Maybe It Can Be Real

Chapter 54

Ending of last chapter:

But I also don't want to hurt myself. Selfish, I know, but I don't want to put myself through that. And once I say yes, there's no going back. I also don't want to put my child through it. I would be a horrible mother to them. They wouldn't want me.

Standing up and wrapping my arms around myself, I bid goodbye to their graves, promising to be back soon. I start heading back to the house, desperately and foolishly hoping that Peeta has totally forgotten about our predicament so we can be the normal us again.

****

"Peeta we need to talk about this... thing going on between us. Right now," I command as I stomp in the door, pulling my boots off in the front hallway. As I was walking home, I realized just how done I was with this whole thing going on. It's an acceptable thing to happen given the circumstances, but come on - we have been through two Hunger Games, a war, and a hijacking and this is the thing that hurts our relationship? No. Unacceptable.

As I turn the corner leading into the kitchen, Peeta emerges from his 'art room', a quizzical look on his face. Striding toward him with a purpose, I say, "But first I need to do this," and I grab the sides of his face, rather forcefully pressing my lips to his. At first he's taken aback, but he soon melts into the kiss, wrapping his strong arms around my waist to draw me closer. My arms wind around his neck, one hand tangling itself in his hair. Every inch of our bodies is pressed together from our chest to our toes. He slightly leans forward, arching my back, and he gently picks me off the floor, my feet dangling a few inches above the ground. Abruptly, he moves from my lips to my jaw, trailing a line of kisses down to my throat.

God, how I've missed his touch. I forgot how it started a frenzy of fireworks in the very center of my body, moving out to all the fibers of my being. I forgot how it made me lose my breath, made my pulse quicken. Most of all I forgot how it made me feel safe and loved. I didn't realize just how abandoned I'd been feeling recently until now. But I can't imagine how he was feeling considering he was hurting more throughout this whole thing.

Definitely not as gentle as I should have been, I push back on his shoulders, straightening us. He pulls away, confused, but only for a moment. Before he can ask why I did that, I grab fistfuls of his shirt and push him back into the wall. My lips capture his once again.

His hands find their way beneath my shirt, resting on the bare skin of my waist. My hands, however, are elsewhere. One of them is gripping his bicep to keep up from falling over - but it actually makes it harder because I'm thinking about how muscular he feels - while the other is playing with his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, running pieces of it between my fingers.

Without warning, this time he is the one to push me off, quickly moving us to the island in the middle of the room. Peeta swiftly picks me up and puts me on top of he island, blindly moving stuff out of the way. I hear it crash to the ground, but I couldn't care less at this point. He stands in between my legs, my legs wrapping around his waist. We become so tangled together, molding together, that it's hard to tell who is who. Our hands are desperately moving from one spot to another, never getting enough. We become a frenzy of moving arms and legs, of lips planted in different places.

When we are finally done, caught up from all the time spent not touching one another, we pull away from each other. But only just enough so that we are no longer kissing. We are still ensnared together, our foreheads pressed together, but our lips not touching. Our breaths mix due to our close proximity.