Regina is charmed by blooms - both by the gesture and the flowers themselves, but she's not one for boring or typical. No surprise there.
Daisies make her smile pleasantly, and sunflowers do, too, but she'd seemed more enamored of the bunch of sweet peas he'd picked up a fortnight ago (although that may have had something to do with the way he'd handed them to her with a grin, and a Sweet peas for my sweet pea. She'd snorted and told him he was horrible, but she'd grinned, oh how she'd grinned). The pot of vibrant purple orchids he'd brought her a week ago had practically had her swooning, and Henry tells him she fusses over them most of all, that she tells him when he teases her over it that it's because they're delicate, but he thinks really they're just her favorite so far.
Robin disagrees.
It's the dahlias that are her favorite - he's been told by Snow that she plants them every year and coaxes them into colorful splendor - and when he picks up large arrangements for her, he tries to include them more often than not.
Lilies she loves - especially the more exotic - stargazers and tigers. But Henry is allergic, and horribly so, which means Robin can only have those sent to her office. She doesn't seem to mind, and neither does Moe French at Game of Thorns - he'd joked to Robin just this morning that he was using the profits from his persistent wooing of Regina to start a vacation fund. Maybe he'd go somewhere exotic. Robin smirked, and put in a request for birds of paradise (he's spent some time on Henry's computer lately, the two of them conspiring to find more and more exotic varieties he can bestow upon the boy's mother).
Today, he has chosen a single flower, instead of a bouquet.
A deep red rose - classic but not boring, he hopes.
She's not expecting him, but that makes his visit all the more worthwhile. She enjoys surprises of the pleasant variety, his Regina.
He rings her front doorbell and waits, a full minute ticking by with no response. He rings it again, just before he spies movement through the glass, and then she's tugging the door open with a scowl. She's fresh from the shower - her hair still damp at the ends, nothing covering her but a robe too thin for the weather that has yet to fully warm. Her scowls lasts only a moment before blooming into a smile - not her full grin, not nearly, but a soft curve of lip that is pleased and flattered, anticipatory. He so often comes bearing gifts, after all. She crosses her arms over her chest against the chill, but all it accomplishes from his end is tugging the fabric more tightly across her breasts, and he can see the way her nipples have hardened from the cold and forces himself to look away.
He looks to her face, and lifts the rose wordlessly, grins at her. She digs those straight white teeth into her bottom lip as if she's trying to stifle the wide, charmed smile the flower brings her, but it's no use. He's succeeded, as always, and she takes the flower from him, sniffs it as she murmurs, "What a pleasant surprise." She looks up at him through her long lashes - somehow this woman, this Queen who once snapped necks and ripped hearts on a daily basis, manages to be coy.
They're grinning at each other like fools - lovesick, besotted fools - and while her focus is on him now more than the flower, the bloom falls gently against her lips. He watches her nostrils flare slightly as she breathes in the scent again, twirls the stem in a way that makes the rose tumble from one corner of her smile to the other, and Robin is suddenly very jealous of the petals.
And she must know it, must see it on his face, because her smile falls away, her head tilting, lips parting slightly, and she lets the petals drag against her lower lip again, teasing, flirting, her dark eyes steady on his own. Robin groans, and steps forward, settles his hands on her hips and backs her through the doorway, telling her, "Why don't we get you out of the cold."
The door shuts behind them with more of a bang than he'd intended it to, but he can't bring himself to care as he presses her into the wall and kisses her hungrily. Her lips are cool, so is the soft skin of her cheek against his nose, but her tongue is warm and eager against his own, and her arms wind around the back of his neck, fingers still clutching that rose. He hadn't come here for this, had just come to make her smile, and maybe try to talk her into making lasagna for him and Roland tomorrow night (the boy's been asking for it), but now that he's here, and she's hooking her ankle around his calf and tilting her head to give him better access to her neck when he moves his mouth there, Robin doesn't think he can stop at deep kisses and wandering hands.
His hands skim down to her rear and squeeze, drawing a gasp out of her, and she breathes into his ear, "Don't start anything you don't intend on finishing, Robin," a certain desperation to her voice. She's wanted this for weeks now, he's well aware, but he'd wanted to woo her good and proper. He'd made them both wait, tested both their patience, but he finds that today, with her smelling of lavender and shampoo, and his hands full of her curves, clutching at the thin cotton that keeps her tempting, bare body from his, he is finally fresh out.
So he pulls back just enough to look her in the eye, and tells her, "Perhaps I do intend to finish." He feels her pull in a breath, her eyes lighting up, lips twitching.
"Oh," she says, and then, a bit of urgency to her words, "Then we should probably go upstairs."
Robin steps back, but finds her fingers, laces his own through them to keep in contact with her, and holds his other hand out in invitation. "Lead the way, milady," he tells her, and now that he's committed to letting himself off his proverbial leash, he watches the way her ass moves the whole way up the stairs. He cannot get this robe off her fast enough.
She turns when they hit the bedroom doorway and yanks him against her again, kissing him fiercely, fingers fisting in the collar of his coat as he reaches for the sash at her hips and tugs it free. She makes enough space between them to yank down the zipper of his jacket, pushes it off his shoulders, and all the while they're stumbling their way toward the bed. When his cold fingers skim her belly, she shivers against him, her own hands clutching at his scarf now and then yanking it over his head and off.
He lets the robe drop off her shoulders and moans at the sight of her, God he's missed her, and lord above, she's a beauty. His hands move over her torso restlessly, wanting to touch everything at once and finding it impossible.
"You are so beautiful," he murmurs to her, adding, "Stunning," as he turns them and sits on the end of her bed. He leaves her standing, parts his knees and draws her between them, close enough that he can mouth his way over her chest, pressing kisses into the soft swells of her breasts, licking across her nipples until she lets out low, breathy moans of appreciation.
He scoots back a little further, and it takes only the soft pressure of his hand at the back of her thigh to encourage her onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips, his mouth still tugging at her breasts.
"Henry?" He breathes the question before he bites gently at one stiff peak and Regina lets out a ragged breath. He hasn't seen or heard the lad since his arrival, but his bedroom door had been closed when they passed, and it's possible the boy is wrapped up in his studies.
"Emma," Regina breathes as he scrapes his teeth against her again. "It's his night with Emma," she clarifies, and her fingers are twisting in his hair, keeping him against her breast. He has no plans to move just yet, but he does use one hand to guide her down against his erection, an action she's all too willing to keep up on her own. "Roland?" she asks him as she starts to rock steadily.
"With Little John," he assures, switching from right breast to left and treating it to the same attentions as the other. He sucks and licks and nips in between each word as he says, "He knows I've come to see you. He'll keep the boy safe if I don't return for the night."
He skims a hand down her belly, his intent clear and she lifts her hips off him enough to make space for his fingers. He finds her warm and slippery and it makes his cock throb, he cannot wait to be inside her again. His fingers run over her clit, and she lets out a moan so wanton and needy that it spurs him into action.
He moves his grip to her hips and flips them, scrambling more fully onto the bed with her and reaching for the button of his trousers. She knocks his hands away and undoes them herself and Robin busies himself twisting out of his shirt and kicking off his boots and soon he's as naked as she is. He tugs her against him and groans at the feel of all that soft, bare skin against his own.
He wants her desperately, cannot wait to be inside her - but he will, because there are other things he wants first. Their mouths crush together in a heated, bruising kiss, hands skimming and clutching and he breaks away from her lips and plants kisses down her throat, her chest, pausing to give one dusky pink nipple a lingering suck. Her hips arch and he moves his kisses lower, scooting down her stomach, he has to taste her, wants to feel her on his tongue, wants to make her shake and writhe and come and come for him.
She opens her legs for him easily, and he settles there, loops his arms around her thighs and swipes his tongue over her clit. She moans and jerks and he is in heaven. No better place than here, one thigh restlessly bumping his shoulder, then spreading wide for him as he drags his tongue through her folds, scoops up the taste of her, and he moans right along with her. He dips his tongue inside, slides his hand around to press one thigh up, tipping her hips for better access and he fucks her with his tongue, licks hard at the inside of her, and she is making these noises, soft and gasping, and he wants her to shout for him, so he draws his tongue out and up to her clit, flicks it against her the way he learned she liked their one and only other time together.
She rewards him with sharper cries and her fingers fisted in the bedding, and Robin draws his hand down under his chin, eases one finger into her, then a second, her soaked body taking them in willingly, easily, greedily almost. He angles them just so and thrusts, keeps up the fluttering of his tongue against her tight bundle of nerves and Regina lights up, flames out, her body writhing at his attentions, hips rocking, thighs shifting, back arching, and it is so incredibly erotic and beautiful and it all goes straight to his cock, makes him even harder for her and he hadn't thought that was possible.
He works a third finger inside, and ups his pace with them and now she's nearly hollering with every well-aimed thump of his fingers against the sensitive spot inside her, and when he starts to suck eagerly at her clit, she starts to tremble, and she makes these glorious noises, and then it's his name falling from her lips again and again and "oh" and "I'm gonna-" and a sharp gasp and he knows she is right on the brink but he has run completely out of patience, and he wants to see her face when she comes apart for him, so he stops and pulls his fingers out, and Regina lets out a plaintive sound of outrage, she'd been so close, and, "What are you-" she starts to ask as he scoots back up the bed and steals a fierce kiss from her, already reaching between them and situating his tip against her.
"I can't wait any longer," he gasps against her mouth and then he sinks into her in one quick swoop, and it is glorious. She is so tight, she'd been just on the edge, and she lets out a little shout at the invasion, and he thinks it might sound pained (it had been a rather graceless entrance, just a quick thrust home) so he apologizes breathlessly.
"No," she insists huskily, "it's good," and she hikes her thighs up, knees pressed into his ribs, and his hand is skimming down to grip at her rear. With the assurance that he hasn't hurt her, he draws his hips back and thrusts in eagerly again and they moan in tandem. Robin takes her fiercely, hooking his elbows under her knees and snapping his hips into hers in quick, sharp thrusts, and she shouts her pleasure and bites her lip, her eyes screwed shut. He watches, watches as her jaw drops with pleasure, and he cants his hips just so, so that he crashes into her clit with every thrust, and she's a goner. She'd been close before but that's all it takes and she is coming and crying out incoherently, half his name, broken expletives, wordless cries, her fingers digging into his biceps, nails biting against his skin, and the sight of her going to pieces beneath him, because of him, her wet heat all around him, is all it takes to pull him after her. He comes fiercely, pushes hard and deep and groans and groans and then collapses against her.
Her thighs are pinned under his weight, stretched up against her torso, and they're both panting hard, and sweaty, and perfectly content. She lets out this little moan, a soft, luxurious thing, and then tries to extricate her leg from his hold and Robin shifts, releases her thighs so she is not quite so bent in half. One heel hooks behind his knee, the rest of her leg dropping lazily to the side. The other foot skims down his calf, as she turns her face against his for a kiss.
He lifts his head enough to oblige, and their mouths meet softly, sweetly, a counterpoint to the sound seeing-to he'd just given her, and something much more appropriate for their fully returning to each other, he thinks. But it had been months without her, months of feeling guilt for how often he thought of their tryst in front of her fire despite his marriage to Marian, and then the illness and the grief, and now, finally, this. He hadn't had the patience to wait for her, to take his time - and now that he has her again, he is never, ever letting her go. He can take his time with her later - and will, just as soon as he can manage it. If they have the whole night to themselves, he has no intention of letting it go to waste.
She doesn't seem to have minded his roughness, not in the slightest, and she's wound her arms around his neck now, those soft kisses going deeper, hotter, and he is growing soft inside her, and wishes never to leave. She breaks from him, finally, with a hum of contentment, their foreheads touching.
"That was worth the wait," she says, her lips tipping up in a sly smile, and Robin lifts his head and grins down at her.
"I told you," he insists, smugly, adding, "Were you well-wooed, milady?"
"Mm, quite," she confirms, stretching beneath him, her torso pressing up into his and Robin shifts, lets himself slip out of her, finally, and rolls onto his back beside her. Her stretch goes deeper, a twisting thing that looks delicious - both from his standpoint (all that damp, lovely skin on display for him), and he imagines, from hers, by the way she sinks back into the bed, boneless, with a grunting sigh. Her hand skims over her sweaty belly, and she smiles at him. "I think I need another shower."
Robin snorts a little laugh, and reaches for her, pulling her against him, and she hooks one thigh over his as he tells her, "Only if I can join you."
"I think that could be arranged," Regina teases as she settles against him, shifts her hips slightly to get comfortable, and the movement has still-sensitive parts grinding lightly against his thigh. The sensation ripples through her pleasantly, and she bites her bottom lip, shifts again unnecessarily, just because she can. Her thighs are slippery with sweat and other things, he's leaking out of her, but she doesn't mind and it doesn't seem he does either.
He is utterly relaxed beneath her, his left arm along her back, thumb tracing back and forth between her hipbones. His right rests on his belly, and she tangles their fingers, lifts them to her lips. This is good, being with him, afterglow. For so long, for most of her life, she hadn't believed this was possible for her. Daniel had been taken, violently and forever, and she'd been alone. Wedded and bedded (and that last one repeatedly, by a whole number of meaningless men, from her husband to her huntsman, not one of them ever felt like this), but never loved. And right now, that's what she feels. With his sweaty shoulder under her cheek, and his come between her thighs, and his fingertip tracing the scar on her lip lazily, she feels loved.
And she loves right back, and tells him so, murmuring the words into the air between them like a spell. True love is magic, she thinks, and it had seemed silly at times over the last few decades, but it doesn't now. This is magic.
When he tips his mouth to her forehead, kisses there and says, "I love you, too, your majesty," she's torn between smiling and scowling. He's teasing her, she can tell by the emphasis he put on the title, the lightly accusatory tone he puts behind it. It's a callback to all those times she insisted he call her that. Not milady, not Regina, but Your Majesty. A title to create distance between herself and the thief, something to put him in his place, to keep her in hers. But Her Majesty has done terrible things, snapped necks and ordered massacres, and immolated princesses (or tried to, anyway), and here, with him, she doesn't feel like that person. With his sweaty skin, and her slick thighs, and their magic, she feels like Regina. Just Regina, nothing more.
But she is more, she knows she is. She is that woman, with the jewel-crusted collars, and the bloodied hands, and the sharp edges and pain so consuming the whole world must share it with her until she can find a way to soothe it. She is all those things, and fate has still seen fit to give her this glorious man, this beautiful, kind, loving man with his eyes, and his smile, and his oh-so-wicked body, and his charming son, and all of it is hers.
She doesn't understand.
It makes no sense.
She releases his fingers, moves her own to trace the ink on his wrist, lingering there, learning every line, every curve of this tattoo that marks him as hers. She has never seen anything more beautiful or more wretched than this thing that ties them together. She is bound to him, can feel it in her bones, and he is bound to her as well, tethered, damned.
If he knew she was thinking this, he'd hate it, she thinks - she knows. He'd shake his head, and tell her no, that being hers is not the horrible sentence she seems to think it is, but she looks back at her life, and so much of it is built up around darkness and pain, and he has had enough of that, some of it - the worst of it - at her own hand. He's forgiven her, but she hasn't quite managed to forgive herself, and she wonders if she should have tried harder to save Marian when she was ill. If she should have moved heaven and earth to save the woman who had stolen back her soulmate, penance for ripping them apart in the first place all those years ago.
She wonders if she didn't try harder because she didn't want to, and it itches at her conscience. She has everything she wanted, everything she lost returned to her without so much as one evil deed required, but did she do everything she could to ensure he could spend the rest of his days with the woman he chose all those years ago?
It would have taken time, research, hours and maybe days, and they hadn't had that, she reminds herself. Marian was on death's door when she walked into that room, already knocking politely at the pearly gates, and she had come to save Roland, she was not beholden to Marian for anything, not even if she was Robin's first true love.
But she wonders, and not for the first time, if his own thoughts have traveled this same dark path before. If he's looked at her with doubt. How could he not?
She wonders if he'd tell her - she thinks maybe he would, he's an honest man, he prides himself on that. So she tips her chin up, lifts her head and asks him with a deep scowl, "Do you ever blame me for not saving her?"
She doesn't have to clarify, he knows exactly who her is, and he studies her face for a second, plays with her hair, then asks, "Could you have?"
They hadn't had time, she decides. And she hadn't lied when she'd told him that saving lives was a dark and costly magic. So she rules out the thought, thinks of the magic she'd used and shakes her head. "No. Even if the spell could have been used on her, she was too far gone..."
The implication is there - the trade would have been a deadly one - and he picks up on it without any further explanation. "You'd have died," he deduces, and something flickers across his face, pain and understanding, and Regina nods to confirm it and sighs. "I'd never expect you to give your life in exchange for hers - not even for Roland's. I could never blame you for not doing what wasn't in your power to do."
It's within her power, she thinks darkly. Power is something she has a glut of, but being within her power doesn't mean saving lives is in her repertoire. Her wheelhouse is more in the taking of them. She looks at him again, and he is so good, and she wishes that she felt anything but this right now, that she could be giddy with his return and not mired in self-loathing, but she is stuck here, in this place, worried that once again she hasn't tried hard enough to fulfill her potential, hasn't sacrificed enough of herself for those around her. She wonders if he'd ever have come back to her if Marian hadn't died, wonders if he'd have preferred it that way.
"But do you ever wish-" she starts, even though she doesn't want the answer, but Robin, her Robin (whether it's best for him to be that or not) won't even let her ask. His thumb falls onto her lips to silence her, and then he caresses along her jawbone and it raises goosebumps all over the back of her neck. "Regina," he says, and she loves the way he says her name, it anchors her, makes her feel like herself, like the woman she's always tried so hard to deny and keep buried, the one who was so smothered in the darkness she was never allowed to see the light, and then, "I am exactly where I want to be."
He says it with such certainty, such conviction. He knows her, knows the worst of her, knows the best of her, and he wants to be here, with all of it. With the mess that is Regina Mills. She tells herself again that he knows what he's getting into, that he's always known, that she cannot make his choices for him, and there's a part of her that begs to believe him. She thinks it's that part, that woman, so long smothered, clawing back toward the surface, battling for her chance to breathe in clean air and freedom and everything that was taken from her by her mother, by Rumplestiltskin, by her own malicious choices.
He wants Regina, and Regina just wants a chance to finally, finally grasp something pure and good and claim it as her own. Something nobody else can take. And he's offering her that, himself, fully, she can see it in the way he looks at her, like he is willing her to believe that she is all he wants, everything.
Enough.
Finally, she is enough for someone she loves. Not since Daniel, not since she was a girl, but now again, finally, with him. Something unspools in her, she can feel it unfurling in her chest, and she banishes every dark thought from her head, thinks only of light, of him, of pleasure and love and soft touches and sweet kisses, and all of them hers to have.
Regina smiles, she can't help it, and she scoots up and claims his mouth. She is going to love this man, and love him well, for the rest of her fortunate days. Starting now.