheets to keep from convulsing. “Am I brutalizing you, Katniss? Are you being treated cruelly?”
“N-no,” she admitted, though what he was doing to her seemed cruel in it’s own special way.
He kissed the inside of her thigh affectionately, pleased, “Do you like it when I touch you here?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. While his attentions felt exciting, she wondered for the first time if ‘too much of a good thing’ was an expression that actually held some validity. There had never been enough good in Twelve for the phrase to ever hold true before.
“No ones ever-,” she wasn’t sure what to call it, “done that before.”
His top lip curled with distaste, “You have a real keeper back home,” he growled, “Sends you off to die alone and can’t even be bothered to make you come.”
Katniss went to defend Gale again but the boy’s head was back between her thighs, his long finger still moving rhythmically inside her and as he likely suspected, all thought of anyone else disappeared.
The modest, private young woman forgot entirely about the cameras, even as her breasts heaved, unbound and straining in the cool air of the room. She lost all thought of the group of eager killers that surrounded them as her sharp cries cut through the silence of the arena. Even the indisputable truth that the man between her legs had ended lives faded away as that same man brought her pleasure she had never known she could experience.
That kind of distraction was something she could get used to.
Without mean to, Katniss threaded her slender fingers through his head of soft blonde hair and stroked him to ground herself as his mouth ravished her core. Her hold on him tightened with a build of sensation so strong it began to feel frightening. The pressure suddenly seemed like more than she could handle and she bucked wildly.
“Please,” she managed, desperate, “I can’t take any more of this.”
He hissed at the pain in his scalp but didn’t correct her hold or still his ministrations. “You can,” he insisted, “Your body is so responsive. You’re so close. I haven’t let you down, Katniss. Be a good girl and let go for me.”
She didn’t know how to let go but it turned out she couldn’t have avoided it if she wanted to. The muscles inside her lower abdomen spasmed in a succession of excruciatingly blissful waves.
Katniss could barely see passed a flashing pressure behind her eyes but was acutely aware of Peeta’s large frame as it rose to cover her. Far from feeling crowded by his size, his solid chest pressed to her breasts and the warmth of his skin against every inch of her was an unexpected comfort. His disciplined power provided a balance to her loss of control and he once again shielded her vulnerability.
The adept male tribute kept his weight off his delicate lover but pressed in close to tenderly kiss her throat and murmur reassurances into her ear as she road out her high.
“I need to be inside of you,” he told her urgently. “Open up for me, Katniss.”
Only half aware, she obediently wrapped both long legs around the backs of his thighs, spreading herself enough to allow him access for their coupling.
Sharp, sudden pain permeated her still pulsing pleasure as Peeta’s strong pelvis thrust his member into her with every ounce of unapologetic force one would expect when being taken by a Career. Katniss’ mouth watered with the instant nausea the body experiences when dealt a legitimate injury and she had no faculties available to hold in her scream.
Either from lack of interest or misinterpretation of the sound, Mellark seated his hips as firmly against her as he could manage, his large member foreign and heavy inside her.
“You feel indescribable,” he bit out, so immediately lost in sensation that his handsome features looked vacant; the antithesis to their usual frightening level of alertness and calculation. “Perfect,” he swore, “Your body was made for this, made for me.”
“Peeta,” she rasped, her finger nails digging hard into his bicep. He pulled out of her only to punishingly press back in. A plea of reprieve fought so hard to escape her that she had to bite down on her bottom lip to keep it in. Somehow, the certain repetition of pain was a far lesser fear than the feeling she knew she’d experience if begging him to stop was to go ignored by the much larger and stronger male.
His lips found her own at the sound of his name and they were contrastingly gentle. Katniss let the distraction help her get a handle on her resolve and she focused on his tongue moving slowly against hers instead of the rhythm he had fallen into as he pumped steadily inside her. She steeled herself against the burn in a way only possible for someone who had experienced so much of it in her short life.
His thick tricep snaked beneath her lower back, shaping her into an arch that allowed his strokes to pierce her body with impossibly greater depth. She watched the flawless boy’s head toss upwards in ecstasy with shallow, quick breaths that forced their way from between her lips in time with his thrusts.
Many a young bride had visited Katniss’ mother in the days following their weddings and she remembered the Elder Everdeen’s years of reassurances that the pain of becoming a woman was temporary. Either their reliably predictable reappearance in the succeeding months with smiles and gently rounded bellies was evidence that the act of being taken wouldn’t always feel like repeated stabs to the abdomen or the husbands of Panem were an elaborate collective of sadists.
“I’m not going to last,” he snapped like a curse. The Career seemed agitated by his admission, and if Katniss thought him capable, perhaps even ashamed. “You’re so fucking tight, Katniss. I swear to the Gods you were put on this earth to torment me.”
Relieved by the thought of an end in sight, she reached up and caressed his cheek, the tips of her fingers brushing at tendrils of blonde that had fallen over his eyes.
“It’s fine, Peeta,” she promised, her voice choked with discomfort. Hoping to give him the reassurance he needed, she pulled his face back down into a deep, searing kiss.
Her bottom lip between his teeth, he pushed as far into her body as his size would allow, spilling his completion in violent, pulsing waves that Katniss could feel so distinctly she could count them.
She couldn’t hold in the deep exhale of reprieve as his movements finally stilled.
Frowning, he rolled to his side, off of her small body and she winced as she evaluated the residual ache between her legs.
Missing nothing, his face contorted with indignation, “Your enthusiastic participation is overwhelming, my dear.”
She was trying her best and his scorn reenforced the pain she’d been fiercely attempting to internalize. Katniss turned her face away, trying to distance herself when there was no distance to be had.
“I have it on good authority that I’m far from the only woman who’s found this painful at first,” she rambled, becoming aware that her cheeks were wet and had been for some time, “I’m sure I’ll get my bearings with time but you could have a little patience with me-“
She felt his body turn to ridged stone beside her.
“First,” he repeated quietly.
He fumbled with something next to their bed side and Katniss startled when he gently placed a cloth between her thighs. Peeta wiped away at the wetness that had been displaced by his exit; a mixture of his seed and-
“Blood,” he snapped, seeing the dark stain he came away with.
She blushed, “Also perfectly normal-“
“I know it’s normal, for fucks’ sake,” he hissed, cutting her off, “What’s not normal is failing to mention that you’re a virgin before I pounded into you.”
Katniss shrugged her small shoulders, wiping drying tears from her checks with a discreet swipe. “I didn’t think it was relevant.”
The Career was silent for some time before he sighed and pulled her body against his. He tugged a warm blanket over the both of them to guard them from the cold and the cameras. Peeta splayed his large hand over the very bottom of her belly in a caress that felt both comforting and apologetic.
It would have been different if I had known,” he murmured, his cheek nuzzling her temple, “I wouldn’t have hurt you- It shouldn’t have hurt you.”
His sincere concern was so at odds with his temperament towards all other occupants of the arena—his mercy towards her so starkly different than what was extended to peers hailing from other lowly districts—that her mind again snapped back a few hours previous, when he’d ordered her to murder, and like a puppet, she’d done as she was told.
Her ordinary discomfort earned her coddling when she had watched another girl die alone surrounded by impatient bystanders.
Her ache was quickly trumped by a crushing weight in her chest she was sure she’d have with her for the rest of her life; be it a single day or eighty years. The guilt was so well deserved that she couldn’t help but feel glad that the initial pleasure she derived from being with Peeta had been so crudely disrupted.
“I’m due my share of pain, Mellark.”
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