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amazinglovers747 · 10 days ago

Note

Absolutely loved When the Rooster Misses the Dawn. Do you plan to write more? Maybe a morning after scene?

Eh, why not. This one isn't quite as fun, and it is considerably longer because they led me down a slightly more angsty road. I felt like there needed to be some kind of aftermath/consequences of Gale listening at their door. But it is from Peeta and Katniss's pov's so you get to read some absolutely unhinged, down bad for his wife Peeta thoughts, if that's your thing. And it does contain Everlark sexy times and a happy ending for them (duh). Part one is here.

RATED M: for sexual content and discussions of miscarriage.

***

The Hen Tarries in Her Bed

There existed very few temptations great enough to induce Peeta Lucian Mellark, accidental Earl of Baecare, fourth in his father’s line to hold the title, to linger in bed past the rising of the sun.

Whether they were the intended heir or not, the late Lady Mellark had demanded a certain level of industry in each of her three sons. Peeta, as the youngest, was no exception, and his body retained the training of early rising and hard work, even after the school yard incident that led to his injury. Even after his mother had passed from the world along with his father and brothers, and Peeta had inherited the title, the fortune, the lands, and all of the privileges that came with such trappings, he could never sleep past the dawn.

But his wife… ah she certainly presented the greatest temptation of them all.

He smiled at the sight of Katniss, still slumbering in her bed. He left her to see to his morning needs, but the soft, pale glow of a lovely spring morning had begun to spread across the sky, making her appear awash with starlight, even as the stars faded from view. He found that he could not resist such a delicious temptation, even though he knew that he should. He had business to see to, and she would undoubtedly be sore after the previous night’s delights.

But in truth, had Peeta ever managed to resist her? He had not.

He discarded the dressing robe and slippers he had donned, and instead of beginning the day’s work, he slipped back beneath the covers, finding the area he had vacated still warm with his own heat. He sighed, content. Carefully, so as to not wake her just yet, he drew his body close to hers and wrapped his arm securely around her. Nestling his face in her riotously messy hair, he smiled and savored her soft sigh, the movements of her body that brought her closer to him, even in her sleep.

He, however, could not sleep, so instead he watched the dawn paint the sky in rosy tones. He caressed Katniss’s still naked form and attempted to reign in his reawakened desire for her. Granted, he did not think he could deem it reawakened. His love for her had never slumbered, and neither had his desire. He’d merely had cause sufficient enough these past few months to firmly control himself where his wife was concerned.

Perhaps his mother’s strict training had at last worked to achieve the desired effect of nobility, beyond Peeta’s inability to tarry in bed. The late Lady Mellark refused to allow any of her sons flights of passion or fancy to the point that Peeta’s brother’s often joked that they resided in a monastery, not an estate, although Peeta knew both of his older brothers had engaged with lovers while away at school. In Peeta’s case, there existed reasons why lovers were more difficult to secure, and he sometimes feared that such austerity in his upbringing caused him to completely lack control once he discovered the abundant bliss to be found in his marriage bed with Katniss.

Likely, his mother would not have approved of his marriage to Katniss at all, had she lived, and certainly not if he still somehow inherited the title, but Peeta had not cared. Not in the end.

Katniss had claimed his attention nearly from their first meeting, and although he did try to court other potential brides whom his mother and father would have considered to be far more suitable candidates for the next countess, Peeta’s heart was not in the pursuit of their hands.

He felt himself continually drawn back to Miss Everdeen’s side, attracted to her wit and her willingness to tease him and verbally spar with him as they stood on the fringes of ballrooms. Or when they would meet in the park, both on horseback, and together avoided the need to converse with society at large, preferring the quiet company of one another. They often met on the streets, usually while shopping for a book, and they quickly fell into a friendship through discussing one tome or another, recommending a book the other had yet to read. She expressed an interest in his art when he mentioned his feeble attempts at painting when they met in the galleries one afternoon, although he waited until after they were betrothed to fully share that aspect of himself with her.

He appreciated the way in which she showed concern for his health, often slowing her steps and finding interesting sights to give him time to rest, but somehow she still refused to treat him as an invalid.

She claimed that she hated to be the center of any form of attention and everyone seemed intent on determining if she were a ruthless fortune hunter or an heiress, so she preferred to appease her guardians with appearances at balls and other society functions, but had no intentions of pursuing a husband at all. She had far more interest in the food being served than in the gentlemen seeking her attention, and so Peeta had gladly secured refreshments for her whenever she desired at one event after another.

Yet he knew it to be an entirely futile endeavor, courting Miss Everdeen. Peeta… well he did intend to marry. As an earl, it was expected of him, but he despised the manner in which young ladies saw his injury as a sort of obstacle worth their endurance if it secured for them his title and fortune. Furthermore, he knew many of the young ladies viewed him as a desirable husband, solely due to the fortune and title, but as an entirely unsuitable and unromantic suitor, since his leg limited his desire to engage in many of the very basic courtship requirements -- namely… dancing.

Until that fateful night when he had noticed Katniss attempting to politely refuse the request of a dance from a gentleman of questionable honor. Peeta had stepped in and falsely declared that his own name was on her dance card for the next set and apologized for his tardiness in escorting her to the floor.

He could not ascertain from her expression if she were furious or relieved or indifferent to his interference, yet she had not hesitated in resting her gloved hand on his proffered arm and following him out to the floor. They had stumbled, quite awkwardly, through one dance and a half before Peeta’s leg demanded that he cease such foolishness. His pride smarted fiercely, far worse than the pain in his leg, as he excused himself before the set ended, humiliated at his own weaknesses and furious with himself that he must humiliate her in such a manner, abandoning her partnerless on the floor.

Better that than continuing to humiliate her with his clumsy dancing, he had reasoned as he leaned heavily on his cane and made his escape.

Peeta had escaped the crowded ballroom into the garden and limped as quickly as he could manage to a secluded spot in the hedges and collapsed on a stone bench. He’d barely caught his breath, and then she was there. Angry, yes, but not for the reasons he had suspected.

And the kiss.

Oh the way she had kissed him that night. Peeta supposes he ought to have been shocked by her forward behavior, but even then, he could not bring himself to deny her. He had indulged in the kisses, aching and greedy and hopeful. He had pursued more kisses, drunk and lightheaded with love and desire for her. Convinced that this encounter would be his only hope for a passionate interlude.

She did not wish to marry and he must. How could he expect anything but a cold, impersonal marriage bed from any of the young girls sniffing after him for title and fortune but who cared not to know who he was as a man. Especially after he knew Katniss’s kiss. Knew the heat and warmth of her fire. Knew the heady tonic of her regard for him. Perhaps she did not love him, but he knew that she respected him. They were at the very least friends. And he was already hopelessly in love with her, he knew. It would be impossible for him to refrain from comparing every kiss in his future to this one.

Of course, they had been discovered. Thankfully, it had been before Peeta’s self control slipped so much as to completely ruin her, although it had been a near thing.

It had been Katniss's sponsor in town who discovered them in such an amorous embrace. The rather intimidating Mr. Haymitch Abernathy, whose suddenly gained fortune remained cloaked in mystery and dark rumors as to the source. It mattered not. Her sponsor saw her into her mother’s arms and then returned to Peeta. He had only to assure Mr. Abernathy that he fully intended to call on Miss Everdeen in the morning and request the honor of her hand in order to avoid a duel, although Mr. Abernathy’s words that it would take some convincing on Peeta’s part to secure the lady’s agreement kept him awake well into the morning.

He hated that he must ask her to go against her own wishes. He hated that he must ask for her hand when she had no desire to marry. But nor could he bear to be the reason for a stain on her reputation, or that of her sister’s by proxy. He hated himself for knowing that if nothing else, the threat to Miss Primrose’s reputation would likely induce Katniss to accept him.

He tossed and turned for long hours, despising himself for allowing himself to become swept away in the moment and ignoring Katniss’s clearly stated desires.

Still, Peeta had woken before dawn and called at the Abernathy house at the earliest hour that would not be considered rude. Surprisingly, it had required very little persuasion to secure Katniss’s agreement. She asked merely a few inconsequential favors of Peeta that he would have seen to anyway. As her husband, of course he would provide a home, security, funds, and comfort for her mother and sister. She hadn’t even needed to ask, but those were her meager requests in exchange for her hand.

During the weeks leading up to their wedding, Peeta could not determine what Katniss might be feeling. She did not act the ecstatic, besotted bride, but neither did she eschew his company. They continued on much as they had before the kiss.

Except that it continued to happen. Whenever he found himself alone with Katniss and any modicum of privacy, they could not seem to resist one another. He began to doubt the entire thing. He wondered if Katniss kissed him so frequently and fervently so as to secure their marriage. Perhaps he had read her intentions entirely wrong. Perhaps he knew nothing about her at all. And so Peeta braced himself for a rude awakening once they were married.

An awakening that never materialized.

Every night, during the early days of their marriage, he went to her bed expecting an indifferent and dutiful wife, submitting to his carnal desires only out of a sense of obligation for the security and financial care he gave to her family. Instead, he had found Katniss not only willing but almost forceful in her own carnal demands, and he was helpless to resist such a temptation. Even the flimsiest of beliefs that he might be wanted rather than merely tolerated overwhelmed everything else.

Even when Peeta knew her to be tired or homesick for her family, the moment Katniss kissed him and pulled him into her bed, he lost all sense of decency or consideration. Her lips on his always seemed to create a lapse in his decorum. Not that Katniss ever seemed reluctant in their lovemaking. Quite the opposite. But after every night of vigorous, prolonged intercourse, Peeta always feared that he had become some sort of mad beast. Uncontrolled and unable to stop, even past the point when he knew his love would become exhausted, past the point when he knew she would face soreness, aching muscles, and perhaps other ailments the following day.

Every morning that he woke beside her, his memories of the previous night stoking his desire awake again, he braced himself for a cold rebuff of his advances that never came. Again, quite the opposite. They made love in the morning nearly as frequently as they did at night.

Eventually, he began to hope that she might love him.

And then the babe.

He had, of course, been elated when Katniss had informed him merely three months into their marriage that she was with child. For a time, they had shared a blissful happiness. He could scarcely believe that he might have so many of his heart’s desires. But providence did not see fit to allow them to continue in their bliss.

There was his own bitter disappointment at the loss of their child, but Katniss bore it far harder than he. Peeta struggled with his feelings of helplessness. He could do no more than hold her and soothe her, love her as best he could, and withhold himself from her bed for as long as possible.

At first, such restraint had been easy. Her body would not allow it. As she began to heal in body, she asked him to sleep beside her again, for comfort. He had agreed, but within days, Katniss made several frantic, tearful attempts to seduce him. His body proved more than willing, but his mind thankfully managed to win the battle. She was not ready. Not if she were sobbing as she issued the invitation into her bed.

She could not bear it, she sobbed into his chest night after night. She could not bear the loss.

Heartbroken and fearful for both of their sanity, Peeta attempted a new approach. He held her on the settee in her chambers, until she fell into slumber, and then he would carry her to her bed, leaving her there alone and retreating to his own. The first month of that had been torture. The cold way she would greet him in the mornings, both of them fully dressed and pale with lack of sleep, gutted him. He nearly caved when the doctor announced her body ready to bear the strain of intercourse, ready to bear another child.

The pronouncement came the same day as a letter from her childhood friend, Colonel Gale Albert Hawthorne, announcing his intention to visit them. As she relayed the news to her husband, Katniss had smiled. It was the first spark of real happiness Peeta had seen in her since the babe had been lost.

In response, Peeta did what any sensible man would do. He had gotten himself drunk for the first time in his life that night and locked himself in his study, fearful of what he might do if he went anywhere near his wife’s bed.

In the morning, jealousy and despair and alcohol still warred within him. Until he woke to find his wife sleeping on the sofa, her arm stretched over the edge and her hand clasped around his as he slept on the floor. He had expected that at last, with the man she could have married set to visit them, Katniss would see Peeta as he truly was. Worthless.

Instead, Katniss had begun a campaign of seduction, conceived with near military precision to attack Peeta’s weaknesses and defenses. The only reasons Peeta had managed to resist her at all was owing to the moments of obvious, deep grieving Katniss still displayed, and his awareness that once she saw her undoubtedly dashing, frighteningly capable, military friend again, she may very well decide Peeta was no longer worthy of her regard.

He held out as long as he could, watching her recovery as closely as he could without discomfitting her. Gale had arrived as expected, and as expected, Peeta found him to be every bit the dashing hero he had feared to meet. Tall, handsome, smartly garbed in his uniform and bearing the responsibilities of his rank and success with clear ease. Peeta found himself observing his wife’s interactions with the colonel with far too much interest and fear.

Yet, although there were moments when Peeta’s heart twisted with the certainty that he had already lost his wife to this man’s love, Katniss never wavered in her efforts to resume marital relations with Peeta, culminating in the note she had sent the night prior, after she had retired to her chambers. It had come to him via a footman, and found him in the drawing room, mired in a conversation with the colonel, about the empire’s prospects for expansion, and when he read the note, it had required all of Peeta’s fortitude and self-control to refrain from running out on the colonel mid-sentence.

Then, somehow, the conversation had turned to Katniss herself as Gale regaled Peeta with several anecdotes about their shared childhood. Peeta had only grown more uncomfortable and less sure of himself as the night wore on. Doubting the sincerity of Katniss’s words in her missive. Until an offhand comment from Gale had caught his attention.

“She was always such a quiet, serious child. I expected her to grow into a quiet, serious woman. Who would have guessed our Katniss could sing with such beauty?”

It took Peeta far too long to piece it together. The words and their meaning. Far too long for him to reply. “Do you mean to say she did not sing when she was younger?”

“Not that I ever heard. She had no use for anything she considered pure amusement. While other young ladies concern themselves with frivolous pursuits such as ribbons and rainbows and embroidering cushions, Katniss concerned herself with far more substantial matters. The running of a household in her father’s place, and the like. What need has a woman of her station for singing except to catch a husband? And you’ll know, of course, that she had not intended to pursue marriage…”

It felt an accusation, this reminder of Katniss’s wish to remain free of matrimony. Yet somehow, Peeta found himself defending Katniss’s capitulation to him rather than defend himself, who was the clear target of the implied accusation.

“She didn’t. Pursue it, that is,” Peeta supplied, and Gale had given him an odd look. Peeta had been too caught up attempting to decipher the rest to pay too much attention to the expression. It made no sense. Katniss had told him that she sang with her father as a child, that her education in song had been informal but beautiful, and comprised many of her fondest memories of her father. She had once told Peeta that when she sang, she felt close to her father again, in a happy way. She sang all the time in the months before they’d lost the babe. And yet here sat Gale, her childhood friend whom Peeta feared as a threat to their marriage, admitting that he had no knowledge of this aspect of Katniss’s childhood, of her heart.

What else then, did Gale not know about Katniss?

Hope sprang to life again in Peeta’s chest. Using the first lull in conversation to make his excuses, Peeta had rushed upstairs and dismissed his valet as soon as he was prepared for bed. Still, he paced and worried and doubted, reading and reading the note again and again. Mulling over her song tonight, Gale’s admissions.

Love me again, she had demanded. Did she not know? Did she not know how fiercely love for her had always beat in his breast? Clearly she had not. Resolved to show her, Peeta had gone to her, intending only to provide for her pleasure and then hold her while they slept. But of course, Katniss had other intentions, and once he was again naked in bed with her, Peeta found that he could not resist.

And he had been right. He had become a mad man. A demon in her bed, yet she had not allowed him to stop. She had in fact encouraged him and demanded his passion. Despite his better judgment, his body awakened the way it did in those early months of marriage. Ready to plunge into her again. And again. And again. Until they were too tired even to dress for sleep.

Peeta knew it would be the same this morning, even after last night. Perhaps especially after last night. He dared not wake her to satisfy his own desires, however, not after he kept her awake so late into the night, into the morning even, with their repeated lovemaking.

He chastised himself for demanding so much of her, for asking so much of her. But, God help him, he desperately and constantly desired his wife, and once Katniss initiated their lovemaking, Peeta almost always found it impossible for him to stop until they both collapsed, satisfied, exhausted, and completely spent.

He should not wake her, he thought as he continued to watch the sun’s progress as it rose and still his wife slept in his arms. He should not. And so he fought a familiar battle with his own body.

Eventually, she stirred in his arms and Peeta found his hand wandering closer and closer to places where bliss could be found. Katniss murmured in her sleep and then stilled. Her breathing halted and Peeta ceased his touches, waiting for her to notice her body’s fatigue and unleash her anger on him for his inconsiderate behaviour.

“Peeta? Why did you stop?” she asked instead and Peeta sighed. He pressed a kiss to her temple and rolled his body away from hers.

“Because you must be tired and sore this morning.”

“I am,” she said and turned to him, her brow furrowed. “But that is no excuse for you to tease me and then to cease.”

“I had not--” he stopped talking at the knock on her door that preceded the turning of the key and the entrance of a servant.

“Lady Mellark, shall I see to your needs?” Eliza, her ladies’ maid, halted and gasped as she saw them. “Your pardon, my lord! My lady! I had no idea!”

She bobbed a curtsy and left, locking the door again behind her. Peeta glanced at Katniss and noted her furious blush. While Katniss was recovering, she often locked the door in an attempt to hide her grief from even the servants. Peeta had gotten quite irate with her over that and the servants had standing orders to ignore the locked door to her chamber, to ensure that Lady Mellark had ample food and had not worsened during her periods of rest.

“You did not rescind the locked door order, did you?” Katniss accused him. Of course he had not. It still felt necessary until a few days ago, and then her note last night had him too distracted to rescind the order.

“And with that, my lady, I believe I shall depart,” Peeta declared and reached for his crutch, but before he could grasp it, Katniss gripped his shoulder and pushed him back onto the mattress.

“You will not. You will wait here.” Katniss clambered from the bed then, and Peeta lay there, wondering why he did not simply leave the room. She returned shortly after and slid naked back into the bed. Peeta gripped the sheets beneath him and swallowed, praying for forbearance.

He would not make demands of her body this morning. He would not.

“Do you intend to ignore me, husband? Or shall we sleep a little longer in one another’s arms?”

“My love, we have a guest,” Peeta reminded her and yet he could not resist. He returned his body to his earlier position, wrapped protectively around her.

“He has been here long enough to grow comfortable. He can amuse himself,” Katniss stated as she wriggled in his arms. Peeta hissed and gripped her hip to halt her motions.

“Have a care, my love. I do not wish to hurt you.”

Katniss scoffed at his words but stilled her body, and gradually, Peeta relaxed enough to slip into a light slumber, warm and content to at last be in her bed again, to know that their love had not been diminished by the months of denial.

***

Katniss waited for her husband’s breathing to calm. The steady puffs of air against her neck did little to calm her own awakened needs, but she was satisfied that Peeta at least slumbered for now. She knew that he woke before dawn every morning, if he slept at all. She knew that he had likely spent the morning silently berating himself for what had happened in their bed last night, despite all the evidence she had heaped before him that she had wanted him as desperately as he wanted her.

She had been relieved at that. Some part of her knew that Peeta’s restraint since they lost the babe was due to his consideration for her well being, both in body and in spirit, yet it had infuriated her. Ever since that first kiss they shared in the garden, Katniss had delighted in her husband’s bashful restraint at first and gloried in his absolutely mad passion once she had broken through his restraint.

It was always the same with him, this belief in his own insignificance, this insistence that he not burden her with himself or his feelings, that he must distance himself to protect her, from what she knew not. And then once she had found the crack in his armour and split it open, the immense outpouring of love and need and passion that Peeta could no longer contain.

Today, she sensed that he needed rest. And perhaps the haze of his sleepiness would allow her to slip in again and ignite his desire for her enough to overcome his silly inhibitions about hurting her. Of course her body was sore this morning. How could it not be, with the impassioned way Peeta had demanded her satisfaction several times the previous night? Katniss did not intend to let that stop her. She had not let it stop her in the early months of their marriage, and she would not let it stop her now.

She let him sleep until the morning sun blazed through the window. Of course, Peeta was correct about their guest. Gale would be awake and about the house by now, but she did not intend to let that stop her either. Eliza had already proven herself time and again as a resourceful and thoughtful maid. She would likely provide a suitable explanation to Gale as to the whereabouts of the lord and lady of the house.

In the meantime, Katniss let her hand rest on Peeta’s thigh and began to caress him, the way he had been caressing her as she woke earlier. She felt the stirring of his desire against her backside and, unrelenting, continued her caressing assault on him.

His breath hitched and his fingers clenched on her hip.

“Katniss,” he groaned and she slid her hand between them. “My love.”

“Why do you fight what we both desire, my lord? My love,” she whispered and gasped as his hand slid around her body, delving into her already considerable arousal.

“Because you are in pain. Because I need you to understand that while I grieve the child we lost, I cannot bear to put you at risk for the hope of another.”

She gasped again and whimpered, wriggling in his arms as his deft fingers and his pained words proved to her again how well her husband knew her.

“I want you, Peeta,” she sighed and moved her hips, inviting him to come into her as they lay like that, his body curled around hers, his chest pressing warm and solid to her back. “I yearn for your touch for the sake of your touch. I want you because I want you. Not because I am desperate for another child.”

“But you do desire another child,” he murmured. She turned her head and gazed up at him, allowing all the sorrow and love she felt to show in her expression as she nodded.

“Yes. Yes, my love. I want a child. Ours. Your eyes, your laugh, your ridiculous curls on his head. But I can wait for them. I cannot wait much longer for you. I cannot bear this distance between us any longer. Do not place it there again.”

His eyes closed and he leaned his forehead against hers, and yet he gripped her thigh and opened her a little more. She gasped as he entered her, swift and sure and deep.

“Oh my love, yes,” she whimpered as he began to move. She smiled with the ecstasy and stroked his cheek and his hair as they gasped and whispered to one another. Her body twisted and turned with the need. Her fingernails scraped at his scalp as she moaned and flew higher, closer to her crisis with each sinuous movement of their bodies together.

She reached hers first, as she knew she would, crying out and then clinging to him as his mouth muffled her sounds of ecstasy. His kiss only heightened her pleasure in her release and she quaked like a storm in his arms, certain that only his hold on her prevented her complete destruction.

As she floated back down from her rapture, she smiled for a moment and then frowned. “My love. You did not join me.”

“I did not,” he admitted, kissing her perspiring brow and then her eyelids, then her lips. “I’ve no wish to hurt you.”

“Then you will love me until you finish as well,” she stated simply. “Let me--”

“No,” he said, his fingers tightening on her hip and his blonde hair shimmering in the bright morning light as he shook his head. “I will take care of myself.”

At this, Katniss scowled. She moved her hips and gripped tight to his hair as he grunted and met her movement. “You will not.”

“You said you could wait for a child.”

“I can. And I will if I must, but you will not deny me what we both desire, Peeta,” she murmured and grinned at the sound of his tormented groan. At the feel of his restraint snapping once again.

Words of love poured from his mouth unchecked as he altered their embrace. He came to her as she lay on her back beneath him now. He moved above her, inside her. She clung to him, her limbs tight around his body, her hands scratching desperately at his back as she arched into their love. Into the inevitable pleasure of having him inside her, moving as though they had been formed for one another. It felt as though starlight coursed in her veins and perhaps it was the stars that had determined them for one another. She knew it was the sort of thing Peeta himself might say, and in fact he did say such things in the early days of their marriage.

Even before that, when they were but friends, together avoiding the matchmaking schemes of others, at times he would say things that hinted at an undying love for her.

Those words had frightened her then but she craved them now. She pulled his mouth closer to hers so that she might breathe them into her lungs as they poured from his lips, his love a vital source of life to her body.

She shook her head in disbelief at the power his love still held over her and whimpered as she felt her body approaching another climax. He must feel it too, she sensed as the expression in his eyes shifted from awe to determination. His fists clenched in the bedclothes beside her ribs and he leaned into her, his movements steady and constant, allowing her to tip into the flames of ecstasy first.

She felt him following her, though, even through the waves of release. He followed her with a tremendously loud shout and wild, almost punishing thrusts of his hips. His body would not seem to countenance restraint in that moment and as soon as he passed through it, she pulled him to her in a tight, unbreakable embrace.

He buried his face in her bosom and seemed to be sobbing. It frightened her a little, his sudden release of feeling. She had once asked him why he so often held back as he did from their passion, until it became uncontainable. He had admitted to her that his father once told him that intercourse was the duty of the nobility to continue the lines. That it should be cold and dispassionate by necessity because passion clouded the judgement and therefore, the late Lord Mellark had taught his son, was the sole luxury of lower echelons of society.

How wretched, Katniss had thought when Peeta first told her that. Her own mother had come from a lower line of the gentry and married a steward. At the time, it must have been scandalous, but they had been happy and loved one another deeply. Katniss herself had married Peeta not because of his title, but because she loved him, although she had not yet admitted it to herself at the time, and Peeta loved her. Despite his father’s lessons on passion, Peeta showered her in affection and passion alike.

No one could deny his love for her.

Much later, they arose from bed and dressed. Peeta aided her with her corset and gown, which delighted her. It had been far too long since he had performed these small tasks for her, engaged in these marital intimacies. He assisted her in donning her stockings even, smiling up at her and kissing her thighs above the embroidered garter ribbons he ordered for her as a wedding gift. She clung to the bedclothes as he did so, thinking of the day he gave them to her. The flower of her namesake twisted around words stitched in a watery blue, like the lakes where one could find Katniss blooms.

Here where I wish to always stay, to know your embrace.

He confessed to her that it had felt perfectly scandalous when he ordered them for her, that it had taken him a long time to pluck up the courage to give them to her, uncertain as he was of her reaction.

When he did give them to her several days after their wedding, along with a pair of luminously silky stockings, Katniss had blushed and wavered for a moment. Was she indeed allowed such a scandalously intimate thing? Of course she was, she finally decided. They were married. She sat up in their bed, clutching the neck of her night shift closed for some silly reason, and beckoned him to her.

“Help me with them?”

He had, even though she would not wear such a thing to sleep and it was already late at night. His touch as he slid the stockings up her calves, the brush of his fingers as he tied the garters in place had aroused her beyond imagining. When he had finished and sat back to admire them on her, Katniss reached for him and dragged him to bed.

Moments later, she had come apart with Peeta embraced between her legs, their bodies undulating in harmony and Katniss moaning his name like a chorus while his fingers toyed with the ribbons still holding the stockings in place.

Remembering that night, Katniss watched as Peeta once again tied the garters in place and turned his head to kiss each of her knees before he stood. She reached out and grasped two handfuls of his still loose shirt. They gazed into one another’s eyes and Katniss wondered if he could anticipate her words before she spoke.

Instead of speaking, she tugged on the fabric in her hands and Peeta tumbled back into bed with her.

Much later, with some difficulty, Katniss let him go as Peeta rose from the bed and stretched.

“Do you intend to remain in bed and neglect our guest all day, my love?” he teased and Katniss threw the nearest pillow at him. He deflected it with a wicked grin on his face and shrugged on his dressing robe. “Or shall I ring up for food to prolong your stay in the sheets.”

“It seems a little late for that. Order a large luncheon today, and perhaps I shall have a bath, since my wicked husband seems intent on exhausting me.”

Peeta scoffed at her words, but the grin hadn’t moved from his face. He rang for Eliza and retrieved Katniss’s key from her drawer before unlocking the door and opening it.

“My lord,” Eliza curtsied again.

“My lady requests a hot bath, although it is abominably late in the day.” Peeta’s grin remained unrepentant as he made the declaration, but Eliza shared a knowing look with Katniss.

“Right away, my lord. My lady.”

She disappeared and Peeta shut the door, his eyes pausing on the floor as he bent over to retrieve something.

“What is it?”

“A note. For you,” Peeta said, his tone and the mere presence of the note giving her pause.

“For me? From whom?”

“A lover, perhaps,” Peeta murmured and ran his finger along the edge. Katniss scoffed at his words.

“Well then, hand it over, although I have no idea why you feel the need for subterfuge when you can simply tell me your thoughts,” she said and held her hand out for the note. Her gaiety wavered as Peeta shook his head.

“It is not from me.” He showed her the address and her heart dropped to her stomach and she lowered her hand as she recognized the penmanship. She knew that her face showed Peeta a terrible untruth as he winced. “I see. I had thought…”

“Peeta, no. That is not… Gale is not my lover.” She rose hurriedly from the bed, and Peeta clutched the letter to his breast. Fear rose up in her. “Here. I will toss it in the fire.”

“Are you not even a little curious what he writes?”

“Not if it is going to lead you into doubts. Read it yourself, then,” she huffed and sat again on the bed.

“Very well.” Peeta shrugged and tore into the note before she could react. “My darling Katniss, When this letter finds you, I will already be away--”

“Away? What can he mean?” Katniss asked, rising once more.

“I do not know if you interrupt,” he said ut his eyes only scanned and he did not read aloud. This time, when Katniss reached for the paper, Peeta handed it over without a fight.

“I do not trust myself to continue reading without destroying something.”

My darling Katniss,

When this letter finds you, I will already be away. Perhaps I should have waited, as leaving in such haste will no doubt arouse your husband’s suspicions. I could not bear to continue a moment longer in a household where you are forced to enact such an elaborate charade. I must confess, I did lose hope briefly last night. I must explain.

After a fortnight in your home, I was convinced you must be miserable in your marriage. You are not yourself around that man. Sickly and pale, dejected and lacking all your former vibrancy. It is as though you are a watercolor caught in a current, all of your bright colors draining from you, and I, the helpless witness.

You wrote to me, fearful of losing me. You begged me to write to you, but I know now that those pleas were mere shadows of what I must do for you. Last night, I resolved to liberate you from your prison. I came to your chambers, intending to declare myself and beg you to away with me. Instead I happened upon a most horrifying spectacle. A charade of desire enacted by yourself--

Katniss could not stop the sound of mortification that clawed its way from her throat. She looked up to find her husband with his hands braced on her mantel, staring into the fire, and somehow she knew that he had at least read to this part.

-- I must confess that at first, I believed it. I credited your performance as proof that I had in fact been mistaken. Perhaps you did indeed love your husband and desire your marriage. I resolved to depart today, a strategic retreat, an admission of defeat, but then your maid gave me hope. She claimed you to be indisposed yet again this morning and I knew that your monstrous husband must be the cause.

We were once meant to be wed, Katniss, my beloved, surely you must recall. We had an agreement, you and I. You swore you had no interest in marriage save to a man you described to me that day. I knew that man to be myself and I believed your love constant enough to induce you to wait for me. I do not accuse you of inconstancy now. I still do not know what dire tragedy forced you into marriage, but I am convinced it must be the worst form of torture and coercion for you to submit yourself to such abominable charades.

My love for you has never wavered, and I sense that yours for me remains as constant as ever. If I am right, my darling, I beg of you… come to me. Meet me at The Hanging Tree Inn along Greenbriar Road. I will await you at midnight and we will escape together.

All my love,Gale

“Escape together? How could he possibly suggest it? Has he no concept of the shame and ignominy his family would face if he deserted his post?”

Peeta turned slowly to face her, and she could see in the glittering fury in his eyes that she had spoken amiss.

“Is that… truly your only objection to this letter?” Peeta asked, his voice low and almost menacing. “Not the suggestion that you abandon our marriage for him, or his clear certainty that you would agree? Not the claim that you were engaged to him? Not the insinuation that you married me out of desperation? Not the admission that he listened at our door while we made love last night?”

His voice cracked on the last complaint and he tore his gaze away from her, whispered one more to the floor. “Or his assertion that I am draining you of all your vitality.”

“Peeta,” she gasped and stood from the bed, hurrying towards him. He stepped back and held up his hands as though to ward her off.

A knock interrupted and Peeta snatched her dressing gown up, hastily draped it over her shoulders before granting entrance to the servants. They brought in the tub and bucket after bucket of steaming water. Katniss and Peeta waited in silence. She chewed on her lip as she searched for the right words to reassure him, and came up uselessly hopelessly empty. How to untangle the mess of her feelings for Gale and how Peeta disrupted every fiber of her being? She couldn’t even fathom how or when to start.

“Thank you,” Peeta said to the servants as they finished and left, sounding shockingly calm. Kind as always.

He stood next to the tub then and motioned towards it. Already she could smell the soothing fragrance Eliza had added. She could see the steam curling up from it and longed to plunge her body into its depths. She longed even more to breach this sudden distance between them.

“My lady,” Peeta croaked. She went to him and he helped her remove her robe, offered his hand in assistance and saw her seated in the tub. Then he bowed to her, turned on his heel, and left her. As soon as she heard the soft click of his door closing between them, Katniss buried her face in her hands and allowed herself to weep. Because she knew what she must do.

After her bath, she ordered her horse saddled and penned one sentence on a piece of paper, entrusting it to Eliza, to see it delivered to Peeta once she had left. She grimaced, still sore from the vigor of Peeta’s lovemaking, as she mounted her horse and rode the handful of miles to The Hanging Tree Inn. It was not even tea time, yet her stomach growled ominously as she rode, from hunger or anxiety, she could not be certain.

When she entered the inn, she was directed to one of the private dining rooms and pain sliced through her as Gale smiled at the sight of her. He was heartbreakingly handsome, she admitted, and she regretted the pain she must inevitably cause. He stood and opened his arms.

“You came. I knew you would.” His gaze darted over her shoulder and his smile widened. “And you came alone. Good.”

“I only came alone because I knew that you would not believe what I must tell you unless I did so in person and alone.” Gale’s smile faltered and Katniss gathered her courage.

***

There were very few temptations in this world that Peeta Lucian Mellark, Earl of Baecare and fourth in his father’s line to hold the title, feared. His mother had prided herself on instilling iron strong self control in all three of her sons. Unfortunately, she never managed to break her own husband of his drinking, and after years of cleaning up his father’s messes together with his brothers, of attempting to hide their father’s inebriation as often as possible to avoid their mother’s wrath, Peeta feared his own vulnerability to excessive drink. He never drank more than one, perhaps two drinks at a social engagement, and rarely ever did he drink at home.

He stood in the drawing room of his estate, the one to which he withdrew to seek solitude after a brawl in the schoolyard saw his leg irreparably broken and himself temporarily ejected from school, until his father had levied his wealth and title to gain Peeta’s return. His mother’s disappointment and creative punishments ensured Peeta never got caught fighting again. He withdrew here again after the fire destroyed the true estate of the title, killing his entire family while Peeta was away seeing a doctor who promised he could at last straighten Peeta’s twisted leg.

He rushed home to see his family buried and never returned to find out if the doctor’s promises held true.

Peeta had thought, when he brought Katniss here, that perhaps he could at last chase away the loneliness and misery that seemed to seep beneath the drapes of every room in the house. He clutched the glass in his right hand. His first drink poured and waiting to be consumed. He glanced again at Katniss’s maddeningly brief and unclear note.

I am not leaving.

Not leaving? Why then did he watch her mount her horse and ride the mare in the direction of town, towards the inn where Colonel Gale Hawthorne asked her to meet him. It was not too late, Peeta supposed. Would they dine and take a room at the inn? Consummate their love before beginning their journey? Perhaps he could follow and challenge Gale to a duel.

Challenge Gale, a trained soldier and colonel in the army, to a duel, what foolish nonsense.

He must indeed be the idiot his mother always declared him to be, if he believed he could earn and hold Katniss’s heart.

He considered his drink. He should just begin it now. Get himself impossibly drunk for the second time in his life and admit that Katniss would not be returning. It was close to dinner.

A shout interrupted his wallowing and he lifted his eyes, spotted the cloud of dust at the end of the lane that indicated a rider. He dared not hope. He dared not move.

Instead, Peeta waited in the drawing room and clung to his drink and the note as the rider approached. As her form took familiar shape and he recognized the same riding habit she wore when she left. His heart clenched and he dropped the glass, spilling the alcohol on the carpet. He retrieved the glass. He grasped for his cane and turned towards the door as she dismounted.

Perhaps she forgot her luggage, he reasoned. She did leave without any bags.

The door opened then and Katniss strode into the room. She seemed confident until their eyes locked and then she wavered. Her mouth opened, but no sound came forth.

“You left,” he croaked and she scowled at him.

“I did not. Did you not read the note?”

“The note? Of course I read the note, all four unconvincing words of it.”

She blushed and dropped her gaze.

“I owe you an explanation.”

“Indeed.”

“There was never a formal engagement between Gale and I.”

She stopped talking and Peeta stared. Blinked. And grew impatient.

“I feel as though there is still much to be explained.”

“I know there is, but I do not know where to even start.”

“Expand on the lack of engagement. That is a start.”

“You should know that he kissed me.”

“He… kissed you. When?”

“Just now, at the inn. It is inconsequential and I stopped him but--”

Rage rushed up inside him, replacing at last the blank numbness that had taken over when he saw Katniss riding away from him. He threw the empty glass and it shattered against the wall. Katniss flinched and stared at him, wide eyed.

“You rode away from here, met another man -- who has professed his love for you -- at an inn, tell me that he kissed you, and expect me to accept it as inconsequential?”

“I would explain if you would let me!”

“I think I would rather call him out. But the real question remains. Would it serve any purpose?”

She scowled at him. Not her usual scowl. Peeta loved that scowl. He often teased it onto her face simply to tease it back off again, into a smile or a laugh, sometimes even a kiss. This was not that scowl. This scowl was formidable and terrifying.

“Serve any purpose? Of course it would serve no purpose! It would be pointless and stupid to call him out.”

Her words only stoked his rage. “Stupid? Stupid how? Do explain to me how it would be stupid to challenge the man who kissed my wife and asked her to run away with him?”

“Stupid because Gale is a crack shot. He would kill you.”

“And that would bother you?” Peeta asked, reckless and uncaring in the moment.

“Of course it would!”

“I fail to see why. You would be a wealthy widow.”

“Don’t be obtuse, Peeta,” she shouted as she charged towards him. “I do not want you dead! Are you really going to throw away our love because Gale kissed me once? Against my will?”

Her words immobilized him. Our love. She sometimes called Peeta “my love,” but he had accepted it as a term of endearment no different than when she called him “my lord” or “husband," not as a declaration of love.

“Yes, of course it would be stupid to challenge him to a duel when you have no hope of winning, and it would be pointless because I came back! I never intended on leaving because I love you!”

Her words and her clear fury shocked him enough that he simply stood there as she grasped his lapels and pulled on them, nearly ripping the fabric as she smashed her mouth to his. He flinched then, the image of Gale kissing her surging up in his mind. Tormenting him with the thought that she might still be able to taste the other man on her lips, even as she kissed him. He attempted to retreat, but Katniss would not allow it. Her mouth savaged his until his resistance broke.

There were few temptations in this world that could induce Peeta Lucian Mellark, Earl of Baecare and the fourth of his father’s line to hold title, into obliterating every known rule of propriety. But the woman kissing the breath out of him had always possessed the ability to addle his mind and stir his blood. She claimed his heart and entrenched herself so deeply into his skin that even now, knowing that she had ridden away from him to meet another man, however briefly, he could not summon the will to resist her.

Perhaps it made him stupid, caving to her demands in that moment, her furious declaration of love for him still waged war in his brain with the certainty that her lover was even then still waiting for her at the inn. But even if that was her plan, to seduce Peeta and leave him too exhausted to follow, he found that he could not quite bring himself to care. Because she did come back.

She gasped when his arms came around her, cinching her impossibly tight against his chest as he finally returned her kisses. They stumbled across the room to the desk. She gasped again when he tossed her atop the desk and flipped up her skirts. Scattered papers fluttered about them, noisy distracting birds as he kissed her. He had neither the time nor the patience for niceties, but Katniss didn’t seem to either.

He moaned her name like a prayer as her hands worked to undress him enough. His coat discarded, his waistcoat half undone. He gripped her buttocks and pushed into her, drinking in the way her body arched and how she moaned as he slid home inside her. She was wet and warm all around him, and he barely had time to register her copious arousal before he began to move.

He thought he had made love to her in almost every state of passion he could conceive. Tender, grieving, hopeful, frenzied, and so many others. But as he moved between her thighs and she met his punishing thrusts with equal fervor, he knew this was different. This had the potential to destroy them. Or forge them into something even stronger than they had been before. He had feared himself to be a mad beast before, but now he knew himself to be one. He rutted between her thighs. He bit at her neck and her breasts while he fucked her. He only half heeded her cries and her pleas as the pain of her nails gouging into his skin became unbearable.

But even when she broke and screamed in his arms, he could not stop. His only saving grace came in the feel of her clenching in release all around him, in the fact that Katniss’s scream of release might be loud enough to reach the other man’s ears, even five miles away at the inn.

He joined her, desperately moaning her name and collapsing even as he was still caught in the throes of his release. The dishes from his uneaten luncheon clattered to the floor and shattered. He winced in regret at the mess, but couldn’t do a thing about it now.

As they recovered their breath, Peeta lifted her in his arms. She curled around him and clung to him as he carried her, staggered the handful of steps to the chair before he sat heavily in it. Her fingers curled in his hair absently, again and again. He waited and waited some more. A servant knocked quietly and he sent them away. The room grew dark and finally, Katniss spoke.

She spoke of a proposal that was not a true proposal, a mere suggestion and a few questions that she had analysed over and over again. She spoke of letters that still came to Hazelle Hawthorne, even after her son had left home for his military duties. She explained that years of hard work had left Mrs. Hawthorne unable to write most days and so Katniss handled Gale’s wayward correspondence, pointing them towards his new direction. Until one day a perfumed letter arrived from a woman whose name Katniss did not recognize. Consumed with curiosity, instead of sending it on, she had read it, and known from it that Gale had taken lovers.

At first, she had been furious, then hurt, and then doubtful of Gale’s intentions. Perhaps he had no intention of marrying her at all, she had decided. She convinced herself that she had been mistaken in Gale's love for her and feeling foolish, resolved to act as though nothing had happened at all. She burned the letter and never spoke of it again, not to anyone.

Then, Haymitch Abernathy had paid a visit, claiming a distant family connection to Mr. Everdeen and offering to help his girls by sponsoring Katniss for a single season in society. She had agreed, not out of interest in finding a husband for herself, but rather to gain the knowledge she would need to guide Primrose through her own launch into polite society.

Then she had met Peeta and everything had changed.

“We were so happy, and I so in love with you that I reconsidered my anger towards Gale. I tried to forgive him. How could I remain angry with him, when his actions helped lead me to you?”

At last she emerged from his shirt, her face red and tear stained, her lips still swollen from how harshly Peeta had kissed her. He winced in regret and attempted to apologise.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Katniss declared with an adamant shake of her head, her ungloved palms resting on his cheeks. “You do not. I should have explained to you better before I went, but I had to tell him in person, alone, or he would never have believed me.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“The truth,” she cried and shook her head when Peeta reached to comfort her. “No, let me finish. I told him that he’d been horribly mistaken. That you do not drain life from me, Peeta. You give me hope. We lost a babe and even though I had only carried our child for a handful of months, the loss devastated me. You know this, but Gale did not. I have not even told my own mother!”

Her voice broke and her confession shocked him. Mrs. Everdeen and Miss Primrose were due to arrive here at their home within the week and Katniss had not conveyed the news? Did her mother then believe she would find her daughter close to childbirth when she arrived?

“Katniss…”

“No, please.” Peeta nodded and waited as she regathered herself. “I have always most feared losing the ones I love, and when he wrote asking if I was truly married to another, I feared he might grow angry with me and end our friendship. It did not even occur to me that our friendship was already lost when I read that letter from his lover, even if I had managed to forgive him. I could not trust him to know my heart.”

Peeta slumped in the chair and in the quiet after her admissions, found a strange sort of peace. Katniss began to kiss him. Soft touches of her lips to his forehead, his nose, his ears.

“Is there anything else I need to explain?”

“Only one thing,” he murmured. “Was that really the only time you kissed Gale?”

She went still and he risked looking up at her. A strange smile had begun to spread over her face. “Yes.”

“Well then,” he said and the last of the tension seeped from his frame. “I suppose I should admit to you that I intended to let you go. If you truly loved him and wanted to be with him, I would not have followed you.”

“Why not?” she sounded annoyed and he nearly laughed.

“Because I could not have lived with myself if I thought I was the cause of your unhappiness.”

“How could you think even for a moment that you were?”

“Because the first time you smiled, the first time you were happy after we lost the babe, was when you received that letter from Gale, telling us that he was to visit.”

She scowled at him then, the scowl that he loved. Confusion and doubt at his words, then she shook her head. “Ridiculous. That was not the first time I had felt happy afterwards.”

“Then what was?” he asked and she caressed his face, a soft smile on her lips.

“We were in the study. You had been working and I had been pretending to read, but in reality I had been weeping behind the book. Eventually, I wore myself out and fell asleep. When I woke up, you were lifting me into your arms. You carried me upstairs, undressed me, and helped me into a hot bath. You suggested we might take luncheon outside in the garden, and although all I could manage was to lay there and watch the clouds while you sketched and played with my hair, I was content. I thought that if I could find those small moments of happiness and hope with you again, and hold onto them, then one day, we might find our way back to feeling joy again.”

“Ah, these are the sort of words I have longed to hear.” Peeta had at last believed her, and slid his hand over hers, holding it in place so that he could turn his head and gently kiss her palms. “Now that we have settled we are both idiots in love and neither of us is leaving, what shall we do now?”

“Hmmm. You could request dinner be served in our room and you could take me to bed.”

“Bed? At this early hour? Countess! Are you so determined to shock the servants then?”

At this, she laughed and kissed him. “My love, I believe we have already done that today.” Her eyes moved pointedly to the desk and Peeta felt himself blushing.

“Well… then perhaps it will not be so shocking after all.”

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