Title: Criminal
Author: timenspace
Rating: PG -13 because kids don't get this
Fandom: Once Upon A Time
Characters/Pairings: Regina/Graham
Warning: contains innuendo if not more. Spoilers for 1x04
Notes: I am in the process of re-writing this, a bit more on the smutty side, but I will need a beta for it before it gets posted here.
Summary: She keeps him under her control. She has to keep it tortuously intoxicating, so he will return, like a drug for more. She doesn't bother to use a love potion. There is no love between them anymore. There hasn't been for a long time.
She did not care that this ritual wasn't based on anything other that pure dominance, the assertion that she was in charge. More than anything to convince herself that she owned this town - not Mr. Gold who had built it and bought it - but her who made it with her own blood. She didn't like Emma Swan, and Sheriff Graham wasn't going to like her either if she had anything to say about it.
It was too bad her powers were limited to merely a heavy influence in this world, instead of making - as she wished - Graham her little Imp. He would have been - had he let her. She always did like a man who fought her advances. Graham always had - even if he pretended not to.
In the times previous she had thought that maybe he didn't coddle to women, or maybe he wasn't interested in her - in particular. Or maybe, as she had discovered, that they were too similar. He never did return her advances, or at the time she thought was love. He wasn't loyal to her, he had his own morals. He had fucking spared Snow. He wasn't supposed to do such a thing. Afterwards he said he felt pity for her. Pity for such a base creature? Snow hadn't just stolen her treasured amulet - she had destroyed her happiness.
She had figured out ways to punish him with more than just the simplistic curse.
She had to time things, to draw it out slowly, like a thorn when she tended her rosebushes. Ways to make things the most painful. Of course that didn't please Graham as much as it pleased her. That included getting information out of him. The revelations that he planned to keep Emma around incited more than just a bit of a cutting rebuke. However, the experience had to be rewarding enough, and intoxicating enough that he couldn't get loose from her grasp.
Didn't he understand that Emma wanted to destroy her - to destroy them and all they had between them? Of course she couldn't make him understand. This world had made him thick.
He didn't ever say much at these meetings except answers to her demanding questions - she kept him Sheriff in her town, as long as he tended to her beck and call.
She wouldn't admit that she craved the contact - but that's all it was now - contact. It wasn't the blending of two souls - Emma accused her of not having a soul. That wasn't true - she did care. About Henry. He hated her in return. About Graham. His loyalties were always somewhere else. About her apple tree - which seemed to be the only actual loyal thing in town. Everybody mistrusted her but no one had the balls - or the guts to say so.
It was all Emma's fault. Thinking about Emma made her angry, and Graham received the blunt of her anger. She knew where to drive her knees and apply the pressure. If she were back in their world, she'd have him flogged - but what pleasure was there in that. She'd grown immune to seeing blood - brutal force only weakened the victim and increased his resolve for revenge.
Pleasure was better.