He ought to have known she'd be here, on this particular night at this particular function, the meeting of two circumstances he'd spent many more planning for—and now here she is to derail it all, dressed to kill, quite literally, and looking for all the world as though she bloody owns it.
It's entirely possible she does, as far as he's concerned, though he'd certainly be the last to say it, even under the threat of a dagger to his throat.
Which he also means quite literally.
"You," Regina hisses, disbelieving, eyes ever watchful on him, though warier still of the corridor that won't be deserted for long, if they continue to delay each other as they (always) seem to do. "Please tell me you're joking. Here, too?"
"Milady," he manages to work out around her blade in greeting, along with a rather strained sort of smile, "we meet again."
"Someday it will be the last," she promises darkly.
"I do hope not," he returns, embarrassed by how winded he sounds. It's becoming a true struggle to catch his breath with that confounded flash of metal nestled so snugly with his windpipe. She looks appropriately contrite then, slipping it back beneath her dress and only gods know where beyond that—and he's certainly no intention of looking to find out while she does, not keen on the prospect of returning to camp missing a crucial body part or two.
"Thank you," he tells her, sincerely, and she mutters something in response that sounds rather like she's already regretting it very much indeed.
"Just stay out of my way," she snarls in warning. "This one's mine."
"Pardon," he protests as politely as he can muster, considering she still has easy access to that knife, not to mention any number of other weapons (sharp or otherwise) likely at her disposal. "I rather think you're wrong about that."
Robin had cased tonight's target for weeks, shadowed the noblewoman's every goings-about and dealings with others—some under-the-table sorts of meetings, furtive and salacious, as well as those more business-like and out in the open, though somehow no less tawdry. He'd suffered through countless dull kingdom-to-kingdom transactions from behind potted plants, and borne secret witness to a fair few sordid affairs as well, when he'd had the distinct misfortune of being cornered into a closet by the sounds of seductive giggling and wanton moans on the other side of the opening door.
And then he'd had to withstand the greatest offense of all in preparation for this party, dressing the part he means to play in seducing the last remaining secrets out of the one they call the Dragon Lady.
He'd resorted to the farthest-reaching parts of his wardrobe, darkened by the shameful truth of his past, unearthing every painful memory of his childhood as he turned to face his likeness in the mirror. He'd seen in himself someone unrecognizable, encased in fancy brocade that years spent in storage had done nothing to dull, with a frilled collar and sleeves that carried a general air of appearing more important than one really was—someone who, come to think of it, looked a lot like his father, the erstwhile Lord of Locksley.
So Robin won't have it all be for naught, simply because this absurd bandit woman has determined he's not the right man for the job. The key to the damn treasure is his, and if his greatest competitor happens to be blocking his path, well, it matters not a bit how bloody gorgeous she looks in that quite possibly see-through dress, or how his traitorous heart seems to skip some beats whenever she deigns to look him in the eye—
Which she does now, and to his great consternation, Regina looks genuinely delighted for a change, seeming so pleased about something her eyes practically spark with the anticipation of it. Robin's spirits begin to sink all the way down to his boots as she presses in close, closer than he'd ever dare to go on his own without her blessing.
"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this," she says, without an ounce of apology in her voice, "but you…" her voice goes husky then, her gaze half-lidded, and he finds himself leaning forward, into her, breathing in every word as though they were his own, "…are not her type."
He bristles at that. "How do you mean?" he defends.
"You're cute when your manhood's been questioned," she observes, and he thinks her smile can only be described as downright villainous. "But don't worry; that's not it. I'm sure you've had many women crying your name with you between their legs."
"That's—" entirely beside the point, he tries to say, but she shushes him with a single finger, curving it delicately over his lower lip, a slow pull, slower release. He thinks, for a heady thrill of a second, that she means to bruise him with a kiss.
"But not this one," she tells him, abrupt, almost cold, shoving off his chest none too gently though she'd already had him backed against the wall.
"We shall see," he returns, winded for entirely different reasons now, as she taunts him with a smirk painted red above one bared and slender shoulder.
"Oh, I believe you shall," she agrees lowly, and it takes no small effort for him to tear his gaze from the sashay of her hips, the dark whisper of ringlets on fabric cut deep down her back, as she saunters off to one-up his heist. He hesitates a moment, re-gathering his wits, before darting off in the opposite direction. They'll meet in the middle again (fortune always favors them that way), but in the meantime, he'd rather not have her see him follow.
…
"You…are not her type."
If there had been any lingering doubt or denial as to what Regina meant, he's good and cured of it once he's blundered his way onto the balcony, performing a timely dodge behind a great stone pillar just as the orchestral swell dims to a coda. The instant the violins return full force, he crouches down and crab-walks to the marble rail overlooking the party below. By some unseen stroke of fate's pen that's drawn him to her, he spots Regina instantly, weaving in between gowns perhaps twice as elegant as her own, though the women who wear them boast not even half her beauty.
While he watches her, she seems similarly focused on someone else—the one they call the Dragon Lady, a willowy, statuesque sort, alluring enough from some angles, but entirely deceptive, through and through. She carries the look of one easily broken when bent the slightest way, but the wits of a woman who privately sees to all the snapping herself. Robin has learned enough of her, from his covert scrutiny of her malevolent ways, that it would not surprise him in the slightest if she were genuinely capable of breathing fire.
And it would seem that Regina is exactly her type, after all.
The Dragon Lady—Maleficent is what they also call her, when it's safe to do so by name—is spread languidly across her throne, looking bored to the verge of tears by this party conceived on her command. She sits aloof from her guests (a term used loosely, for Robin's certain they attend more out of fear than any occasion for feeling festive), features locked in a look of permanent dissatisfaction.
No one else appears daring enough to approach such a hostess, so cold her gaze alone could burn holes into the most determined of hearts; even Robin is beginning to question every turned corner (perhaps hastily done), all those hours spent trapped in a wardrobe (learning all the ways of his target except the one that mattered), that have brought him here to flirt with failure.
And then he sees her see Regina.
She's gliding down the carpeted aisle, a lone red rose amongst the garden-variety women currently overcrowding the ballroom. The exposed arch in her spine is delicate but unyielding, sheathed in green to match the shade of his forest (hers too, whenever she's so inclined) in the stem of each its flowers, though he knows her to prickle with thorns of a different kind.
It takes considerable effort for Robin to tear himself from the view long enough to witness Maleficent's own blue eyes pierce and widen, with a near-imperceptible shift in her posture to something slightly less distant and even vaguely intrigued.
Her tongue drags thoughtfully across her bottom lip, actions he doesn't quite mean to mirror, as Regina crosses the gilded platform threshold. It both amuses and thrills him, her indifference to the scandalized stares, the gaping mouths at her audacity to advance without a proper introduction or the most explicit permission from she who wears the crown.
Regina's turned away from him now, but Robin finds he's oddly attuned to every subtly expressive way of her body, the seductive side-tilt of her chin, the softening angles in her shoulders as she leans in, breasts piled high and pulling her close. He imagines the sudden heaviness clinging to her eyelashes, the slow curve of a smile so sinful it can only lead to one thing—
Gods.
He blinks dumbfoundedly at the spectacle below, as he realizes something very upsetting indeed—not only is he well and truly gone for her, she'd planned for it. All along. Had prompted him none-too-gently with that irresistible scowl, charmed him with that obsessive way in which she saw everything he did as what she could do better. Had more or less shoved him unceremoniously into a well of such deep feeling of things for her, he's helpless to stay afloat. And now she's used the very same tactics, used him even, to her every mocking advantage, and because he's a sodding fool, he's about to let her.
Which hardly seems like fair play.
He grips the railing with renewed purpose, jaws setting firmly together when Regina relaxes forward, loose, provocative, and slowly trails a finger up the wooden armrest. Maleficent raises a single, immaculate eyebrow, observing her progress with a sort of mild curiosity. It's a brazen move, presumptuous even, to toy with such danger in so public a manner, a sentiment the nearest onlookers have surely begun express in shared mutters with the corners of their downturned mouths.
But while he's loath to admit it, Robin simply can't fathom any other woman to be half so thoroughly versed on the finer points of taming a dragon.
Regina starts speaking then, and gods what he wouldn't give to hear the things she must be saying, in that voice to rival raw honey, though he can easily hazard a guess at their intent from the sudden, almost startling way Maleficent bares a smile at her. Emboldened, Regina resumes her slow, steady caress of the armrest, then a dress sleeve, now a pale white wrist idly laid out for her perusal. A dark lock of hair falls loose from its pins, smoothly ensnared between two long fingers as they share a look full of secret desires and promised things.
Robin swallows thickly.
The woman is regarding Regina as though she simply can't decide whether to devour her whole, or nibble more specifically at discrete parts of her first, savor her slowly. Finally arriving at some private conclusion, Maleficent stands to tower above her, hand slipping where Robin can't see to lead Regina away from the throne, velvet curtains spreading to swallow them into some nameless room beyond the ballroom wall. And gods above but if it isn't the most bloody arousing sight, and quite vexing too in equal measure, when Regina turns a shoulder just as she parts the drapes with a thigh, so casually he nearly misses the meaning of it.
She's patient while he catches on.
Their eyes fuse and hold, the rest of her caught mid-vanish from view, until all that she's left behind for him is half that damning smirk, followed by the mocking echo of his own treacherous desires edging him forward to claim what's rightfully his.
…
Robin refuses to heed the grumbled warnings inside his head—all of which sound a suspicious amount like Little John—as he retreats from the balcony. He takes the marble steps in twos on his way back down to ground level, then several more underneath it.
He can't say what, specifically, it is that draws him one way out of thousands in this cunning fortress of trick walls and trap doors. He's become well-acquainted, in his recent weeks of mapping out shortcuts and escape routes, with which are least heavily guarded, and which he ought to avoid on account of meeting almost certain death on the other side.
But in all his calculated wanderings, he had never managed to successfully locate the innermost chambers where the dragon slept, if the wicked ever truly do such things. And though he can't be positive that that's where Regina has even been taken (if those who command their own path can ever truly be led anywhere), Robin would bet the very treasure they've both declared as theirs that he will find her there.
Wherever there happens to be.
He's no memory to rely on save for that of her rather merciless derision, taunting with the swing of her hips as much as she did the delight of triumph carved into her smile, but it suffices nonetheless. He forges onward, bypassing familiar, better-lit corridors for the ones that gape in shadow, winding deeper into the castle's belly (he can hear the not-so-distant rumblings of ancient pipes overhead, can practically taste the change in the air as it absorbs the scents of surrounding mold and grows damp in its coldness).
The time Robin has bought himself by efficiently navigating the unknown darkness ahead has been similarly well-spent by the woman he seeks, it seems.
There's no mistaking the sound, one of reckless ecstasy, as it joins and drowns out the clanging of the pipes, intensifying with each cautious forward step.
His fingers dance faster over the dank, spongy walls, a light but thorough inspection, until they stumble upon a notched groove, too wide, too extensive in either direction it travels, to have been left there unintentionally. He presses an ear to the crack, but nothing filters through, and the loudly professed satisfaction of one well seen-to fades to cease as he waits, and waits.
He grips the fissure again, pushing with the intent to split it open this time. The wall groans creakily as it gives way, swinging in upon a sight that nearly blinds him, despite the softly dimming candlelight.
"Bloody hell," he breathes.
The woman they call the Dragon Lady lies spread-eagle across a lush, black satin bed, four-cornered in a richly sculpted wood frame that speaks of luxuries far beyond the telling. Blonde mane untamed, it runs wild across her pillow tops, parts of it pinned down by an arm she'd thrown back in what Robin imagines to be a perfect likeness of feral abandon.
But for now she sleeps soundly, likely to recover from such an onslaught of pleasure, and she sleeps bare, with silk-thin sheets draped strategically over places Robin has little interest in seeing.
Particularly when there are far more erotic notions at play. He's caught Regina off her guard at last, crouched above the naked form of her lover—for what else could have transpired here, between two bodies still slick with the sheen of their exertion, in this room below ground that smells of earth, and sweat, and sex.
Regina is, regrettably, considerably more covered than her counterpart, though perhaps clothed would be a bit too generous a term for it; her dress has been wrenched sideways and rucked up to her waist, with an impressive tear at one shoulder, the fabric frayed and ragged as though shredded with some great, impatient force. Small welts dot semi-circles around her arm, red and angry, that can only be bite marks, and he aches to know where more might be found. Her breathing is heavy, not yet regular, dark hair glorious in its unkempt state.
And gods but what he wouldn't give to know the feel of it, of everything.
Her silhouette stiffens and turns under his scrutiny then, and he finds her lips are red no longer, though that scowl is certainly no less striking for it.
"Close it," Regina hisses, and he frowns his confusion—he'd hardly spoken at all, and even then it was more muttering to himself than anything—until she gestures impatiently at the secret opening in the wall, made not so secret by the manner in which he simply stands in the way of its closing.
Robin obliges, toeing it shut, which he regrets almost instantly when the air of the room, with nowhere else to go now, turns on him instead, thick and cloying with the heady weight of his own growing arousal.
At the click of the latch, Regina is loosening her limbs to disentangle and spring nimbly from the bed, landing firmly, bare-footed on the floor. It must hold none of the heat afforded by the touch of a dragon, and he finds himself arrested even by the plain vulnerability of her toes, curling delicately against the cold while her hands hastily right her hemline, then adjust what's left of each sleeve on her shoulders. She carelessly cups herself as she wrangles the bodice somewhere into the realm of slightly less immodest, her mouth thin with determination and gaze calculated in its wide sweep for the way of escape.
But he's in no such hurry himself, now that this moment of hers is his for the taking; he means to be generous with his time, and he means for her to know it.
Her lips purse at his approach, swollen from kisses belonging to places kept secret. The rest of her stills as he steps in slowly to relish her space, the way she looks like heaven, and how she smells of sin.
Robin makes a silent show of craning his neck for a better view of her fallen prey. There's a fixed sort of placidness to Maleficent's features that looks somehow wrong, and a smear of red catches his eye, the path of its trickle stalled mid-thigh, borne from a tiny nick in her skin. He's every suspicion now of foul play, though he knows not what manner of drug or spell has left her this way.
He keeps his words vague but by no means unclear. "That didn't take long," he observes, almost conversationally, if not for the gravel-like texture of his tone.
"Took you long enough," Regina returns with a shift of her weight between each foot, elbows in hand, clearly uncomfortable with standing so close on another one's terms.
"Perhaps to allow you enough time to find what you were looking for," he suggests lowly, without relinquishing an inch to her, and the bedframe jostles as he backs her into a post. It unleashes a thrill up his spine, the precarious act of cornering a creature too fiercely exotic to withstand a cage for long.
"How very noble," she drawls, "for a thief."
"Simply watching out for my own," he shrugs, and their eyes exchange a fleeting warmth, a tenuous truce in the knowledge of their cycling ways in trust and betrayal. She may imperil him all she likes with those beguiling lips and quick-witted tongue, but he needn't worry where she keeps that dagger, when she has other, sharper means of forcing his hand in surrender.
Her touch is firm and flat on his chest, to halt more than discourage his progress, her tone mocking but light. "A gentleman, through and through."
"Well, did you find what you were looking for?" he queries casually, and her gaze flicks downward to the unmistakable length of him tenting his trousers.
Regina wets her lips, and that's when he catches a glint of something in her smile, a six-pronged shard of very fine gold, thin, exquisite, no bigger than a thumbnail. Desire burns and brands him, white-hot with the realization of just how she must have come into possession of the key they'd both laid claim to, while she twirls it with her tongue and teeth, then slips it between two fingertips. He watches with a heavy swallow as it disappears within her cleavage.
"Looking for what?" she wonders, a challenge, but he won't be deterred, unrepentant in the heat of his stare, tracing the course of her finger from the hidden valley of her breasts. Then, because she can't seem to resist every opportunity to achieve a rise out of him (and oh how he does, for her), "I did warn you that you weren't her type, didn't I?"
"You did," he agrees in a most amiable fashion, as though the fact hadn't galled him mere hours before. She looks smug then, victorious, and doesn't protest when he finds purchase in the slender slope of her waist, a modest concession in the face of his defeat. "But you, Regina? Is she yours?"
Her chin tilts, smile turned secretive. "What makes you think she isn't?"
"I noticed only one of you screaming," he murmurs, and her smirk startles slightly before solidifying into something bold, relentlessly sensual.
"I can be a selfless lover," she tells him seriously, neither of them missing the rigid throb of his cock into her belly at the admission, "and this wasn't about me."
Robin bends forward to frown his disapproval into her sex-tousled hair, dropping a husky whisper near her ear. "She didn't make you come, then?"
Regina's hands seek out the collar of his tunic and tighten there, tugging until their gazes realign; there's a visible break in her composure now, as though he's finally defected, double-crossed her by crossing some line she had carelessly toed herself with every expectation that it would continue to hold. She stares and stares at him, her lovely breasts swelling with the force of each shallow breath, and he thinks of the treasure buried in their vale.
"Remarkably considerate dragon," he muses when her silence says it all, "for saving me the honors," and Regina's mouth falls open in a lovely oh of surprise before he steals it swiftly away with a kiss.
Their tongues meet and tangle instantly, a battle of wills neither can stand to lose this time, and the contact bruises, has her moaning, pressing every one of her curves into the lines and planes of his body. When he's a chance to gather his thoughts later, he'll spend it in the deepest regret of all other moments they'd previously wasted for the sake of things worth no more than what they weighed in gold.
No amount of gold in the world could account for the loss of such kisses that had never been.
But for now, he'll take every bit of her she's willing to give him, and he begins to investigate just how much that might be, hands rising from their place at her waist to scour up her sides, then coming to squeeze a breast in each palm. She sighs into his mouth, angling the kiss sideways to deepen the slow dance of their tongues, and he kneads, thumbs finding her nipples through the fabric, pinching lightly before traveling further inward, and—
"Don't even think about it," she rasps, twisting their mouths apart with a wet pop, and he rewards her vigilance with a rakish grin, hands lifting away in a protest of innocence, before reaching around to cup her arse instead. She acquiesces as he gathers her to him, the bulge in his britches pressed intimately into the meeting of her thighs. Her hips pick up pace, establishing a friction so divine it has his eyes rolling back, but his balance tips forward, and her head knocks back against the bedpost with an audible thunk.
She shoves at his chest to make room for her glare, and he's murmuring his most heartfelt apologies against her cheek, the corner of her frown, while he palms her nape, fingertips massaging the point of impact.
"Are you all right?" he murmurs, and she declines to respond in favor of fusing their lips together once more, licking at the seams and swallowing the sounds of his strangled groan. He's not entirely oblivious to the highly inappropriate state of their current arousal, with the risk of mortal danger lying unconscious only an arm's length away. But then Regina is twisting her hips again, rubbing up and down the length of him, and she'll be the death of him in other ways.
"We should've done this a long time ago," she grouses upon parting for another ragged breath, and even her ornery tone of voice charms him to no end.
"I couldn't agree more," he tells her, deciding then that he'd quite like to taste the rest of her too, and he moves to do just that, tonguing her jawline, the shell of her ear.
She gives a sharp gasp when he sucks at her pulse, and he withdraws long enough to scold her, mildly, "Haven't you ever heard never to wake a sleeping dragon?", before resuming his heated perusal down the curve in her throat.
"Oh, she won't be waking up any time soon," Regina hums, fisting his hair and urging him faster.
"And how much time is that exactly?" he wants to know, scratching shivers into the skin of her collarbone, then lower, lower, with each stubbled, open-mouthed kiss.
"Plenty," she says breathlessly, "enough for—"
He drops to his knees.
"For this?" he finishes, gathering her skirts to bunch at her waist as he buries his head between her thighs.
"Robin," she sighs, and he aches to bury other things inside her, but he's so utterly distracted by the scent of her desire for him, it's all he can do to kiss his way up to the very center of it.
Since the dawn of their time together—if together is what one could even call it, when he's never quite certain whether he ought to be watching his own back or hers—Regina has so often insisted on stealing things of his. The replaceable things or otherwise, from jobs he'd so carefully planned that she'd so easily sabotaged, to the very saddle off his horse's back (sometimes the horse along with it), not to mention his pride upon arriving home to greet his men with neither gold nor a single sorry excuse to speak of.
And his heart, but there will always be the question of whether she had stolen that too or he'd relinquished it willingly.
But never before had she indicated that this beating in his chest, of all his (her) modest possessions, was the exact thing she'd truly wanted for herself, and now that he knows she's a taste for things beyond dragons, he's prepared to take back something of hers, before—
"What was that?" Regina asks suddenly, just as he's slung one knee across his shoulder and brushed a kiss along her inner thigh. He strains to detect whatever it is that has her legs tense and trembling, stilling his ministrations, and then she's hauling him roughly up by the shoulders back onto his feet. He sways in place, momentarily dazed, the abrupt disturbance in his fog of lust disorienting him all the more when it clears enough to see her looking frantic and furious with herself for getting so carried away with him.
Robin hears it then, the distant slap of heavy footfalls on wet stone, and though it could be nothing, it could be all that stands between escape and their heads on a spire for the dragon's next meal when she stirs at last.
"Whoever it is, they may not know of this hidden room," he tries, uselessly.
Regina sounds thoroughly unimpressed as she snaps, "Are you willing to bet your life on it?" It suffices to silence him; truth be told, though he's risked his own neck for far worse, he's loath to do the same as far as hers is concerned.
She struggles back into heels while he carries on simply watching her, still hard and aching in places he shouldn't be, given the evidently dire straits of their most recent predicament.
"Come on," she hisses, grip commanding his wrist, and then she's throwing them both at the crack where door meets wall, slipping through first with him stumbling after her.
A voice accompanies the echo of footsteps, a tuneless hum, along with the clang of metal with metal, armor with sword. It creates such an awful racket it's nearly impossible to predict the angle of its approach, and the longer they loiter…
He can't think on what gruesome fate will befall them for absconding with the only existing key to the dragon's prized nest of eggs.
"We'll be less likely to get caught if we split up," Robin tells Regina when she balks at either direction, her hand hovering uncertainly at his elbow now. She appears reluctant to agree, but more reluctant still to squander precious seconds quarreling about it.
So she gives a curt nod and a "Fine," clipped, back to business-like, as her touch falls away. He feels the loss of her then, acutely, though she's still within his easy reach. But in the dankness of the corridor, the warmth of the dragon's lair now lost between them, they stand apart almost as strangers, carefully aware of each other's space, when he—she too, he's certain—had allowed for none of it just moments ago.
"Wait," he utters when she turns, in any one of all the ways there are to leave him, and then he's pulling her back to fit within his arms for a last, long kiss, hard enough to bruise his heart this time.
"Until we meet again," Regina's whisper touches his lips, and he lets himself mistake the tone of her vow for one of fondness now.
He gives her the head start, as he does all things meant to be hers for the taking, and when she affords him a single backwards glance, he tells her of promised things, and all his desires (secrets no longer), without a word.
The gold is fine enough to cut into his skin, its six prongs drawing blood as he wheels it between two fingers in his pocket and doubles back the way he'd come.