Alright, so this is my second chapter today I am on a roll! Alright so my friend Joreyna got constant butterflies from this chapter so I'm praying that you all get them as well. Anyone ready for a battle and some romance? I sure was...

I didn't want to speak to anyone and I was able to maintain this angst for more than a week. Aro was none too happy about it, but I could care less. The only person I allowed to see me was Jane. I even ignored Heath's feeble attempts to apologize for his impertinent behavior.

All I could do was paint. I painted his face because, as there was no one to stop me, I couldn't believe that what Aro said was true. I knew it in my gut that he was wrong. For one thing, the way Heath had described his dream to me the night of Prom was too real to explain. I felt it too. I quivered at the thought of my body setting on fire, my soul being relinquished into the pits of hell. Then again, this life was hell. Why couldn't I just have a normal life? Everything was so messed up! My mind was in a constant state of torment.

Yet, I couldn't allow him to catch onto this. Lord knows what he would do to me if he knew what I truly thought.

All of this anger was more than pent up and it wasn't until a man by the name of Patricio knocked on my door that all of it vanished.

"Can I help you?"

A smile of doubtless happiness rolled across the handsome features of this god. With an ease that I couldn't even perform in my inhuman state, he held out his hand. "My name is Patricio and I will be serving as your personal trainer."

My breath caught in my throat. "Trainer?"

"We have to get you in shape for your major battle."

"Major battle…right. Well, let me change."

He held up his hand in protest. "No. It would be better if you practiced in your heels. You never know when you'll have to fight."

"But—"

His tongue made a tsking sound as he reached for my hand. "No ifs, ands, or buts. You're coming with me."

I tapped behind him, surveying the halls he led me down with curiosity. On my way down a corridor, I glimpsed Heath far off speaking to Aro. A chill splintered my spine. Aro didn't need to remind Heath of his debt, he knew exactly what it was he had to give up. I muffled a sob and quickened my pace so that I was right alongside of Patricio. We moved further down into the ground, using various elevators and stairs. How big was this fortress? Better yet, would I ever be able to escape it?

"This is where we will practice once a week. I've made an extensive program just for you that will fit your personal areas of expertise. Aro has informed me of the numbers who protect Lexis and let's face it, even with your strength you wouldn't make it through the front doors." I wasn't listening to him. The room that he brought me into was a metal fortress. Along the left wall were various assortments of weaponry, things I would have to use but weren't necessary. Bullets couldn't kill rock, but they could pierce flesh. I felt something press into my hands as my eyes scanned the walls. On the far back wall was a glass door that led into a darkened chamber. The left wall was flanked by tables and vampires that all stared up at me with an expectation that I had seen in Aro's eyes. Did they know what I was meant for? Who I was? I looked down at my hands, noticing for the first time what it was I held. A gun.

"Excuse me, Patricio?" I held up the gun completely frightened of it. "But, I don't think this will be necessary."

"You over estimate your strength."

"But—"

"I told you no buts."

"Ok…then who will I be fighting?"

Patricio's glower sifted about the room until he rested it on two men that I knew from my first day. Demetri and Felix. "You two. Come here."

The two men sauntered over towards us with confidence as if they knew exactly what it was Patricio wanted. "Yes, Pat?"

Pat scowled in their direction but continued. "I need you to do me a favor. I need you to fight Lilly."

They burst into laughter like this was some sort of joke. "Us two against her? We'd kill her Patricio and you know that."

Patricio's eyebrow rose. "You want to bet?"

"Sure. I bet you six hundred that we pin her down in thirty seconds."

"You're on."

"Excuse me!" I interjected. "I don't think its right to bet on my destruction."

"Dully noted." Patricio grumbled as he stalked over towards the left wall. He pondered for a moment on whether or not to give me a gun but did an about face back towards us. "Put me down for a thousand."

Large grins swept across Demetri and Felix's faces. "Alright!"

"But you can't use guns. Instead, you shall use the weapons your mamas gave you."

They both materialized into shock. "What?"

"That's right, boys. Use your fists." He acted innocent as he glanced back and forth between the two cocky men. "What the matter? Don't think you could take her without the force of bullets?"

"No!" They both shouted. "We can take her. It won't be a problem."

The glass doors slicked open and into a dank room we went with little lighting. The remaining vampires in the room gathered around the closing glass to watch this event that was surely to send them gossiping about it for weeks. I was beyond nervous. What if they mauled me? Or worse…what if I killed them?

"Alright, Demetri and Felix you know the plan. Lilly," Patricio was beside me in a flash whispering into my ear, "take Demetri out first, he's the weakest. While he's down, use Felix as your own personalized punching bag." He glanced down at my chain. "Hide that."

I tucked the diamond into my shirt and trembled. As the glass doors shut and the noise of the crowd disappeared, my attention was focused on the two advancing men. I stepped back but remembered that this would have been expected. I took a step forward, my heel scrapping against the stone. God this was ridiculous! Fighting in heels…

"Show us what you've got, pet."

Did he just call me pet? What in fresh hell does that have to do with me?

"What? Are you frightened because of what will happen to you?"

"What would you do to me?" I answered, rejoicing that my voice sounded sure of itself.

They chuckled darkly. "Well, you are a woman and we are men."

"You wouldn't dare."

A soft chuckle, this time close to my ear. This was intentional. They were trying to break me apart slowly so as to take me out easily. They really wanted that thousand. For the first time in years, my ears were more keen than usual and my movements were liquid as I took a step to my left. There was a rumble from behind me and two moans.

"What are you doing? She's over there!" Felix yelled at Demetri.

I was already on the other side of the room, my mind reeling at their advances. I ducked, hearing the slam of rock against rock, bits of it crumbling onto me. There was a grunt and then I was slammed onto the floor, a punch being thrown into my stomach. I thought surely I was going to throw up food. My face contorted into pain and I struggled to break free of the hands that held me.

A blow to the face, a kick in the side, a clutch of my hair and a tongue on my skin. It felt like ants were crawling on my skin. The screams that came forth from my chest only made it worse. One was yanking me upwards and into a wall, burying me in the stones that weren't strong enough to stand against me. Across the room I was thrust, four pairs of hands tugging at me, grinding me, nibbling at my snow colored marble skin.

I could feel my limbs tightening, my fingers aching to get a hold of the two men who unceasingly began to torture me.

I had had enough.

I seized the arm that held me up against the wall and threw it with the body attached across the floor. The hands around my neck were instantly scrunched into mine. Without thinking I twisted them back, the bones cracking at the sound, my heel stabbing into the back of my attacker. It was Demetri.

Luckily for me, I was able to smash his face into the wall, hammering its perfection away into the stone. I felt a hand on my back, my shirt ripping into shreds until it lay on the floor into billions of pieces of material, my upper body prickled by the iced air.

I shoved my hand up to Felix's nose, the rock of it breaking into small shards that stuck out of his skin. I placed my hands on his calves and tore off his jeans to reveal him in his boxers. I could faintly hear the laughter of the crowd as they viewed the spectacle of Felix trying to hide his pink undergarments. I couldn't help but laugh myself. I was laughing through every part of my killing spree. The Lilly that had been repressed for centuries was automatically turned on. A switch had been flipped up and she was on full blast, her strength unrelenting as she walked up and down the room with Felix in tow. A finger here, a limb there. I was having my way at last and nothing, nothing, was going to stop me.

The walls were cracking at their cores, bits of rock plummeting onto our heads as I had my way with my attackers. It went on like this for a good hour, and at some point they gave up. I loosened my fingers from Felix's hair and staggered over towards the opposite wall, consciousness hitting me.

What was I doing? I promised myself I wouldn't allow that to happen.

And so, without any extra thought, I leaned against the far wall and sobbed. The glass doors slid open but I couldn't hear them as everything drowned out. I was exactly as the stories said. A monster.

I could feel something being draped over my shoulders, the light pounding my eyes, numerous faces watching me with a mixed emotion of awe and terror. The arms that held me up were familiar somehow and I leaned further into them. Hair black as night fell into my face when I realized who it was. Aro.

I must have shut my eyes because the next thing I knew, I was lying flatly on a bed of gold satin with a black blanket over my body. I blinked three times before sitting up. I hadn't been sleeping but I suddenly felt infinitely better. My mind was clear and I was able to finally think. It wasn't my fault that my monstrosity came into full force. They had taunted me. It was self defense…right?

"Exactly so."

I screamed at the voice. My eyes fell onto a figure who sat in an ancient chair from the eighteenth century. A sigh of relief fluttered through me. It was only Aro. Had he stayed with me? Was this his room?

"You should feel very lucky. I only allow close friends into this place."

I blinked again, surprise writing its way into my features as I took in my surroundings. It was the room in the highest tower looking more like a nightclub than it did a bedroom. There was a balcony in which black velvet curtains waved prettily in the breeze.

"What time is it?"

"Does it matter for us immortals what time it is?"

I shrugged, the blanket falling from my chest. "Some of us care to know."

Aro's gaze shot down onto the floor, frightening me. Did he see something on the floor? I flew back into the center of the bed to watch the floor from a distance. He stifled a roll of laughter and cleared his throat. "Your chest, Lilly."

I peeked down at my chest and yelped. Why hasn't someone gotten me a shirt?

"I didn't want anyone to go into your room and I couldn't very well leave you all by yourself in my room as you could have woken up at any moment and I wouldn't be here to comfort you."

I was taken aback by his decency. Maybe he wasn't as bad as I had predicted. Maybe he had been telling the truth. "That's very…considerate of you."

"If you want, I could give you one of my shirts."

"Please."

I hadn't seen him move before he held out a white tunic to me that looked to be from a time I used to live in. I took the shirt, my hand brushing against his and blushed. He turned away from me to give me some privacy and into the shirt I shoved. It was loose on me and one could still see my black bra through it but it was better than nothing. He turned around and sighed at the sight of me. I shrank back consciously aware of how vulnerable I was. How many times had he seen me without a shirt in my former life? How many times had we…I gulped…shared a room together.

"You are oddly shy when in comes to physical intimacy."

I cocked my head to the side. "Haven't I always been this way?"

"Yes, but the circumstances are different. We are now in a world where sex is the 'it' thing to do and being shy about it isn't. Besides, we aren't married anymore."

"Oh." I paused. "Should we be?"

He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he paced around his room examining his artifacts and pondering about my question. "It depends on you. Do you want to be married?"

"No." My answer was too quick. His eyebrow rose deviously at my answer. "I mean, I couldn't. Not yet. There are things I must consider."

"For example?"

"For example, I barely know you. It would be much different if I remembered our life together. God! I don't even remember kissing you."

His laughter lifted the seriousness of the conversation at once. "Would you like a reminder?"

"What?"

"Maybe, if I kissed you, you would remember."

"A small kiss?"

"If that is what you would like."

I nodded. I was an adult. I could handle the situation. Corpus! Remember him? The man you love? He doesn't exist…

I slid my way over to the edge of the bed and waited patiently for him to make his way over to me. I suddenly felt embarrassed by the situation. Wouldn't this be considered skanky, to allow him to kiss me while in his shirt and bedroom where he could easily have his beastly way with me?

"Just a small kiss, remember? You didn't ask me to have my 'beastly' way with you."

I blushed and his breath caught in his throat. "How could something as dead as you be so human?"

I could feel the scarlet in my face deepen. That was oddly charming, in it's on way. He placed his hand underneath my chin and tilted my head back. I shut my eyes, waiting for him to press his lips onto mine. And I waited.

"I can't."

My eyes snapped open. "What?"

"I can't do this to you. It isn't fair."

"Would it help if I asked you again?"

His lips were in a tight line. There it was again, that internal battle between something I couldn't decipher. He nodded once and I pressed myself against his chest, almost falling backward in surprise. He was fit underneath all of those robes, fit as a SWAT officer. I inched further until my nose was touching his, our sweet breaths combining into a luscious scent. "Kiss me. Please?"

His arms wrapped around my shoulders, tightening me in his grasp like one of his human toys. I didn't expect him to follow through this time—but he did. His lips gently came down to mine and he pecked me like a good friend. That wasn't good enough.

He pulled back a small bit and his lit eyes found mine. "Remember anything?"

"Surely you were a better kisser than that." I mumbled trying not to loose my thoughts completely.
"Is that a dare, Miss. Vespa?"

My head creaked into a nod.

His lips pressed down on mine without hesitation and we were locked into each other's hold. I wrapped my fingers into his hair, his lips pressing down into my collarbone, all the way up to the crook of my jaw and back to my mouth again.

I leaned back and we fell back onto his bed. Our holds tightening as he took my face in both of his hands and whispered something unintelligible.

I was lost in a battle between good and evil. Being sexually repressed for four hundred years wasn't helping the situation. I needed something to stop me or I would go too far.

A pounding on the door made us both jump. I scampered out from underneath Aro, my lips swelling with the released sensation of lust.

"Come in!"

The door thrust open and in walked Heath.

Shit. Why, God? Anyone but him. I wouldn't have cared if it was Lexis himself, but anyone but Heath would have been infinitesimally better. Heath was too smart for his own good and one glance thrown my way and he would have figured it out.

And that is exactly what he did. Heath's face crumpled into a pain that was unfathomable. His voice shook as he spoke. Raw human emotion exposed to us lust filled vampires. "Y-you wanted to s-s-see me, Aro?"

"Yes, I did. I had forgotten about our little meeting."

"I suppose that's easy to do when you're with her." His voice was more assured as he glowered in my direction, drawing up the hatred that I knew he would continue to have for me as long as we both lived. I shivered silently.

"Yes…well, I can't seem to remember what it was that I wanted, so come back to me in half an hour."

Heath said nothing as he stalked off with me in tow.

"Heath!" I called out to him, just barely following in his pounding footsteps. Men and women were watching us as I pleaded with him to stop walking. He did, and that's when he blew up.

"What, Lilly? What do you want me to say to you? Do you want me to congratulate you on finally finding love with someone who isn't—" He bit back what he was about to say and carried on in a different direction. "You know him for less than a weak and already you're sucking his face off."

"You don't understand. I needed something to kick-start my memory so I could remember him and myself in my past life!"

"And do you remember anything? Anything at all?"

I was about to answer when it occurred to me that I hadn't. I didn't remember anything. I flipped through the images again, slightly blushing at the sensation that coursed in my veins. Nope. Nadda. Zip.

"That's what I thought. You know, you could have—I mean he shouldn't have taken advantage of the situation."

"He didn't." I was on the defensive now, trying to make Aro the good guy in this catastrophe. "I asked him to."

"You what?" His placed his arms on top of his head and frustratingly strutted about in front of me cursing to himself. "You asked him to kiss you! If I were him I wouldn't have listened to you! God, you are so conniving."

"Oh, get over it! Just because you're jealous doesn't mean—"

"I'm not jealous!"

"Then what are you? Aggravated that I haven't made that advancement towards you yet?"

"Shut up!" He screamed at me.

For the second time that day I was kissed. But the difference was significant. As Heath slammed into me with a fierceness to knock my unaware body into the wall which, for a human was close to impossible, I realized what he was doing. He was submerging himself in my scent, smelling my stone arm all the way to my neck and to my lips. And when he kissed me, we both slipped back into a time that I had forgotten until that moment when he nibbled on my lower lip and I sighed…

"Thank you, Heath, for all of your help."

"I am bound to your every whim, my lady."

"And for that I shall reward you. What would you like? A title perhaps?"

Heath's head shook fiercely and his fiery scowl was gone, replaced by an urgent want that I couldn't place. "Just a kiss, my lady."

I chuckled darkly, confused as to what he meant. "One of my ladies' in waiting, then? I shall call for Francesca."

I raised my hand to motion call out to Francesca, but my hand was caught and shoved down by Heath. "No, Lady Lilly. I desire a kiss…from you."

I gasped but there was no time to react. He was kissing me against my will. Kissing me as his reward and though I would have hated him for it, I couldn't deny him his reward. So it was a kiss I gave him and it was the kiss that frightened me. It wasn't my husband's kiss of tender affection and smoldering desire. It was a kiss that melted me because I had never been kissed by anyone else.

He pushed me firmly against the wall and nibbled on my lower lip, his name on them as our mouths moved in a constant lock of human and immortal lust.

"Heath…"

"Heath." I exhaled, my eyes tightly shut while the memory passed.

Someone cleared his throat beside behind us and Heath startlingly turned about to see who was intruding on his alone time with me. Aro's intent gaze rendered both of us speechless.

"I remember what it was I wanted to say."

His small scowl went to me and my cheeks were bruised once again with blushes. Heath straightened, brushing off his shirt while goofily staring at me. He pivoted about and walked off in the direction where we had just come, people watching him with curiosity.

I nibbled at my lower lip finding it to not have the same feel as when Heath did it. But this was due to the fright I felt at the heat of Aro's intake of my position. He stepped a little closer to me and smiled brightly.

"I will take in the fact that this wasn't your idea and that it had been his. Young boys are raging with testosterone and so I only expected it from him. As long as you didn't enjoy it, there will be no consequences for you."

The whole hall had heard those words and at the second he spoke them, I was claimed as Aro's. No man would dare try and ask me on a date or attempt a conversation with me, save for a few, because of my new status with the head ancient. I dropped my head so as to watch my toes tap together in my heels. "I didn't like it." It was a lie and I was sure that Aro knew it, but he didn't say anything. I felt his lips on the top of my head as he kissed my hair, inhaling it like he hadn't ever done it before, and was gone towards his room where Heath awaited his fate.

But I was scared to death now. Truly scared. Because when I had kissed Aro, wishing to remember something from my past life, I didn't find anything. Yet, when Heath kissed me, I could recall something buried within me. With this knowledge, it was more than possible that Aro was lying. Maybe not about everything, but I surely hadn't been married to him and I most surely hadn't slept with him. I would have remembered. Things weren't adding up and it was only a matter of time before I found out the truth.

For now, though, I would keep a low profile and wait. Because I had waited for centuries and I wasn't about to give up the once chance I had to be with the man I loved, Corpus. Even if he wasn't alive, I was going to find out where his remains were and know for myself that I wasn't going insane. Then, I would go home and be happy again. This was if everything worked out.

And I had a feeling it wouldn't.

A/N: Admit it. That gave you butterflies. Did you like how kick-ass Lilly is? Which kiss did you like more? Aro's kiss or Heath's? Tell me what you think...