These things always seemed to happen right before Emma came.

She was enjoying some nice me-time, having the manor to herself while Regina and Henry went to a play because that was a normal thing for a twelve-year-old to be into. The theater. Emma ordered a pizza, disposed of the evidence before Regina got home, did not leave one piece behind for the Zip-Loc bag. She watched something obscenely violent and irredeemably sexual on the big TV, the kind of thing that would roll Regina's eyes and gross Henry out. Then, since it was kind of boring without Regina there to be—Regina, she broke out her vibe.

Which was when Regina came home. And carried Henry into bed, the tired little thing, tucked him in, went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, went through her nighttime regiment that was so intense it might've been initially designed to summon Cthulu, and then came into the bedroom.

Emma was kinda enjoying herself under the sheets.

"Emma, duck!" Regina ordered, summoning a fireball as Emma tried to grasp why there was a sorceress in her bedroom, holding a fireball, naming birds. Naturally, she took the vibrator away—"Don't touch it! Just back up, I'll handle it!"

Emma stopped, her lack of pluss shifting Regina out of panic mode. "Handle it… how?"

"I'll…" Regina's fireball burned a little cooler. "Throw a fireball at it. It was attacking you. Right?"

Emma showed her the vibrator. "Regina, do you even know what this is?"

"Some kind of enchanted… magical… well, obviously it's a…" The fireball went out. Regina crossed her arms. "Well, what was it doing?"

"It's a vibrator, Regina. It was… vibrating."

"That's what you do when I'm gone? You lie here and vibrate?" Regina smirked. "I never would've taken you for the New Age type."

"New Age?"

"You know. All those fads about… tea and clay. I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish by vibrating yourself, but I'm sure any doctor would tell you how useless it is."

"Regina…" Emma paused. "It's for masturbating."

Regina's fingers tightened minutely on her biceps. "What is?"

"The vibrator. I mean, surely you've noticed I'm not wearing pants? Wait, you don't know what a vibrator is?"

"I should say not! I'm not some sort of pervert!"

"They're pretty mainstream. I'm surprised you haven't heard of them. Don't you read, like, Cosmo?"

"Smut."

"Or watch TV?"

"Not that sort of TV."

"Or use the Internet?"

"Parenting tips, cooking recipes, and occasionally tweeting. I follow Norm MacDonald. He's a very funny man."

Emma blinked. "So in all your time on this plane of existence—no vibrators?"

"No." Regina sat down on the bed. "And frankly, I'm surprised you go in for that sort of thing. I know I'm not Ruby or someone like that, but I'd like to think I know how to satisfy certain urges of yours." Regina nodded thoughtfully. "I put that thing in your butt that time."

"That was awesome," Emma confirmed. "Look, it's not you. Sometimes I just like to be totally selfish, you know, to focus on just pleasing myself and nobody else."

"Must get that from your mother's side of the family."

"You can't tell me you've never gone into the shower and—you know—massaging showerhead?"

Regina was aghast. "Our son showers in there!"

"What do you think he does when he's in the shower for forty minutes?"

"Being hygienic."

"He's clean, Regina, not a girl. And I'll buy that you don't know what a vibrator is, but no way you've never masturbated."

"Of course I've masturbated!" Regina snapped. "But I don't have a dedicated appliance for it. I simply use my hands. Your modern world, it's so decadent. You'd think people would be satisfied with air conditioning and indoor plumbing, but no, everyone needs… sex robots!"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Regina, have you seen your house? I still haven't stopped checking this place for an entrance to the Batcave."

"I would never allow bats to nest near Henry, they carry rabies—"

"Not my point." Emma turned onto her elbow, drawing the sheets a ways down her body. Especially on Regina's side of the bed. "Why don't you lie down here and I'll show you what the modern world has to offer?"

Regina got up, unbuttoning her skirt. "I'd be satisfied with you, but since you're in such doubt over your own prowess, I'll submit to this machine designed to compensate for sexual shortcomings…"

Emma made a face at her.

"I'm just saying, you really should work on your self-esteem. I mean, you're not a master or anything…"

"Oh, no, of course not."

"But you are a very gifted amateur."

"Thanks."

Regina stepped out of her skirt. "Don't be sarcastic. You must admit, your efforts have been lackluster on occasion. And when was the last time you turned into a dragon right in the middle, when it's getting good?"

"Uh, never?"

"My point exactly."

Sometimes, Emma felt like being with Regina was giving her the strongest eye-roll muscles in the land. "C'mon, would you?" She patted the bed beside her.

Regina still retained her sleeveless blouse, the better to show off the shrug of her shoulders, and her panties still set atop a dark set of pantyhose. "I'm not exactly ready for bed."

"I'll take the rest off myself."

Regina gave in. She laid down on the bed, Emma pulling the sheets back, inadvertently giving Regina a look at her own bottomless state; her own wetness. Regina was a little lost, staring, before Emma put a finger under her chin and raised her head again.

"Don't worry about me," Emma said. "I want to take care of you. This is about being selfish, remember?"

"Because I'm normally such a giving and generous lover."

As often as Regina griped about Emma, that never hurt like when she aimed the barbs at herself. "You are. And you did try to rescue me."

"From a masturbatory aid."

"It's the thought that counts. Relax. Lie back…" Emma looked Regina over. Pulled the sheet over her perfect golden legs, leaving off at the knees, leaving Regina mostly exposed but a little bit… boudoir. Enough for her purposes, at least.

She turned the vibrator back on. Dragged its buzzing tip from the lowest reaches of Regina's belly down the front of her thigh, circumventing her sex for now. Then back up, not straight, but winding a little path that touched the sides of Regina's thigh, skirted her groin where it crossed her belly…

"I feel like I'm getting a text," Regina complained, and Emma fixed her with the Look that could shut even Mayor Mills up.

"I said relax," and Regina quieted, lips bitten. "Close your eyes. I don't want you thinking about anything. Just be here with me. In your skin. Feeling this." She ran the vibrator over Regina's other leg, up and down, one side and the other, letting Regina grow used to the strange sensation rattling her flesh. "I know it feels a little weird, but it's just here to please you. And I'm just here to please you. You don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to redeem yourself or make up for anything. You don't have to prove anything. I'm here. I love you. We're happy together and you deserve that, so I'm going to make you feel just as good as you deserve to feel…"

"Ms. Swan," Regina said leadingly, wanting to make some biting comment, some deflecting quip, but finding her vocabulary empty as the vibrator trailed lightly up her tummy.

Easy, tickling spirals around her belly button, Emma pulling up her blouse to get to her flat stomach, the little bit of softness that Emma thought was so sexy. The vibrator hummed happily as Emma darted it down to her groin, flicked it back up, teasing Regina as she leaned down and kissed Regina's belly, nuzzled her nose in it, brushed her hair against it.

"A big puppy dog," Regina said finally, and Emma laughed. Didn't stop.

"Your puppy dog," she replied, loving how soft Regina's belly was, just made for her or the kid to lie their heads down there, to be filled with warm food and good drink, family dinners, to be tickled and kissed and, occasionally, straddled…

The vibrator ticked down between Regina's legs, the Mayor shivering as it burned into her panties. "Ooh!" she said, a little involuntary sound that Emma just ate up. Her eyes shot up to Regina's face—regal eyelids still shut, lips curling as if she'd just tasted something delicious. Then Emma looked back down at Regina's sex, her tongue poking under her bottom lip as she concentrated on making Regina feel enough pleasure to make up for all she'd suffered. Maybe she never would, but she had her whole life to try.

"Mmm!" Regina went, a tiny, muffled noise as the vibrator shook through her panties, turning them almost translucent with wetness.

"Close your legs," Emma said.

"Uhh?" Regina was not, at the moment, sold on human speech.

"Close your legs," Emma insisted, and with dazed obedience, Regina clamped her thighs shut with the vibrator buzzing between them, not touching her pussy, just kneading at the muscles of her thighs.

"Good," Emma said, moving up to undo Regina's cerulean blouse. It flattered her so much, but there was only so much it could do to distract from the beauty of her chest.

"And you were doing so well…" Regina observed, her sarcasm back. If Emma was a puppy, Regina was a kitten. She showed her love with claws. A little snideness was her way of saying Emma had been doing a good job.

"Good things come to those who wait," Emma reminded her, undoing the last button on her blouse, opening it up nice and wide. Underneath, Regina's bra wasn't magic, but it did as much as it could to be a good frame for what Emma had to say was her favorite masterpiece. And it unhooked in front…

"Emma…" Regina whined, the vibrations in her thighs drifting up a little too far for her not to be teased.

"Nag, nag, nag," Emma quipped, opening Regina's bra. Damn, those breasts. Even with every villainess who came into town sporting a push-up bra and an outfit from a Dead Or Alive game, none of them could compete with the reigning champion. Emma ran her hands over them, once, before Regina's pout got any more sour, then took Regina's hands and brought them to her own breasts.

"You know how you like to be touched," she told Regina, the sight of Regina groping herself a barely passable substitute for getting to do the same job herself.

Regina smiled into her own stimulation. "I know how you like to watch…"

"Open your legs."

"You like that too…"

With her legs open, the vibrator fell away, the slightly painful throbbing from it giving way to a nice ebb Emma knew all too well. She let Regina simmer as she peeled Regina's panties away, all the way down her long legs, but leaving them coiled around her ankles because she knew the dishabille would turn Regina on more.

Then she came back up, took hold of the vibrator, let it thrill just north of Regina's core, in the lovely little nest of hair she had kissed down so many times, the one that told her the roller coaster had reached the top of the hill. The vibe fingered bluntly at the sensitive flesh there, just sharp enough to reach Regina's clit, Regina moaning as her arousal reached a new state.

Regina was a very silent partner, for the most part, but when Emma got her going, then it came out. Moans, groans, screams sometimes—chants in dead languages that Emma had looked up once. They'd been prayers to certain Lovecraftian entities to let her be able to make Emma feel just as good.

"This is all about you," Emma told Regina, watching as her fingers pursed and pulled at her breasts, perfectly playing their weight, their heft, their flush like musical instruments that spoke in sighs. "I only want you to feel good. I don't want anything from you. I don't expect anything in return. I just want to see how you smile after you've been fucked."

Regina's fingers tightened on her breasts like they were trying to escape. "Emma."

"You're my wife. I just want to love you like you love me. To show you how much I love you like you show me…"

"Please," Regina said, and she was cupping her breasts, holding them up—

Emma's lips descended on one, the nipple perfectly fitting into her mouth, hard and demanding to be sucked. Emma pulled hard, mercilessly, and Regina crooned into an arching of her back, a squirming of her legs through the sheets that covered them, her lips twisting and turning trying to avoid the explosive sigh she couldn't even hold back a minute: "Emma!"

Emma pushed the vibrator into Regina's perineum. The liquid sound it made told Emma how wet she was, how she was kerosene and gasoline and dynamite, how her arousal had made her flammable and now Emma was setting her off. She slicked the vibrator up Regina's sex—"Emma!"—over her pink folds, inside and around, not penetrating—"Emma!"—just kissing her, tasting her, dining on her, the vibrator moving up-up-up as Emma bit at Regina's breast, gnawed it, Regina's breathy gasp becoming a scream—"Emma!"—a plea, a demand, a thank-you.

Emma kissed down the slope of her breast, up the column of her neck, traveling parallel to the vibrator that was now coming up the narrowing of Regina's core, up to the top of it. Emma kissed Regina's lips, letting the vibrator buzz almost inside her, almost atop her, then pulled away, their wet lips clinging together like the very molecules of their bodies wanted to be one, then Emma moved the vibrator to Regina's clit.

"Oh!" Regina said, a little exhale of warmth against Emma's kiss-stung lips, and her breasts heaved and her mouth opened and her body had too much pleasure to hold, it had to escape from her, had to turn liquid and shoot from her like a lightning bolt from a blackly pregnant cloud. Emma watched as Regina darkened the tangled sheets with her rain.

"Didn't know you were a squirter, Regina."

"Me… neither…" Regina gasped. Her silently screaming mouth had shut, lips held open by a weak smile, eyes heavy but still open a slit to stare at Emma. She didn't want to give up the sight. "It was because of you."

"I know."

"No… all this… you." Regina tried to rise, not quite managing it, and Emma soothed her down, moving over Regina to undress her fully, to strip away the wetted sheets, replace them with an army blanket from the chest of drawers until morning. She tucked Regina in, tucked herself right next to her.

By then, Regina had caught her breath. "You gave me my chance at happiness. I never could've taken it if it weren't for you."

"You deserve to be happy, Regina, c'mon…"

"Maybe. But I don't deserve you."

"I didn't deserve you first," Emma replied, mock-offended.

She undressed Regina—the poor dear would just have to go naked instead of wearing her usual Hammer Films nightie—and pulled Regina into her, to sleep on her shoulder where she belonged.

"How much battery life does that… 'vibrator' have?"

"Enough," Emma replied, grinning.

"Good. Because when I wake up—"

"Yeah?"

"I want you to use it on me again."