AN:

Cheire – Yeah exactly, and the longer things are left unsaid, the worst he feels it'll be.

Sun – Aww I'm sorry! I promise I'm including their next chat! Yeah Ani is not entertaining Clovis even for a second!

Angie – Yeah she probably could've been nicer about it haha. Yes what Anakin thinks is protecting the ones he loves is really just him trying to control situations he can't.

Guest – Yes exactly! Both love the way they know how. That's awesome to hear that you've re-read this story many times! Thank you!

Give In To Me

She always takes it with a heart of stone

'Cause all she does is throws it back to me

I've spent a lifetime looking for someone

Don't try to understand me

Just simply do the things I say

After smoking a cigarette downstairs, Anakin came back up. He shoved his lighter into his pocket and walked straight into the kitchen. He grasped Padme's wrist, taking the spatula out of her hand and placing it on the counter.

"Look at me." He said softly.

"Anakin–" She tried averting his gaze. She closed her eyes, hating the weakness, the surrender overcoming her once she felt his warm, slender fingers holding her in place with a dangerous softness, an inferno, a masculine caress, disarming.

He looked deeply into her eyes. "I'm sorry. I should've told you. And. . .I promise next time someone offers me cash, I'll take it."

His face brightened with the smirk of a rebel, to distract, to pull her in. But she sealed her own amusement beneath a heavy heart. No jokes, no games – he couldn't get through like this. He could tell that she could not allow herself to laugh. Her delicate features were shaded by profound burdens. He wanted to disperse them all, rush her to peace.

It was too much in one day. Clovis returning, bringing up old trust issues. Finding out about her own sister and how they dragged Anakin into the mix. She did not want to find out that he too wasn't who she thought he was. She didn't want them to take away what is pure in her life now and foil the magic that made her infatuated with life again. They had surrounded him with trickery, backed him into a corner. She understood that. But still, she could not prevent an old shadow emerging, and she reacted with a distrust, positioning her smack-dab in the middle of old traumas with the wolves of perfidiousness.

Of course her and Anakin were newly married at the time but she needed him to not be afraid to tell her things. Let her switch a light on in the darkness, through the cries, the trapped breaths, the convoluted cages of the culture.

His mischievous streak wore off under a calm awareness as he studied Padme's face with sincere interest. He admired her strength but he wanted to solve the problem – and she wanted to let him.

"I don't mean to keep secrets from you. It's just. . .it has nothing to do with us. Who cares if there's yet another person who didn't want us together... We're still going strong." He looked down at her lingeringly and saw her expression unclench, softening against his fingers that cradled the sides of her face.

"But she's my sister, Anakin." Padme groaned with a restlessness, wanting to pull away but at the same time wanting to stay in his arms. "My sister."

She still couldn't quite follow the unexplained track, the tangled landscape, the relation. How could her and her sister act so differently when push came to shove?

"I know." Anakin soothed. "But. . .it's better to have someone who cares and messes up, than be surrounded by people who don't care at all."

Padme shook her head, defiant. "I'm not talking to her."

"You don't have to." He buried his fingers in her hair behind her ears, craning her neck back to look him in the eye. There's something so soothing about his hands in her hair. "Take as long as you like." He could evoke a ceasefire with that gentleness and this ability he had to be so tender in the most manic way – it led her to blind faith. He caught the glimpse of a smile forming; she was warming up to him. She felt his smiling lips against her cheek.

She couldn't stay mad at him. There was no rhyme or reason to love sometimes. It would just magically make victory seem not so out of reach.

"So..." He moved to kiss the crook of her neck, and her eyes fell closed. His head swiveled round to nibble on one ear after the other. His lips painted comforting kisses along her jaw. "Are you done being mad at me?" His sweet, sensual whispers blanketed her in lace and silk, and that sickening ability to romanticize everything had won.

She nodded, giving into what tingles, seduces, what made her enamored with this physical, emotional, overflowing intimacy. She accepted his mouth as soon as it found hers.

In between this lavish brushing of the lips, a heat bloomed, consuming, quick, lucid, and he breathed into her mouth, "Now tell your friend Clovis to leave you alone."

She pulled away from the kiss and sighed, placing a hand to his chest, assuringly. "Clovis isn't here for me. He wouldn't come all the way down here after all this time just to track me down."

He tipped her chin up with his finger, not leaving much room between their faces. "I would."

She wanted to roll her eyes at what makes him extreme, cocky, ineffable, not subtle. "That's because you're crazy."

He carefully scooped up all of her hair, moving it behind her shoulders. He smirked, and she felt him guiding her to dreamland with incendiary hands. Hands that rub, rupture, and inflame as they glide down her back to her hips. Forest fires were rising in her, lowering her defenses.

He tugged at her skirt, dragging her closer. "You like it."

A shy grin graced her lips as she playfully slapped his chest. He angled his head to kiss her, and just before their lips touched, they both found themselves mirroring each other's giddiness – a giddiness that takes her higher, flying with optimism, free; the core is touched, weightless and full when she's with him.

"Did you think about the offer?"

Padme's head shot up at the sound that sliced through her ears – Clovis' baritone voice loomed over her desk.

"Clovis, how'd you get in here?" She quickly stood, trying to spot the receptionist desk through the glass door. "Where's Hermione?"

"Who?"

"Hermione Bagwa! The receptionist!"

"The young blonde? She's having a cigarette out back." Clovis jerked his thumb in that direction before taking a seat. "Now did you give it some thought?"

Padme sat down and gathered scattered papers she was reading in one place, too busy to hike up this hill. There were too many spikes on the trail that might nudge her impoliteness today. "I told you, Clovis, I'm not coming back. And I don't think you should come around here anymore."

"Yeah, about yesterday, I came to apologize. I put my foot in my mouth sometimes." He pulled out a long, thin grey case from his jacket pocket and plopped it on the desk. "I brought you a peace offering."

"What is this?" Padme folded her arms, her posture tough and distant.

"Open it."

Padme reluctantly picked up the case and flipped it open. The sparkle of a gold bracelet had her recalling used-up apologies. A jaded familiarity played on her face.

She shut the case, a quick snap, a rejection. "Clovis, I can't accept this."

"Why?"

"Because it's inappropriate." She shot back, armed with frankness.

"It's just a gift from a friend." He adjusted the lapels of his jacket.

Her deeper instinct clawed through, a blow to his reason. The sting of doubt compelling her not to lay down her armour, wary of snake-like webs.

"Clovis." She warned, her tone strict. "I'm married."

"So this is about the husband..." He concluded, blasé about it all. He then leaned against the table, his fingers splayed on the surface. "Padme, don't dismiss the job so quickly. It's a great career move. And you can tell your husband we won't even be working closely together."

Padme sensed his eyes pressuring her without looking up. It felt like rain thrashing down, no umbrella to endure adversity.

Her silence prepared him to leave. The quiet thumps of his shoes fading on his way out.

"Take the bracelet." She called after him, shaking it in his direction.

"It's a gift." He raised his palms, without looking back, feigning innocence as he approached her door.

"Clovis!" She said, frustrated. "I'll return it!"

"Fine by me." His words faintly fluttered through the room as if supported by the sun rays from the window, they traveled through the narrow gap settling inside before the door shut behind him.

Dorme stood in the doorway, glancing behind her and back to Padme, befuddled. She and Padme exchanged a look and she sensed the uneasiness in the room. There are always symbols, undertones, distinctions... A lot is revealed in the quiet.

"What was that all about?"

"Clovis being. . .Clovis." Padme said resentfully, resting her forearms on the desk, hands holding opposite elbows.

Dorme sauntered around Padme's desk and sat on the edge. Padme's desk was never this untidy; clearly her mind was elsewhere. Amid the disordered files, Dorme spotted the jewelry case. The shiny item dangled in her hand. She raised her forehead, slightly regaled, slightly deadened.

The expression on Padme's face was vague, wrapped in an ill silence that didn't bring anyone any good.

Dorme let out a huff. "You know how to pick 'em."

Padme's chuckle was hollow. There was a frost of reluctance around her desk. "He wasn't always this–"

"–obnoxious?" Dorme finished her sentence for her and this time she got a more genuine laugh out of her friend.

Padme let her thoughts climb in with the history, the misrepresentation untying inside her, stripping it all down to the nitty-gritty.

"When I met him, he was already working at Palpatine Law Firm, and his ambition was inspiring. He set out to build the career he wanted and he did it. He's great at what he does and we made a good team. I guess I mistakenly thought that meant we'd make a good team in every aspect... Clovis got sucked into the limelight and then everything else came second."

She had come a long way from accepting mediocrity in her personal life and only demanding excellence in her professional life. Now she dared to dream like an illusionist, trailblazing. And the young girl who was once naïve and immobile no longer remained in bondage to propriety.

Knowing what she knew now, she realized she didn't actually know what love was back then. She cared for Clovis, loved him in a love-the-one-you're-with sense, respected him as a lawyer and admired his career. But it wasn't until Anakin that she understood love in a real, substantial way.

The unquenchable closeness, visceral, liberating power of being in love, and the strength it gives you, the bravery it casts, its snowflake freshness, its golden sunlight driving you to a heightened reality, where you add meaning to your life. It can't be taken; it must be earned.

Anakin taught her that there's so much more to life, to embrace the crazy, the danger; be nomadic, revolutionary, invent happiness anywhere, demand that the joys of imagination become a reality, create your own rules – and believe, with an unrealistic intent, that you can do so.

And others may pity their passion, but they didn't care. He worships her and she worships him.

"Sorry, sweetie." Dorme gave an exaggerated sigh. "I can't play the violin for you. Somehow you still go for bad boys knowing what you know."

"Anakin isn't a bad boy. He just has a small problem respecting authority."

"Small." Dorme nodded, mockingly.

Padme chose to ignore the ridiculing tone; her eyes journeyed back to the bracelet. She observed Dorme fiddling with it still. "You want it?"

Dorme's brow arched. "Me walk around wearing this? With my luck I'll get robbed."

Anakin found the reception desk empty as he made his way over to Padme's office. His knuckles tapped against the door three times. But no answer. His peeked through the door's glass window but the view wasn't as clear from this side of the wall. He turned the knob and the door squeaked open. The two desks before him were cluttered with paperwork and other office supplies... but it was the thin, grey case on his wife's desk that drew his attention.

He lifted the gold bracelet between his thumb and index finger — with an overloaded sense of discomfort that he absorbed murderously. He was confronting his own tolerance as he sketched many scenarios and suspicions in his head.

"Hi Hermione."

Hermione gasped at the sudden voice. She found Anakin behind her, standing there with a beguiling smile, a charismatic confidence.

She was young, around Anakin's age, and he knew it wouldn't be too difficult to sway her with a glamourized, risqué charm.

"Anakin! You're not supposed to be back here."

He moved beside her, his fingers drumming on the back of her seat. "I just need a small favour. Could you tell me what appointments Padme had today?"

It took quite an effort for her to channel all her focus on her computer screen. "I can't give out client information."

"Oh I know." Anakin's voice was smooth, light, persuasive, and it took away a power from her, one that kept her head clear, blocking out distractions – especially distractions like this, a young, handsome man who could lure you in with artful eyes and a suave soft-spoken pitch that has you believing everything will be alright. If there's one thing Anakin perfected it was how to make people need his attention, because he knew what it felt like to need a void filled, to dispose of an insecurity.

He rested his elbow on the top of the monitor with a carefree ease. "But who I'm looking for isn't a client. So we're not breaking any rules are we?"

His head ducked to meet her eye-line. Hermione hung her head, afraid that she'd turn bright red at the sight of those convincing blue eyes hovering beside her. She twisted the ring on her index finger. "I could get in trouble."

"I won't tell if you won't." He had this lopsided smirk, boyish, that reverberates at the side of her head, making her timid, slipping her away from what is sensible and making her want to embrace the alliance. Her duties be damned.

She found herself smiling back, abashed, and even intrigued to sustain that grin on his face. "Got a name?"

"Rush Clovis."

"He's that tall guy, dark hair?"

"That's the one." Anakin hid his contempt behind a calm voice.

"I saw him leave here around ten-thirty."

"Today?" He asked and she nodded. He patted her hand that cupped the computer mouse before heading out. "Thanks."

Anakin closed the front door to his apartment behind him. Padme was standing in the living room, her hair damp after a shower. He got a good look at her, at her irrepressible smile and the black camisole revealed now that she had let her baby blue robe slip open.

She played with a lock of her hair, her voice was what dessert would sound like if it could simulate a note. "I came home early to surprise you."

His gaze ran down her body and up to her enticing grin, but no matter how irresistible she looked, how hopelessly he desired her, it could not make him swallow the battle rising, the thunderstorm of doubt, anxiety, anger.

His jaw flexed, torn between love and hate beneath the skin. The ego is itching, conflicted, shaping the agility of his mind. His fears were on the bleeding edge of actualization. He knew it was a weakness that he didn't want to define him but he was flooded with thoughts, connived, contradicting, fusing into his skin. An intellectual acuity, betraying, constricting.

He was dual, dismissive yet concerned, untouchable yet corrupted. He frowned as he walked over to her, slowly, with a pang of bitterness in his voice. "Consider me surprised." He pressed the jewelry case to her chest until she accepted it. It felt like a poisoned dart had been dropped in the palm of her hand. The dim light in the apartment made the blue glare in his eyes cruel before he disappeared behind her.

Love is a feeling

Give it when I want it

'Cause I'm on fire

Quench my desire

I don't wanna hear it

Talk to me, woman

Give in to me, give in to me

Michael Jackson - Give In To Me