A/N: Note the rating change. This story is now M. The information about the Jedi (you'll know it when you see it below) is sourced from George Lucas himself and backed up by canon.

Chapter 44. Touch

Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life;
it supports them all, lends strength to them all
ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust.
― Marquis de Sade

Never underestimate the power of the forbidden.

In the early stages, when Darkness is doing its intoxicating dance between the Concerning and the Alluring, and a solid foundation of love is their dance floor, Self-preservation stands little to no chance of cutting in. Even the brightest among us has fallen victim to thinking this time will be different; the small voice of warning in the back of the mind will be wrong. When the misunderstood beast nuzzles his face under your palm alone, and you're drunk over your presumed power, you can almost be forgiven for thinking he will always bow to your caress. At least, this is what I pray. I gamble the damnation of my soul at the mercy of such forgiveness.

But I said at the onset where I'd be willing for my soul to go— for not even eternal judgment shall keep me from my beast.

One by one, I rolled the grapes around on my plate with a single, straightened finger. With their plump roundness and swirling coat of blue, white, and purple, one might think they looked more like marbles than anything which had grown from the ground. I pushed on one as a self-amusing test, just to be sure. It gave way, compressing precariously as it absorbed my pressure, then retracted thankfully back into its neat sphere shape when I set it free.

Hunched in my seat, my eyes lifted to scan the eerily silent cafeteria around me. The walls and ceiling were a dark gray. White tile canvased the floor. Circular tables devoid of inhabitants were scattered throughout with uncomfortable chairs as their accessory. I utilized the same hand I'd just used to terrorize a grape with to plop my chin into the cup of my palm. The vertical elbow underneath supported me from the white table. By my guess from the last time I'd seen a clock, it was somewhere between two and three in the morning.

I was exhausted. My efforts to keep away from both Anakin and Obi-Wan and from my own thoughts had run me ragged. Seeking distraction in temporary employment, I'd stayed so long with the engineers that I'd missed the hours for dinner service. There were other places to eat on the cruiser, of course, even another cafeteria I was reasonably sure the droids were still facilitating. But I'd chosen this one because I wanted to be alone. The chance that a member of the night shift— comprised of bridge operators, the maintenance crew, engineers, security patrols, and a host of others— might walk in was possible but slim. I didn't want to be the amiable Senator from Naboo right now. I wanted the quiet of solitude, even if it didn't come with the peace.

The ovens had long been shut down and the perishable food stowed away, but I'd managed to fill half a plate with pieces of colorful fruit. I had no complaints, although, I'd barely managed to eat what I'd scavenged. My stomach was subordinate to the effects released by the rest of my body.

{My life is separated into two eras: before you — not Qui-Gon— walked into Watto's shop, and everything that's happened thereafter. You're the benchmark, Padmé.}

{Don't you see? You're everything to me. You're everything.}

My ears replayed his words like the audio of a holomovie. My skin still felt the electrifying pressure from where his body had pressed against it. And my bloodstream… it ached to rage again, like a river which had discovered it was meant to charge and hasten yet had been hindered once more by my own damming.

None of my fantasizing from conference table chairs had prepared me for the actuality of what explosive desire with Anakin felt like. But as powerful as my draw to him was— both the physical and, more importantly, the emotional— it didn't override wishes and dreams which had existed since before I walked into that sandy junk shop.

I'd always known I wanted to be a mother. It wasn't a matter of if, but when. Although my political career was demanding and rewarding, there was never even a question that one day it would have to make room for the domestic life I wanted to have too. A family of my own was a dream delayed when a new Queen of Naboo asked me to stay on, but I'd never let it go.

On the wagon ride to Edum Bloom, I'd spoken to Anakin about my plans to have a husband and children. I was flexible in whatever form or fashion the universe might decide to bless me with such a family, but there was a truth I'd not brought up to my listener. Now, I was immensely grateful I'd innocently left it out. Arranged marriages, though somewhat going out of style, were not unheard of on Naboo. My own parents, a shining example of a couple meant to be, would have been introduced by way of an arranged marriage prospect if Fate hadn't intervened and allowed them to find their way to each other naturally first. My grandmothers, left out of Fate's mischievous conspiring, had designed a love match for their respective son and daughter. The fact that their hoped-for goal came to be via a different route than what they'd planned nevertheless imparted a lasting impression on me— arranged marriages sometimes get it exactly right.

Of course, sometimes, they get it very wrong. And I would much prefer to have a naturally unfolding love story the way my parents beautifully enjoyed it. But a history of such organized matches in my own family, and the reality that I've seen a great many happy Naboo couples united by such methods, meant it was never something I'd ruled out.

And then Anakin came back into my life.

I sighed into my hand, rubbing it up and down my face in the misery of my musings. I wanted to drag Fate down to rub its face in its mess.

An arranged marriage had always been an option. Tentative, in the background, but there. However, now I couldn't muster near enough faith that all matchmakers in the Chommell sector combined could find me a man who made me feel half as much as Anakin did.

If I had no ambitions to have children, I likely could've been persuaded into accepting his proposal, even with all the other odds and headaches stacked against us. But to knowingly volunteer myself for such a situation— to enter into it with at least an idea of what to expect— was to saddle my offspring to my dire choice without their say. The family values instilled in me since I was a girl reviled at a threatened life of secrecy, lies, and dimmed expectations. My children couldn't pick their father like I could pick my husband. It was my sacred duty on their behalf to lay the foundations of our home before it was built, and I owed it to them to get it right. In a way, I considered it my first act of a mother's love.

The then selfish act of pursuing a life of love with Anakin was not a luxury I could afford, but I could no sooner erase that desire than erase the stars in the sky and leave the nighttime canvas a barren black. Thus, abstaining would have to be my silent torment. I recalled the phantom parents I'd thought of at the massive Jedi funeral— how I envisioned myself scanning the HoloNet news articles for the rest of my life if I had ever handed my own child over to the Order; how I would hold my breath every time I saw a headline about a Jedi casualty. I would join their ranks now and do the same for Anakin, secretly spending the rest of my days using official and unofficial news avenues to stay attached to him from afar. As for the father of these future children I was already trying to prioritize… well, that would have to be a headache to ponder on another night.

Somberly, I bypassed the grapes and eyed the yellow fruit on my plate. It looked delectable enough. I had skipped lunch and missed dinner. There would be more work to do tomorrow— as an actual public official this time, not as a makeshift intern. I picked up my fork and knife to slice apart the large fruit.

Until it moved.

My spine was suddenly a straight line. To my shock, I watched the golden produce tip to the side before levitating right off its nest on my plate. It danced a few inches above the dish only for a couple seconds before what was happening registered, and then my eyes darted up to ransack the area around me.

I spotted him several tables away on my left, standing by a pillar, cast in shadow. I'd never even heard him come in; I had no idea how long he'd been watching me.

When our eyes met, a lazy smile on his face grew, but the eyes were dark and brooding. My body reacted instantly at the sight of him separate from my conscious mind, as if the antidote to its coagulated blood flow had rapturously been administered. His human fingers moved in the air like they were playing an instrument. My fruit sailed through the space towards him, albeit far more clumsily than the shuura he'd once plucked from my plate. I faintly wondered if the difference between trying to do the maneuver with his left hand instead of his now artificial dominant one hindered him. The working ways of the Force in such matters, like many others, were unknown to me.

The parcel ultimately delivered itself to its new owner. I wasn't sure if he was going to eat it, trash it, or hurl it back at me like it was a sports ball. I should've known better than to guess, though, when he dug into it with his own thumbs, splitting it apart. I saw a short rain of juice spill to the floor in front of one of his brown boots.

He looked up and eyed me, as if making sure I was ready. I sat frozen in my chair, hypnotized by him. I'm not sure I really had a choice in the matter either way.

Anakin kept hold of one piece in his mechanical hand but began the aerial process of returning the other. It dipped and halted a few times in its course, but the pilot never let it fall. When the fruit slice neared, as if by habit, my right hand reached up from my lap to touch the metal utensil next to my plate where I'd abandoned it. I made contact only for a split-second before a warning voice growled out across the cafeteria.

"Leave. The fork. Down this time."

My hand relinquished its grip on the utensil as if it had burned me.

Now the voice was quieter, though no less commanding. It snaked its way over the tile.

"Open your mouth."

I switched my focus from the impatient piece of fruit newly hovering six inches from my face to the eyes hunting me meters away. My lips were a firm line as I held his stare defiantly.

Then a vixen's voice from within urged me to comply. I slowly parted my lips and made enough space between my teeth.

Anakin was too busy concentrating now to carry his previously ominous look, but there was a display of triumph that lived on his features long enough for me to consider gating my mouth shut again.

I kept my eyes on him even as I saw the golden fruit come nearer in my periphery. Its sweet, textured skin touched my bottom lip first. He didn't seem to be in any rush, but his toy began to tremble in the air with unbalance. He took a single step forward, his frown of focus deepened, and the shaking stopped.

He slowly dragged the food towards the back of my mouth until there was enough inside for me to sink my teeth into it. I had to coat my lips around the bite and suck to keep the juice from spilling down my chin. Boldly, my eyes remained fixated on the puppeteer's.

Anakin watched and waited as I swallowed, then he fed me the rest of my half as leisurely as if we had all the time in the galaxy. When the last of it was gone, I broke eye contact and picked up a nearby napkin, dabbing it at my lips. One would think that wasn't the first time I'd been Force fed fruit. The calm appearance of ladylike decorum belied the racing pulse underneath.

He left his shadow mark by the pillar and initiated long strides towards my table. I listened to his boots cross as I set my linen tidily by my plate. A chair scrapped against the floor noisily as he pulled it away from the rounded edge directly opposite me. It wasn't his fault the sound echoed— in such a massive, industrial space with no other dwellers to fill it, every movement became a concert broadcast to an empty auditorium.

I lifted my eyes from my napkin when I could no longer ignore the heat of his stare. We regarded each other across the table wordlessly. I didn't know if he was angry I'd left his cabin so abruptly, angry that I'd rejected his proposal, angry that I included his prophecy as a reason to, or angry that the ship was full of fish because of me. Likely, it was all of it.

He put his forearms on the table and leaned forward. The mechanical one landed with a noticeably louder, heavier thunk. We both ignored it. "Have you changed your mind?"

Straight to business then.

Despite his show at an apathetic if tense exterior, there was a flash of hopeful vulnerability in his expression he failed to conceal.

I sat back in my chair and place my hands on the curved armrests. "No." In the resulting silence, I rolled my tongue between the dividing line of my lips. I could still taste the fruit's tangy aftermath. "I should've guessed you'd find your way here, with your appetite."

That lazy smile dragged his lips up again. He looked at me like he was about to Force throw the table out of the way and stroll over to my chair. "And which incurable appetite of mine would we be talking about?"

Heat rushed to my cheeks, but I refused to retreat from his eye.

"I crossed paths with Jurue." Anakin tilted his head at me. "Had an interesting conversation with him."

I bit the inside of my cheek. While searching for distractions today, the thought had crossed my mind to seek out Jurue's company to go over reports— for all of two seconds, before thinking better of it.

"Was this meeting happenstance, or did you seek him out?"

Anakin grinned and leaned back in his chair, mimicking my own position right down to placing his arms on the supports. "I wanted to meet this man I hear the Senator from Naboo keeps spending all her time with." He paused. "He seems to think you're going to make an amazing Supreme Chancellor one day."

I frowned, surprised the topic had come up between the men. "He said that?"

"Suffice to say, you'll have his support."

This wasn't the first time I'd heard of such a notion. Others had openly wondered— some innocently, some not— if Palpatine was grooming me to one day take over his position the same way I'd stepped in to fill his previous role as Senator. Jurue, indeed, had himself encouraged me to consider the idea, if the time came.

"It's a lot harder to hide a family when you're at the top of the chain of command." Anakin's expression darkened. He seemed to drop his performative act of indifference. "Is that what all this is really about? I get in the way of your political ambition?"

I pushed back my chair and rose, hurt and insulted. "That's unfair and you know it." I picked up my plate and starting walking to the dirty dish outlet located several meters away. It would take the plate and wash it on a conveyor belt on the other side of the cafeteria wall.

Shortly after I began heading towards my destination, I heard Anakin's own seat push back. His boots stomped after mine across the floor.

"You certainly have a type, milady. Dark hair. Curls. Interest in politics." His ever-nearer voice called out to me over my shoulder. "Tell me, does he have an interest in art school as well?"

I had to stop myself from slamming the plate down into the receptacle. "It wouldn't matter if he did. I told you, he's just a colleague." I turned on my heel to walk away, but Anakin was already there in front of me. He glared at me under eyes hooded by his brows.

"Now I understand, milady. You want to keep your options open." I moved to my right, barely avoiding a graze of his shoulder. I saw the open, wide door to the cafeteria far away on the other side of it. "Tell me." Anakin was suddenly back in my vision. He'd used his lengthy stride not only to catch up and put himself in front of me, but to aptly herd me in the direction of a nearby table. I backed up into it, and he cornered me in with his wide step and larger frame.

"Does he make you feel the way I make you feel?"

I shot my chin up unsubmissively. His behavior was already inappropriate, but my heart pounded with disloyal excitement. That roaring, invigorating feeling of being alive had returned. "And in what way is that?"

He smiled, clearly pleased that I'd asked. A strategic master of our seductive dance, he knew to suspend the moment out, until he finally, pointedly quoted, "Uncomfortable."

'A man of intensity' is a line reserved by many but deserved by few. As Anakin continued to showcase his earned title while he dragged his eyes over my lips, the little voice in the back of my head warned I'd passed the point of playing with fire. I was now standing in the flames so blindly that I couldn't see Anakin was already there too. If both of us were burning, who could possess the ability to put it out?

The craven desire to put my hands on his face and resume the kisses I hadn't and could never forget was maddening. Searching for sanctuary, I took a step away from him. The back of my thighs hit the edge of the table once more. He reacted by moving closer in, tightening the window. He looked like a man who exhaled sin.

My lungs strained to inhale his air.

"You said your body belongs to me," he whispered in a low voice. There was a subtle but present shake to it. "I can understand the sentiment well."

"And you said you love me because of my eyebrows."

His demeanor didn't change. His voice was unapologetic. "You asked me if I love you. A ridiculous question deserved a ridiculous answer."

"At least I've said it," I charged, immediately cringing inwardly after. I sounded like a schoolgirl keeping accounting tabs on her crush. But the indignation was already wildly free, and truthfully, it had bothered me that he hadn't said yet. They were three words in comparison to the mountain of existing evidence proving how he felt, but on an irrational level, I still wanted to hear them. "I've already lost count of how many times I've told you I love you. Can you say the same?"

My words and pathetically vulnerable tone made him halt. He blinked, as if unaware of what his omission had inflicted and surprised to realize this was the case. I watched the emotions play out, culminating in a hard expression that nevertheless reflected the weight of the moment. He inhaled deeply, his chest expanding as he prepared to declare words I was supposed to rejoice in hearing.

"Don't," I quickly rushed. "Don't. Not like this. I don't want to hear you say it as something to hurl at me in the middle of a fight."

For a few precious seconds, there was humor in his eyes. "Is that what this is? Our first fight?"

"It's hardly our first."

Anakin chuckled and my heart fluttered. "That's probably true."

"Probably?"

He sighed, the levity gone. "Must you argue with me on everything? Fine. Fight me on everything, all of it." He stilled again. He began to look at me more imploringly. When he spoke, his timbre had weakened, grown more strained. "Just don't, don't fight me on this. Don't fight me on us. Surrender to this one thing, and I'll let you tell me I'm wrong for the rest of our lives."

He moved towards me, placing his feet on either side of mine. My own shoes were conveniently pressed very near together in my stance, allowing the tips of his boots to rest on their outsides. He tilted his head in towards mine at an angle, but I only felt delicious, warm air as his mouth hovered an inch above my lips. "Padmé," he breathed, ache and longing in his voice swirling around me like a love potion.

"I can't," I sighed through a wince. My grasp on the domestic future I was trying to salvage grew tenuous.

Anakin moved his nose up and around mine, never grazing but coming intoxicatingly close. "Can't you share some of your soul with me?" His voice was music. A sea siren in a Jedi's tunics. "I promise, I won't need much of it."

The look in his eyes communicated this was an absolute falsehood. Of all his epic promises, he'd vowed the one he knew he couldn't keep even if he wanted to. When it came to Anakin and me, there were no such things as filled quotas. Not with each other. I didn't hold this against him; there was no doubt in my mind I would be unsatisfied with the idea of sharing his soul with any other as well.

With a level of primal, possessive propriety, I wanted to be the ruinous cause of all his mistakes, just as he was sure to be to mine. I fought for equilibrium. I gripped the table behind me for an anchor, then I pulled my head back and pointedly turned it away from him. I stared at the cafeteria door, terrified that I'd forgotten how public our pocket standoff was.

He froze at my dismissing aversion, his torso leaned forward, his head still inclined. Silence dragged on while I thanked whatever deity had made it so that no one had walked in on us yet.

I swallowed and used a nod of my head to indicate the open door only meters away across a quiet space. "Anakin, not here. It's too dangerous. Someone will see."

I shuddered as I realized the possible interpretation of my words. If he took them as a sign that I would be willing to continue this somewhere else, somewhere private, I wasn't sure I'd have the wherewithal not to follow him out.

"You're afraid."

My head snapped back towards his, and I met his eye questioningly. "What?"

He took a step backwards, gracing us both with needed space. "You're afraid. You're afraid of what the Senate will think, you're afraid of what the Jedi will think; afraid of what every human, Gungan, Bothan, Twi'lek, and Togruta will think. Afraid of what everybody is thinking and feel about it, except for the two people at the center of—"

"This is not fear, Anakin." The plasma which had melted my bones in his proximity solidified. "This is strength!" I stared back at him furiously. The truth of my words burned a completely different fire through my body. "Do you have any idea how much strength it takes to resist you? To resist your proposal?" I nodded emphatically, continuing, "Yes. I was afraid— before the arena. I had my moments of weakness. I mourned Cordé and the others, and I took on too much blame. I ran away from my feelings for you because I was afraid." I straightened my back and regarded him unflinchingly. "This is not me cowering from how I feel about you. This is me being strong enough to say no— even to you— when you're asking me to go down a path that will break my heart."

As I bore into Anakin's eyes, willing him to understand, I saw the first moment of true fear there. He seemed to sense that the combined strength of Padmé Amidala was a far more formidable foe to his efforts to persuade me of anything than the weak version of either. As important as that night had been, this was not someone who could be resolved by holding her while she cried, telling her insightful words, and presenting her with a lantern.

My tone softened as beseeching replaced resistance. "I'm not trying to diminish the way we feel about each other. I'm only saying what I said at the beginning. It's not possible." I hated myself and the words even as I said them. "It isn't enough."

The man who'd told me multiple times that this was everything set his features into a scornful look. It twisted his face beyond recognition. "You're so sure that it will destroy us that you won't even try."

"I wasn't the only one by the fire who followed through to that conclusion— you were just as sure that it will destroy us. Those were your words."

"That was back when falling in love was apparently regarded as a rational choice. A decision." He took a step back and ran a shaking human hand through his hair. A frustrated, manic grin still uncalled for in its level of sex appeal drew his cheeks up. "I'm beginning to think you're the cosmic payback for all the patience I wrung out of Obi-Wan over the years."

I stiffened. "I am not a pawn piece between you, Obi-Wan, and the universe."

"This wouldn't have anything to do with your parents' marriage, would it?"

I balked, then froze. "Why would you even say that?"

His brows drew down again as he took on an investigatory air. For a moment, I saw the interrogative side of Padawan Skywalker that those who got in the crosshairs of him and his Master must've seen. "You told me about their arranged marriage. Or did you forget about sharing that detail on the walk to your house?"

{My grandmothers knew each other well, and they actually plotted to get my parents together in an arranged marriage. They were more surprised than anyone when they found out the two had met and already fallen in love.}

Damn me for forgetting Anakin hung on my words far better than I did.

He took a step closer. There wasn't a movement of expression on my face which wasn't seen by his examining eye. "Do you still want to tell me Jurue Batar is just a colleague?"

I leaned slightly backwards against the table to avoid his domineering frame. Despite my defiant stare, I marveled with shock at my body's mutinous response to him. Heat was forming in primal regions. My stomach was clenching and my breath rate increasing. I felt my bones liquefying again. The only thing which appeased me, and yet wound me up even more, was witnessing a mirroring disposition in him.

My eyes darted in the direction of the open door. Gods help me, I couldn't make myself break the spell.

Anakin used his low voice to draw my attention back to his eyes. They simmered at me from an intersection somewhere between the heavens and hell. "You aren't built for a loveless, arranged marriage, Padmé."

Recklessly, as I had no true desire to prove him wrong or inflame his jealousies, I still couldn't help myself from countering, "Not all arranged marriages are loveless. The matching of my parents proves that—"

Anakin smiled like I'd made a crass joke. "You don't want a man served to you on a plate any more than I want to watch it happen." I was leaning back now at a full diagonal. My arms were supporting me on the table in bent arrows behind my rear. He bent forward and placed his hands flat on the surface on either side of my skirt, his thumbs just barely missing the fabric. He hovered his face an inch in front of mine. The Padawan braid swung between us like a pendulum of fate.

"You have a fire inside you need to let breathe. I know you do." Glazed eyes funneled into mine. He was right. We both knew it. Anakin could take my feral loneliness and turn it on its head with a single touch. The yearning for it undid my veneer. I looked at him as a woman parched, and he fed me a careful distance of salt. "You just need to let the right man—"

"You seem to have a bounty of confidence that that's you," I shot back with renewed grit, as if it wasn't plainly obvious what affect he was having on me. Not for the first time, I remembered that the Jedi Order was not a celibate one. Dormé hadn't gotten her crude joke about their lightsabers out of thin air, though as far as I knew, it wasn't from her own personal examinations.

Jealousy, a bedeviled fire I had never been afflicted by in my life, licked at the insides of my rib cage, burning the organ within. I didn't want to think about where Anakin had picked up his impressive kissing skills and other seduction techniques— or, rather, with whom.

I eyed him with challenge. "I wonder where all this confidence comes from."

He seemed to waver, staring back at me with grounded insecurity. I watched a decision come together behind his pools. This wasn't easy for him to discuss either, but he was trying to. For my sake. "Is there a question you'd like to ask me, Padmé?"

I pushed the words through before I could change my mind. "Does all this confidence come from intimate experience?"

His lips turned down in disappointment, like I was a foolish child, but they evened again when he saw the delicate wariness in my eyes. I loved him unconditionally, and that wouldn't change, no matter what answer he gave. But that didn't mean I didn't prefer one reply over another. I wouldn't exactly be cheerful to share his body with phantom women from the shadows of his past.

He imbued that signature intensity. "I told you. Not a day has gone by, Padmé. Not a single day. There's been no one else. There could never be anyone else. I've thought about you every day since we've parted." His lips turned down again even as my heart swelled.

I gazed at him from our exposing and thrilling position on the table— me tilted back against it; Anakin's palms supporting his crouch as he leaned over my unwanted escape; his legs straddling mine in a wide stance. "You're telling me all of this, all of your—" I didn't know how to put the effects he evoked in my body into polite words for conversation. I hoped my expression and the context clues of the moment could say it for me. "Is instinctual?"

He sighed and looked at me seriously. The seduction dance had paused for an adult talk.

"I… listened to advice from the many others who are experienced. The Jedi Order doesn't allow for attachments, but that doesn't mean they don't allow for… enjoyments." A hint of that former shyness I used to see so often returned. "Some… tips and techniques get shared almost as often as dueling techniques. Unlike these, ah, givers of advice, I knew I'd have a wife one day I hope to please. I took their knowledge in, and they assumed I was putting it into practice; I never told them otherwise and let them believe what they wished." The timidness floated away, and his eyes blackened again. "I listened very closely to what they shared. But that doesn't mean I don't have my own imagination as well."

My mouth went dry as another area grew wet. If I'd just understood him correctly, Anakin had stored a plethora of Jedi's adult guidance for the sole purpose— a man of his attentive caliber— of wanting to practice and perfect it all on me.

For better or worse, I didn't have a chance to dwell on this electrifying thought when he next added, "It's not as if Jedi aren't propositioned by lonely souls of the galaxy. Though, we receive less offers than I imagine a beautiful and influential politician might."

My chin dropped, and I fixed him a look.

"Careful," I warned, using his own phrase from earlier against him. After a moment, though, my eyes softened. How could they not, when his were gazing into mine with such fragile fear? His extremely poorly phrased remark was actually a question. "I haven't… I haven't been touched like that either. And…" I blushed and looked down at the floor. "I might have also listened with extra attention to my handmaidens who are, like your friends… more experienced than myself."

"Look at me."

My focus rose. His eyes scanned mine deeply, searching for any sign of deceit. He found none.

I didn't blame him for searching. As a twenty-four-year-old apparently physically pleasing woman in a powerful position, it's not as if matches of the scandalous or advantageous variety hadn't been insinuated my way. I'd turned them all down. But there were many Senators, many different cultures— some more open about their exploits than others. Exploits even the Jedi might have heard about.

My jealous fire withered and died; the highest levels of flattery took its place. With this divulged honesty, a sweetness palpably endeared us to each other, made our love story that much more tender, and we gazed at each other lovingly for some precious moments. Then the innocent sweetness faded away, as we both seemed to shift back into our tense poses. We remembered our grownup hunger, tested and proven merely hours ago in his cabin. Possibilities to put his research into his own experience and mine were just a few decisive words away.

"Do you feel that? This pull between us? This spark?" He studied me closely. He saw the confirmation in my eyes without me making a sound. "That's because I own you, and you own me."

I titled my chin up. "No one owns me."

"Then walk out of the cafeteria. Right now."

I didn't move.

Time stretched on as we stared at one another. My heart pounded with the fear of discovery but also with the vivacious thrill of the moment. One of the corners of Anakin's lips rose. "Some would call that a deafening silence."

Moving with precise slowness, I pressed the back of my thighs up against and over the edge of the table. As smooth as silk, I slid backwards till my legs hung off the rim. Anakin watched me, transfixed. If a sibling from the red beast of the arena barged into the cafeteria at that moment, I doubt he would've taken his eyes off of me. They flickered down to my knees as I spread them from clinched closed to a forearm's length apart, though everything between was still hidden by my long skirt. It wasn't lost on either of us that I was reenacting the sit I'd been in when he'd lifted me onto his stateroom table. I was calling his bluff as ardently as he was trying to call mine.

I peered back at him in my pattern of disobedience. "I would argue, the fact that I'm disobeying your order to leave proves—"

I stopped talking when he suddenly surged forward, putting all his weight to his palms spaced out on either side of my thighs. He came within an inch of my mouth with his. I watched, entranced, as his eyes fluttered open and closed like a man on the verge of losing control. Hot breath caressed my skin. "Why are you fighting this, kujula?"

I rummaged my fogged brain for familiarity with the word but came up with nothing. It sent a warm shiver down my spine regardless. My mouth opened and my lids grew heavy with lust.

"Say yes, Padmé. Say yes, and we'll celebrate right here on this table so loudly, we'll wake up the whole fleet." Blue eyes dragged across my parted lips. Our breathing was obscene in its unabashed texture.

My body shook with want so hard I gripped the edge of the table till I thought the skin of my knuckles might split. I wanted to rake my nails into his shoulders, hear his growls in my ear as he commandeered mewling, wanton cries from me. I wanted to break in his arms only to be made whole once again immediately after.

But a voice in the back of my mind told me this wasn't it; this wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Yet my body was still reacting to him, and so I gasped more than spoke, "I-I'm tired, Anakin. I n-need sleep." I was beyond caring that my voice rattled so much— I was flummoxed that I was still capable of talking.

His eyes traveled down and back up my body, sending another quiver through me. They met mine again and locked them in their trance. I saw his tongue move against his lips as he replied, "Lucky sheets."

My hold grew weaker. My blood was an inferno scorching its way through my system.

But Anakin wasn't done reducing me to shrivels yet. "I wonder, if I were to pass by your cabin, if I could picture you lying there in your bed." His smile flickered up again. "It wouldn't be the first time."

I swallowed and parted my lips again, famished. Both of our breaths were coming out hoarsely. I felt I was surely going to die if he didn't kiss me. Life was the mouth a narrowing distance from my own.

"My door's pin code is 1138 if you change your mind."

With that, he abruptly pushed himself up and back from the table. Cold air surrounded me. Anakin straightened and gave me one last heated look before turning and striding out of the cafeteria. He walked casually, as if he hadn't just turned a fully grown woman into a puddled mess.

Adrenaline made my body shake, but I otherwise stayed still until he was out of sight. Only after he rounded the door did I plaster my hand across my heart, marveling at the speed of its frenetic pace. I looked down at my own body— my chest, my waist, all the way down to my knees hanging over the edge of their precipice. The vessel I'd lived in and operated for twenty-four years no longer felt like my own, but it savaged me with its reactions nonetheless.

I lifted my gaze again and stared at the empty door. I was equal parts desperate and terrified that he would come back. We had slipped into an obsession with each other from which we would never recover. The reality of this became even clearer as I listened to the rapid thundering of my heart once more, absolutely bowled over by an impossible fact, given my heightened state:

From the moment I'd seen Anakin by the pillar to the moment he walked out, we'd never even once touched.