An alarm splits the early morning silence, and she groans. I chuckle, pressed snugly against her back, my lips brushing the nape of her neck. I've been awake at least an hour already, waiting. But as soon as she turns off the racket, I pounce. In a heartbeat, I have her pinned under me, nuzzling her throat, musky and sleep-warm.

"Peeta," she whines, though there's a hint of laughter in her voice. "It's too early."

"It's the first day of school, Miss Everdeen," I chide. "It's a big, big, big day!" She's wiggling now as I pepper kisses along her shoulders, nip her collarbone with my teeth.

She groans. "You know it's just meetings this week. The students don't come back until next Monday." I do know that. But I also know after a long summer away, she's anxious to get back to her class.

"Hmmm," I hum against her throat and she squirms. "But that's only a week to get your classroom set up," I mumble, even as I drag my lips lower, pressing the words into the warm valley between her perfect bare breasts. Her fingers tangle in my hair, tugging until my lips are aligned with one flawless peak. She groans as I suckle the taut bud into the heat of my mouth. She has such perfect breasts, I could spend all day enjoying them. But even half asleep she's impatient.

"Peeta," she whines, arching against me. I know what she wants, but I have ninety minutes before she has to leave for work, and I intend on filling every one of them.

"Patience, my love," I smile, moving back up to kiss her properly. "You are so beautiful."

Her silver eyes light up with pleasure. "You're beautiful too," she whispers.

Our lovemaking, always good, has been phenomenal this summer. And not just because I've gotten my head out of my ass. Our month-long separation - and the hard work we've done since reuniting - has emboldened Katniss. She's better now at telling me what she wants, both in bed and in life. And I'm better at listening.

Her fingers twist in my hair again and she kisses me, hard. But I pull back, just a little. Just enough to slow our pace. Kissing Katniss is exquisite. I've always loved kissing her, but for far too long I really didn't appreciate how incredible the simple feeling of her soft lips under mine could be. How erotic it is to breathe through her. To lose myself in exploring every delicious inch. And though she whimpers and bucks, I keep kissing her with maddening restraint, pulling back just a little each time she tries to rush us along. Savouring her.

Until her hand slides between us, gripping me firmly. I break our kiss to gasp and curse. "Oh fuck, Katniss," I groan, bucking into her soft hand. She squeezes a little tighter, then laughs as I shudder.

"You're insatiable, Mr. Mellark," she purrs, but she's smiling.

"Only for you, love. Only ever for you."

"I know," she whispers. And she does. I've spent the past four months making sure of that. Never missing an opportunity to show her how insanely attracted I am to her. Loving her every occasion I get. Never letting myself lose sight of how lucky I am to have a second chance.

Katniss is diminutive in stature, but strong; she flips us in a move that'd make my old wrestling coach proud, straddling me and grinning. She strokes my chest with both hands, stubby nails raking through the hair there, making me erupt in goosebumps. Her ebony locks fall in tangled waves around her gorgeous face, caress the tops of her breasts. She's a goddess, still naked from our bedtime activities, flawless olive skin glowing in the shafts of sunlight that stream through our open window. My hands are drawn like magnets to her slender waist and I trace tickling circles over her jutting hipbones, where I know she's sensitive. She rewards me with an erotic swivel of her hips. Any thought of going slow is dashed. I grip her more tightly, trying to align her centre with my aching cock, but she shakes her head, and slides backwards.

Her eyes gleam with mischief as she hovers over my dick, each soft breath brushing over the sensitive head. She licks her lips and I groan, arching helplessly. "Patience, love," she mocks, but with no malice. Then her lips, soft and wet, press a feather-light kiss at the base of my cock, and I nearly lose my mind.

"Please," I beg. "Katniss. Please?" I'm practically hyperventilating. But she just smiles.

She nuzzles my thigh, looking up at me through thick lashes, eyes full of love. I am the luckiest fucking man on the planet. I reach down to brush her hair away from her face and she kisses my wrist. "I love you," she murmurs, just before her sleek pink tongue traces a long line up my shaft and I moan. Then she smirks, and in one fluid motion takes half my cock into the heat of her mouth.

I nearly choke on my own tongue. Sugar and spice, that's my Katniss.

She moves slowly, humming around my dick and doing that thing with her tongue that makes me feel like I have pure electricity running through my veins. I grab fistfuls of the sheets, chanting her name and bits of nonsense.

She lifts her eyes to mine, shimmering pools of lust. Then she gently tugs on my sac.

I bolt upright, howling. "Oh fuck, love, you've gotta stop. I don't want to come yet." Katniss laughs around my dick, enjoying how I lose control when she touches me. She releases me, pressing one final wet kiss to my twitching head before crawling back up my body.

Katniss hovers over me, grinning, and I cup her gorgeous face in both hands, kissing her languidly while I try to get my dick back under control. Kissing every freckle scattered over her pert nose, her rosy cheeks, that spot under her jaw that makes her mewl.

I roll her under me. Her fingers tangle in my hair again but only gently stroking as she lets me take the lead.

Sliding into her wet heat is like coming home, it's as close to heaven as I can imagine. I have to pause, just to fully appreciate the incredible feeling. She wraps her lean legs around me, and her sigh of pleasure is like music.

I stare into her silver eyes as I start to move, focussing on her, only her, always her. We rock together, each slow stroke accompanied by a soft groan or whispered curse. Drawing out our pleasure. She grabs my hands, curling her fingers around mine. I lean down and kiss her, enjoying the incredible feeling of being joined in almost every way possible.

There's no rush, we make love as if we have all the time in the world. As if nothing exists outside of this bed, nothing but her and me and us, together.

But I'm only human, and I'm already so close. She knows. She tugs my earlobe between her teeth, and I shudder. Then she starts whispering in my ear. "You feel so good, Peeta," she purrs. "So good. I love the way you fill me."

I can barely breathe through the wall of pleasure. She knows what her words do to me, each is a lightning bolt straight to my dick. I let go of her hands and push up on my knees, the new angle makes her cry out and that simple song nearly has me blowing my load. As it is, I only manage a half dozen hard thrusts before I'm coming, grunting out curses and praise. She follows, her velvet walls fluttering and pulsing around my dick, milking every drop of my release.

I collapse onto the bed beside Katniss and pull her tightly against me. For several long minutes we simply breathe together, hands caressing, murmuring compliments, sharing light kisses. And my thoughts stay focussed on the here and now, on her, on us. Practicing mindfulness isn't easy for me, and it certainly doesn't come naturally. But Katniss in all of her post-orgasmic glow is a pretty spectacular thing to concentrate on. Finally, she sighs. "Time to get up," she murmurs.

She's right, it is. I kiss the tip of her pert nose. "I'll make you pancakes while you get ready," I offer, but she shakes her head. "Waffles?" She bought me a waffle iron for my birthday over the summer, though it turned out to be more a gift for her. Lazy Sunday breakfasts in bed with Belgian waffles and whipped cream are a new favourite, though I won't tell Finnick that we've used all of his sexual whipped cream suggestions, and then some.

"Come shower with me," she smiles. And there's no way I'm going to say no to that.

Our shower is slow and sensual, I love washing her hair, feeling her slick body pressed against mine. Which of course leads to some heavy making out. I slip away from her though, reluctantly, before I can beg for round two.

Tugging on shorts and a polo, I head for the kitchen and mix up batter for pancakes. She might have said no to them before, but I know she's hungry, and I know her days go more smoothly with a proper breakfast.

It's Sam Smith filling our kitchen from the docking station when she sneaks up behind me on silent feet. "Are you going to the bakery today?" she asks, laying her cheek on my back.

"Nope," I tell her as I swivel to wrap an arm around her, plating our breakfast one-handed. "You know it's my day off."

One of the biggest changes I made in the aftermath of our separation happened almost accidentally. Just a week after we got back from Katniss's birthday weekend at the lake, and just days after she moved back home officially, Dalton, my weekend baker, announced he was retiring because of his wife's health. Old Peeta would have flown into a tailspin, taken on all of the extra responsibilities, fretted and worked myself half to death rather than ask for help.

Instead, I sat down with Katniss and Thresh. And together, we made the decision not to replace Dalton.

So now, instead of a weekend baker, I do the Saturday morning baking. It gives me one day a week in the kitchen, doing the things I had always dreamed of when I envisioned my bakery. Baking, creating - it's done incredible things for my quality of life. I'm happier, I enjoy going to the bakery, especially the Saturday mornings that Katniss joins me. She's taken so much more interest in the bakery now too, now that she doesn't have to compete with it for my attention. Now that she knows my priority will always be her.

But in exchange for taking over the Saturday morning baking shift, I agreed to close the bakery entirely on Sundays. It turned out to be a wise move, we were barely breaking even on Sundays anyway, and being completely closed helps me to have at least one day a week where there is no temptation to sneak in, to check up on what's going on, to work 'just a couple of hours'.

To make up for working Saturday mornings, and to ensure that Katniss and I have real time together every week, I also now take Mondays off. It was really hard, at first, to commit to a day one hundred percent away from the bakery when it was open. But the benefits of taking back that time for myself have been staggering. It was incredible to have a whole summer with Katniss where we had a true two day weekend together every single week. We went camping, hosted barbeques with our friends, even painted our living room, finally. We've grown so much closer, thanks to time spent together. I've fallen more and more in love with her too.

Now that she's going back to work, I'll use the day to putter around the house, cook meals, clean, spend time in my painting studio, maybe go to the gym. So seeing me dressed in something slightly more upstanding than sweats must be confusing her. "Thought I'd drop by and check on Haymitch later this morning," I tell her.

She smiles. Her smiles are so much freer now, genuine happiness shining through. "I know he'd like that," she says.

We eat side-by-side at our little kitchen table, and chat about our plans for the day. When I ask if I can come to the school and have lunch with her, she laughs, teasing me about separation anxiety. But she agrees readily. "And I'm hoping to finish that painting today too," I admit. I've been working bit by bit on a large landscape, for Thom and Delly's nursery. Their baby girl is due in about two months, and the painting will be our gift for the baby shower that's happening in less than two weeks.

"Mmmmm," Katniss sighs, resting her head on my shoulder. "They're going to love it so much." After a pause, she continues. "Maybe the next one could be for us?"

The smile that stretches across my face could probably be seen from space. I know what she's hinting at. She's not talking about making paintings to decorate our home - I've already done a few that hang in the living room and our bedroom. She's telling me, in her Katniss way, that she hopes we'll be decorating a nursery of our own someday soon.

We're not pregnant yet. But over the past four months, we've begun talking about the future - our future, together. As Katniss has gotten more confident that the changes I'm making are real, that I'm committed to our relationship, she's been more open about what she wants for us. We've started talking about marriage and children in the abstract at least. But I think she's hinting that she's ready to move beyond abstract thinking.

I hope so, anyway.

"A field of dandelions," I tell her. It isn't the first time I've thought about it, not by a long shot. Fantasizing about our future occupies much of the space I've cleared out by obsessing less about the bakery.

That's not to say I don't obsess anymore, I do, and still too frequently. I definitely screw up still too, get lost in working and forget to take breaks. But now, when it happens, Katniss points it out, or Thresh does. And I'm getting better about seeing it myself too, catching it before I fall too far. I'll probably always be a workaholic, at my core. But I'm surrounded by people who are willing to help me, people I trust. I'm not alone.

She lifts her head, eyes shining, and kisses me.

I'd like nothing more than to spend the rest of the morning kissing Katniss, and I know she's equally reluctant to leave me. But duty calls. She grabs her satchel and I pick up the box of supplies she packed last evening, so I can carry it to the car for her. But I hang back just a little in the entryway, watching her. "Peeta?" she calls out, confusion in her voice. "Do you know where my keys are? I thought I left them in my purse?"

My heart is hammering and my palms sweat. "I, uh," I have to pause and clear my throat. "I think they're on the foyer table." She walks the few steps from closet to table, topped with a huge bouquet of sunset orange gerbera daisies. Then she stops, and I can hear her breath catch.

I've already set the box down, and closed the few steps between us. Her keys are indeed on the table - I know, I put them there. But instead of the cheesy oversized glass ring keychain she's had since we were young, they're tied to a red ribbon that holds a much tinier, but very real, engagement ring. "Peeta?" she whispers, her voice barely audible over the blood rushing in my ears. I reach for her hands, tugging her gently to face me.

Then I kneel before her.

Her musical laughter bubbles out, and before I can begin the speech I've memorized she drops to her knees too, and throws her arms around me. Then we're kissing and laughing and crying, kneeling together in the foyer of our home.

I pull back, just enough to lock eyes with Katniss, and reach up to unravel the ribbon, grabbing the ring. It's a simple solitaire, elegant, just like Katniss. I brush a tear from her cheek, cup her face in my hand. Even though I'm fairly certain I know the answer, I still need to ask the question. "Katniss, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she laughs before I've even finished. "Yes, yes, yes!" I slide the ring onto her finger, and we both stare at it in awe for a few seconds, watching the light refract off the diamond facets, bathing us in dancing rainbows. Then she tackles me, pinning me to the floor, kissing me hard, her tongue curling aggressively around my own.

We kiss and laugh and kiss more, until we're stiff from lying on the floor. "You're going to be late, love," I mumble between kisses. I don't want her to go, but I know she should.

"Screw it," she says, eyes sparkling. "I don't have any meetings until this afternoon. I'd rather spend the morning with my fiancé." I like the sound of that.

Hand in hand, we climb the stairs and crawl back into bed together. And in between kisses and cuddles, we make plans. Together.

I know we're going to be all right. Our relationship has been sorely tested, and I'm sure we'll weather more storms in the future. But I know they won't break us. In the end, our love is strong enough to bend.