A/N: I told you I'd update quick, didn't I? Tension and hurt and angst and nothing is okay, because I love it. I promise, I'm not sadistic, not truly. I just love drama.

If none of you have realised it yet, these past few chapters, and ones to follow, are based of the Clovis arc of the The Clone Wars. And yes, it's all Padme's fault. So, hate on her all you like in this chapter, if you want, because she brought it on herself.

"Have you told him yet?" Padme frowned at her sister's impertinence. The way she was so blunt and straightforward reminded her remarkably of Anakin, and she both disliked it and yet admired it at the same time.

She replied with a question of her own, yet one she knew would have the exact same answer. "Have you spoken to dad yet?"

It was Sola's turn to scowl. "Your situation is completely different to mine," she rationalised. "I haven't seen dad since the wedding. Do you think this is going to be easy?"

The circumstances were completely different, Padme knew, and yet she couldn't help but retort, "You think I want to talk to Anakin about Clovis? You think this is going to be an easy conversation to have?"

The frown on her sister's face deepened, the crease in her brow becoming more and more noticeable, and her eyes narrowed into slits. "At least you know that Anakin loves you." It was a heart-wrenching thing to hear. Up until that moment, Padme hadn't realised how much her sister's broken relationship with their father had affected her.

Reaching out, she grasped her sister's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, accompanied by an equally reassuring smile. "Dad loves you Sola. You're his daughter."

She said nothing more on the matter and tugged her hand free. "If you don't tell Anakin soon, then I will."

That morning conversation was the reason that Padme was now in the bathroom, fluffing her hair and fiddling with the tiny straps of the sheer, pale blue chemise that her sister had given her for Christmas. It was a bit over the top, she knew, but Anakin was waiting for her in her room, and she needed to butter him up a bit before she could bring up the topic of Clovis. Catch him unawares, as it were. And, though she didn't want to admit it, she wanted to look good for him. A part of her recalled reading something in a trashy magazine at the airport that one way to show a man how much you loved him was to do little things like this, and though Padme never believed in such garbage, she thought it wouldn't hurt, especially not tonight.

Giving herself a once over, she fixed her hair so it curled nicely over her shoulders, gave herself a confident smile and strode into her room. Anakin was sitting on her bed, long legs stretched out, laptop resting on his thighs. An adorable frown marred his handsome features, and his tongue was between his teeth as he stared at the screen in deep concentration. He was so focused that he didn't even look up as she entered.

"Did you change your password?" he asked abruptly, still fixated on her laptop. "I can't get in."

She chuckled softly. "Yeah, it expired or something. It's the same, except all the e's are now 3's."

"Ah," his eyes lit up in recognition and he hurriedly began typing away. "Thanks." A satisfied grin soon crossed his face and he hummed, searching around on the bedside table for something. He still hadn't looked at her.

To rectify the situation, she softly called his name, a sensual sort of whisper that she only used when wrapped up in his arms, and it worked without fault. He lifted his head, and his eyes widened as he took in the sight of her. The blatant desire there would have made her self-conscious during the beginning stages of their relationship, as she never could have thought someone could look at her like that. But such looks were so common now that she almost puffed up with confidence. Yet, there was something different about the way he was regarding her. He tilted his head to the side, just a little, and his mouth fell open. Padme could practically feel the sweep of his gaze over her body, which responded as honestly as ever, so attuned to his hungry gaze.

"Wow." It was the only thing he seemed capable of saying. It pleased her that she could do this to him, render him speechless like this, as he had done to her so many times before with just a flash of those blue eyes.

Padme grinned and fingered the hem of her chemise, taking a few steps towards him. "Do you like it?" The way he was looking at her appeared to answer that question, but she wanted verbal confirmation.

Anakin swallowed, nodded and wet his lips with his tongue before replying, "I-it's... erm… very n-nice – " Padme crept forward slowly, until she was standing at the edge of her peer, beaming down at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "What's the occasion?"

She smirked and cocked her hip. "Do I need an occasion?"

Chuckling, Anakin shook his head. "Well, no. But I'd like to know what I did to deserve this," he gestured to her attire. "Y'know, so I can do it again." He winked at her and she shook her head at him, but was laughing all the same. "Is it new?"

"It's from Sola," she explained, reaching out to lightly touch his shoulder. He barely seemed aware of the contact, for his eyes were solely fixed on her body, seductively exposed to him behind thin, sheer material. They lingered on her chest, and she wondered if he could see her nipples hardening beneath, for a shudder ran up her spine that had absolutely nothing to do with the cold. Anakin reached out with his hand and touched the fabric, letting the silken material slip through his fingers.

"Well," he said, finally meeting her eyes again, though she could tell it took him a lot of effort. "Remind me to give her my thanks."

Giggling, Padme sat down beside him, running her hands over his chest and up to his clavicles where his skin was exposed from the collar. She bent closer to him, their faces inches from each other and smirked. "Why don't you show me your… appreciation," she purred, her thumbs rubbing over his jaw and brushing against his lips.

Anakin's eyes sparkled and his large hands rested on her hips as he closed the distance between them. Padme leaned into the kiss, her eyes fluttering closed as the softness of his mouth against hers, the way his hands slid up the delicate fabric, outlining the curves of her waist, skimming passed the swell of her breasts before tangling themselves in her hair. She shuffled closer, which was difficult as there was still her laptop resting on his knees, but somehow managed to throw her leg over his waist so she was sitting on his stomach.

She deepened the kiss, pulling him forcefully against her mouth by fistfuls of his hair, and he responded playfully, letting a hand fall down to her ass and gave it a squeeze. A little gasp of surprise escaped her at the unexpected action, causing Anakin to grin against her. It was all moving too slow. He kept his attention solely focused on her mouth. Normally, he would dip lower, suckling her neck and over her clavicles and she would know that he intended on having her, right there, at that very moment. But he didn't.

Frowning against his mouth, Padme decided she would need to instigate the whole thing if she wanted it to progress. It was an unusual experience for her. Anakin's desire for her was so strong that he could never keep his hands off her. It was always her job to keep things proper, for he had no qualms about ravishing her in public, wanting the whole world to know that she was his. So, she was a little confused by his sudden chastity. Still, when Padme wanted something, she went after it, and decided to take matters into her own hands.

Releasing a soft sigh, she rolled her hips against Anakin's, letting him know exactly what she wanted and ran her hands down his chest, trailing along his belly, before dipping underneath his pants. He jolted when her hand came in contact with his cock and pulled away from her, stilling her hand, staring into her eyes with a seriousness that surprised her.

"Padme…" he groaned, taking each of her wrists in his hands.

Huffing, she fixed him with a pout. "What?" It was all so confusing to her. He'd never acted like this before. Anakin released her hands and she crossed them over her chest, raising an eyebrow at him, demanding him to explain himself.

With a soft, amused smile, he traced her cheek delicately with his fingers. "Not now."

Instead of scolding him, Padme suddenly burst out with bewildered laughter, shaking her head at him. "I never thought I'd see the day…" Anakin smirked. "I'm right here, Anakin, and you…" her eyes drifted over to her table, and saw his box set opened, a disc missing, and suddenly it all made sense. "You just want to watch The Game of Thrones, don't you?"

He couldn't keep the grin off his face and ran a hand through his hair, sheepish and caught out. "It's… it's not that I don't – I'm just so behind. I – I have to know, angel." The begging tone of his voice, coupled with his affectionate name for her, pleased her for a strange, unknown reason. Perhaps because it made her feel like she was in control for once, and she liked it. She liked it a lot. "Please… please," he put his hands back on her hips, thumbs rubbing circles on his hipbones just as she liked. He was good, she gave him that. "Just one – or two, and then, I promise, angel, you'll have my undivided attention for the whole night."

She bit her lip, dragging out the pause, making him wait for it as she contemplated his request. "The whole night, hmm?" she questioned, bending to brush her lips against his jaw.

"The whole night," he promised, taking her chin in his fingers so he could look in his eyes.

Shrugging, she sighed in defeat. "Fine." The grin that broke out on his face was so wild and grateful that she couldn't help but laugh at him. "I swear I'm in a relationship with a child," she teased, rolling off him to sit beside him.

In response, he leaned over and kissed her quickly, a chaste, innocent kiss of she settled beside him, with his arm around her shoulders, she found she couldn't concentrate on what was happening on the screen. Her mind was preoccupied. She was frantically running through scenarios in her head of how she was going to bring up the Clovis issue. She didn't want to make Anakin upset, but Sola was right. He needed to know and she needed to be the one to tell him. It wouldn't do for him to hear it from someone else.

Thankfully, Anakin was oblivious to her inner turmoil, his sole attention focused on the screen. She watched him fondly, how he could possess such a childlike innocence sometimes. Mouth parted, eyes scarcely blinking, the only way Padme would be able to drag him away would be to physically turn his head. But she was glad. It gave her time to think. To sort things out in her mind before her emotions took hold and she ruined everything. Like she had with her father.

A part of her was a ashamed of how she had reacted the day before. Now that they had reconciled, she realised how silly and dramatic she had been acting. Her father was only being protective, it was his job after all. Really, she should be thankful that he reacted the way he did. Anakin didn't even have a father. At least Ruwee cared enough about her to get overprotective.

Two hours and two episodes later, and Anakin finally closed her laptop and put it away, before turning to face her. "There, you held up your end of the bargain," he whispered, leaning in to capture her lips. "Now it's my turn." As he showered her with affection, his mouth moving against hers in a familiar, sensual sweep of lips and tongue, she sighed heavily, and broke away.

"Anakin…" she began, unsurely. "I… I need to talk to you." He cocked his head to the side and she swallowed, before bravely continuing. "I haven't been completely honest with you."

He frowned, eyes narrowing, his expression growing hard. "What do you mean?"

Padme shifted uncomfortably beside him, not knowing the right way to go about this. Her sister was right, Anakin needed to know about Clovis. So, why did she feel so guilty about telling him?

"You know, yesterday morning? When Sola and I were in the living room?" She waited for him to nod before she continued. "Well, I lied to you. We weren't talking about family stuff. I… I received a letter…" she sighed heavily, casting her eyes to her lap. "From my ex-boyfriend."

The expression on his face was one she hadn't seen before, but immediately didn't like. Just the word seemed to affect him. She instantly regretted not telling him. But she couldn't stop now.

"Ex-boyfriend?" he growled through clenched teeth. "You've never told me about an ex-boyfriend before." This wasn't looking promising.

"His name was Rush Clovis," Padme told him, trying not to stutter over his name. Even just saying it aloud made her tense up. Though she was well and truly over him, the knowledge of what he had done to her, to her innocence, still troubled her. "We were together for two years, met in freshman year. He was studying law."

The comment only served to make Anakin more annoyed and he growled, low in his throat. "I suppose he was the kind of man your father approved of then, right?" The disdain was so clear it made her flinch.

"Ani…"

"Well? He was, wasn't he?" he snapped, clenching his fists and there was a deep anger resonating within him that worried her a little. He shouldn't be doing this. He didn't need to compare himself to Clovis when he was already leagues above him, in so many ways.

"Don't do this, Anakin," she said, miserably, reaching out her hand to unclench his fist and twine her fingers with him. "You know I don't care about things like that."

He didn't seem to hear her. "I'm such a fucking idiot," he cursed. "No matter what I do, your dad's never going to like me. I can't fill the shoes of a fucking Harvard law student. Who am I kidding?" He laughed, a cruel laugh, and it only deepened her worry for him.

"You don't have to fill anyone's shoes," she tried to reassure him, but he brushed her off. When he trained his eyes on her, they were more intense than she'd ever seen.

"I'm trying, Padme," he implored, strained. "I'm really fucking trying. I – I cut my hair… I'm not using my motorbike anymore – fuck, I even got Aayla to take me shopping, so that I can look the part. For you. For him."

His words broke her heart. He didn't need to do that. The last thing she wanted was for him to change himself, just to please her father. It wasn't fair. "Oh, Anakin," she all but sobbed, clutching the sides of his face to force him to look at her. "You didn't have to do that."

"But I did, didn't I?" he hissed. "It doesn't even matter, because no matter what I do, I can never be that. I can never be what he wants me to be."

Padme couldn't listen to another word of his self-pity. It was too much. With a soft cry, she kissed him violently, tugging roughly on his hair, wrapping it around her fingers as she pressed herself as close as possible to him. "You listen to me, Anakin Skywalker," she told him fiercely when they parted. "Don't you go comparing yourself to Clovis. Don't ever. Because you're so much more than he will ever be, Anakin. In so many ways. He…" she paused, took a breath, then continued. "He cheated on me, Ani."

A million different emotions swam in his eyes and yet, Padme could pinpoint every single one. Anger. Disgust. Jealousy. Despair. And yet, there was something else, almost a certain joy that Rush Clovis was not the perfect man he had conjured up in his head. That he had done something so despicable in Anakin's eyes, so disrespectful, and she saw him visibly swell with self-pride. He cupped her cheek, drawing his thumb lazily over her lips, regarding her through soft eyelashes.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. They were not the words that she had expected to hear leave him mouth, yet Padme was truly touched by his words. It was as though he knew how painful the experience had been for her.

Shaking her head, she gave him a small smile in return. "You have nothing to be sorry for," she told him.

"I don't like the idea of someone hurting you," he told her in a rough whisper, drawing her closer with his hand. His eyes were narrowed into slits. "I want to wring his neck. No one is allowed to hurt you. I'll never let anyone hurt you again, angel. I swear it."

His intensity shocked her. Laughing softly, to lighten the mood, she muttered, "Please don't. He's not worth it."

Anakin's tight, possessive grip on her hips told her that he didn't agree with her, and she was silently grateful that the two of them would never meet, because she had no doubt that Anakin could and would wring his neck.

"What did it say? The letter?"

"He…" Padme faltered. This was the part she had been dreading all along. How was she supposed to make this sound good to Anakin's ears when he was already acting so… protective? "He wants to catch up… and… talk."

Anakin scoffed. "Yeah, well that's not going to happen," he said firmly, a look of resolution on his face.

The finality of it all alarmed her. "Excuse me?"

"You're not going anywhere near that guy. I won't let you."

"Let me?" she cried in exasperation, not believing what she was hearing. Who was he to talk to her like that? "You don't decide what I do or who I see, Anakin. That's my choice. Not yours."

He remained firm. "I'm your boyfriend, Padme. As your boyfriend, I'm asking you not to see him. I demand it."

For the first time since they'd been together, she thought she might actually slap him. He couldn't talk to her like that. She wasn't his property. It made her blood boil. If Padme hated anything, it was being told what to do.

"You don't own me, Anakin," she hissed. "You don't have any right to tell me what to do."

He locked his jaw stubbornly. "You think I'm just going to let you go crawling back to this… Clovis… when he obviously wants to get back together with you?

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed. "Why would he want to get back together with me? He didn't even want to be with me when we were together!"

Anakin huffed. "A guy only contacts his ex after so long when he wants to get back together with them," he insisted.

Padme rolled her eyes, ruefully. "Right, so suddenly you're a relationship expert, are you?"

"No," he scowled. "I'm just not an idiot. And you're not going to see him."

She glared at him, suddenly furious. "I don't believe this. Even if Clovis does want to get back together, have you ever stopped to think that I don't want to get back together with him? I mean, can't you trust me?"

"T-trust?" Anakin blinked at her, throwing his arms up in the air, aggressively. The way he was staring at her, as though she was talking crazy, made her a little worried. "This has nothing to do with trust, Padme. This is me asking you to do something, and you flat out refusing!"

"This has everything to do with trust, Anakin," she insisted, reaching for his hands, trying to get him to calm down and talk to her rationally, without his emotions getting in the way. "If you can't trust me enough to see my ex-boyfriend, just to talk, then we have some serious problems."

He snatched his hands from hers, his expression venomous, but the hurt and betrayal was obvious there, swimming in his eyes. "Yeah, we do have a problem," he grumbled harshly. "The problem is you wanting to see him in the first place."

Padme groaned and put her head in her hands. Why was he so quick to think she would go running back to Clovis? Didn't he realised how much he meant to her? How much she loved him? "Yes, Ani. To talk. I never got an apology. I never knew why. Is that so difficult for you to understand?"

He leapt up from next to her, throwing his hands about wildly as he struggled to express himself. His mouth opened and closed a few times as he struggled within himself. Padme could almost hear his inner torment. "You… how can you – " he stammered, trying to keep his voice under control. It trembled with every word. "After what he did to you? Padme, he doesn't deserve shit. Why are you being like this? Aren't I enough?"

His words took her by surprise. There he was, all unsure and insecure before her and she felt incredibly guilty, because she was the one who had made him like this. "What are you talking about?" she cried, incredulous. "Ani, I love you. You know I love you."

"Then why are – how can you just - ? I'm asking you… begging you and you can't even…" he broke off and rested his forehead in his hands for a moment and sighed, a heavy slump of his shoulders. "I can't… I can't do this." And then, to her horror, he turned on his heel and made to leave, and suddenly, Padme was crawling forward towards him, reaching out to him.

"Wait… Ani, where are you going?" she called to him, feeling herself become overwhelmed with emotion.

He didn't turn around, just stopped in the doorway. "Home." Defeat rang in his words. "I just need to be alone right now."

"Anakin, you're overreacting. Please, come back to bed," she told him, begged him, because she couldn't end it like this, watch him leave like this. It wasn't right. She needed to make it right.

That seemed to get his attention. He whirled around, anger and hurt blazing in his bright, blue eyes, singeing her soul. "Overreacting? Padme, I…" he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "I love you. I love you more than my own life. I'd give you the world, if you asked it of me. But you…" when he opened them again, she whimpered at the agony swimming there, the agony she had caused. "You can't even do this one thing… for me." And then he was gone.