I wake up to see Peeta, already awake and looking down at me.

It's beyond cold, so I close my eyes again and snuggle my back towards him. He knows from hundreds of chaste nights in my bed what I want, and wraps his body around mine, though it's a very different situation now that neither of us wears anything to bed.

"Were you just sitting and watching me?" I ask him playfully.

He sighs against my back, which gives me an exciting shivery feeling. "You make it sound so creepy. I was trying to decide whether to wake you up, because I made hot chocolate and brought it up here for you, but it's starting to cool off now."

"That was thoughtful of you," I answer back, making no move to get up despite his kind gesture. We can always reheat it later.

I wriggle against him a bit, bringing our bodies into an even tighter spoon. I can feel him hot and hardening against my back, and it gives me a thrilling sense of power to know that doing something so small can make him want me.

"And that was thoughtful of you," he whispers tenderly, nipping my ear. "Roll onto your back now," he says then, in a completely different tone of voice.

It sounded almost like an order, which nearly always brings out my rebellious side, but I'm so surprised to hear him talk like that that I comply. I look up at him with a questioning expression, but his eyes are dark, unreadable. Then he folds the blanket down, and sits up, evaluating me where I lay.

My skin rises up into goosebumps either because of the cold, or his stare, or maybe both. "Are you alri-" I start to ask, but my voice dies off as he shakes his head at me with a serious expression, putting his finger on my lips.

"I'm trying to decide what to do with you," he admits. "Give me your hands," he says then, nearly commanding me once again. But I do what he says, placing them on my stomach, offering them up to him.

He takes both my wrists into one of his hands, then presses my arms up over my head so that my hands rest against against the headboard. I am far from cold now, my entire body is flushed with waves of heat. "Peeta, I -"

"Shh," he says, no less a command even though it is said gently.

I don't understand what is happening to me. I am never so obliging to anyone ordering me around, and yet I am undeniably excited. Anticipatory.

How does he know how to do this to me?

But the small voice inside my head is quickly overridden, because he isn't staring anymore. He starts by almost kissing me. Almost because as I move to kiss him back, he draws away, biting softly at my lips, denying me participation. Then he begins to nibble his way along my jawline, up to my ear.

"You are mine," he says, still holding my hands above my head. "Real or not real?"

I am breathing so heavily, I can barely hear my own voice answer, "Real."

His chest brushes mine as he moves lower down my body, setting off rising waves of heat in me again. I feel his hardness pressing against my thigh when he leans down and takes my nipple into his mouth, sending a shock all the way through my core. He is looking up at me, watching my reaction as he sucks harder, increasing the feelings inside me. I buck, because I cannot lie still, and I want to run my fingers through his hair, pull him even closer to me. But he must feel this, and he tightens his grip on my wrists.

Peeta is stronger with his one hand than I would have thought, but I could still break away easily if I really tried. "You trust me Katniss. Real or not real?" he asks, toying with my other nipple, pinching it lightly.

"Real," I gasp back, letting my wrists relax helplessly in his grasp.

He nods. "Good," he responds quietly, before planting a kiss on the flat space between my breasts. His mouth trails its way down my body, so that he pulls my arms upwards and around as he goes. Still, I feel even more trapped as the closeness of my arms grazes my ears, then eventually the sides of my breasts, pinning the outside of my body.

He licks my belly button along the edges, then his tongue finds my hip bone. When he bites me softly there, I wriggle shamelessly at the sensations that roll through my core. My hands rest at my stomach now, and suddenly he lets go of my wrists, leaving me with a strange feeling of loss.

Then he grabs me by my sides, rolling me, tucking my hands under my back. "This is easier for me now," he says casually, almost to himself. "Gives me a better view of you."

I gasp, because I have never felt like this before, never felt this sort of shameful excitement, and I turn my head away, sharply, trying to bury it in the pillow, my eyes squeezed shut against the heat rising at the back of my lids.

Peeta's fingers trace my lips, and I cry out again, until he puts one finger gently in my mouth. The wantonness of the act shocks me beyond anything I have ever done, but I know what he wants, and I suckle his finger, rolling my tongue, stroking it up and down, amazed at the heat that this sends through me.

Until it is gone suddenly. I open my eyes, cautiously, and he has returned to his work on my lower body, stopping to nibble the same spot again, which makes me buck and moan as my eyes roll back in my head.

"No. Open them," he instructs.

"Eyes on mine," he adds, so I obey. I watch him as he parts my legs, lifts one up in the air, planting a kiss along the back of my knee. He kisses his way along the back and then the inside of my thigh until he reaches my center, where he leans down and licks me softly before lifting his head to look up at me.

"You want this. Real or not real?"

I am crying now, and I cannot understand why, cannot understand anything except that I want his mouth back on my body. "Real," I answer back, as lucidly as I am able. "Please ... real," I repeat again, watching him as he dips his head down and finds the same spot, nibbling and then licking me, softly; but with an even, steady rhythm.

I gasp, wanting again to run my fingers through his hair, to press his head further down to me, but he has not told me I can move my arms yet, and so I writhe instead, squeezing my legs tight against his head while he watches me steadily.

My sense of longing has grown overwhelming, I am on fire, and yet I know that I cannot be satisfied with just this. I cry out when his finger parts me, strokes my insides, and when he presses against my stomach where his finger presses up inside of me, I buck again, feeling myself surge with wetness.

My neck tightens and pulls my head back. My eyes are hot with tears, and I know I cannot watch him any longer or I will die from the shame and the heat of it. "Please Peeta, please; I need you now," I cry out.

I feel him prop my leg up against his shoulder, rub himself against me once, then twice, making my body writhe in agony each time. "I think you are ready now. Real or not real?"

"Oh God real! Real Peeta, please, real to anything you want," and he plunges inside of me, filling me up with his hot hardness. He moves inside of me, then tilts my hips up a little bit more, adjusting his position before he begins to rock in and out of me again.

The heat that has spread from my center outwards begins to come in short waves. Then they become longer, stronger, roiling throughout me as strokes the same spot within me again and again.

"You like ..." he begins, his own voice gasping and unsteady now.

"Real," I reply before he can even finish.

Then he reaches down and rubs me just above where we are joined, and I feel a split second of pleasure so intense it is painful before the waves rolling through me crash down and around my body, sending vibrations from my center all throughout as I gasp and cry out again and again, and he continues to move inside me as the vibrations grow fewer and further between.

Just as they subside, he stiffens above me, and his face takes on that unnaturally still blankness that I know means he has been undone too.

His body rocks forward, rests on me, and both of us breathe heavily for a few moments.

"You can move your arms now," he says, almost laughingly after a few moments of stillness. "I'm sure that isn't the most comfortable position in the world, I just couldn't figure out how else to get you to let me take complete control over you."

And he's right, they are a little stiff, so I do move them out. Run my fingers through his hair as I had wanted to do so many times while he made love to me. Then I remember what I wanted to ask him.

"Peeta, how did you know ... how could you tell that ... that overcoming me like that would turn me on so much?" I ask, feeling strangely embarrassed to question him, even though it's a pretty small deal compared to the sex we have just had.

He looks up at me, laughs, then rests his head on my chest again. "You really don't know? I watch you Katniss, I always have. You've had to be in control a lot of your life. Had to be in charge, had to rely on yourself, not trust that anyone but you could get the job done. So I watch you, and I love you, and I want to please you. And I realize that what you must want most, maybe even need most, is to not be in charge, to be allowed to be completely out of control for once." He slides off of me as he says this, takes me in his arms and rolls me up on top of him, where he pulls my head down for a kiss.

"Real or not real?" he asks me.

My only answer is a smile.