A/N: Hey readers, apologies to all, I know full well I should be updating my other fic Tells but this little idea popped into my head and wouldn't leave until I'd gotten it down on paper. Probably a one shot, but could do sequel if you guys like it enough. Please let me know your thoughts- reviews make me a happy soul! Oh and happy SQ smut to you all!
CHESS:
"Do you play chess Miss Swan?"
"That's what you called me here to ask?!"
Emma tapped her foot impatiently on the marble tiles by the doorway to the study, huffing with incredulity. "I am Sheriff now you know; people rely on me for their communal safety and wellbeing."
"Miss Swan, I have a hard time believing you know how to spell communal safety and wellbeing let alone wilfully representing the source of it."
Emma bristled as she crossed her arms purposefully. "What can I say, I'm the intellectual powerhouse they don't see coming."
"Then I must congratulate you on your disguise for its imperviousness. Truly, no-one would ever tell," said the mayor peering up from her paperwork with the barest hint of a smile.
The stand off intensified as the two women locked gazes, neither wanting to break the opaque connection filling up the space with its buzzing charm.
Almost instinctively, Emma took a step further into the room; laying down a challenge no-one else could possibly have picked up on except for the insanely perceptive woman sitting a few metres away behind her monochromatic décor and fingerless sheen.
"As always I appreciate your unblemished honesty, Madame Mills."
The Sheriff caught brown pupils trailing up the seams of her tight jeans, pausing momentarily at their apex before flitting away.
"And to be honest the insults kind of make a refreshing change from the backslapping and grateful looks I usually get around town."
"Well how absolutely terrible that must be for you," drawled the mayor, upper lip twitching.
"Isn't it just? Screw Hamlet, sometimes I'm pretty sure mine is the greatest tragedy of them all. "
Emma had to keep herself from betraying her smirk as she moved stealthily closer, from durable marble to the plush threads of a ruby coloured rug, the growing proximity of her skin noticeably forcing her nemesis's eyes to flit higher and higher.
"So you were saying?"
"Mmmm?"
"I thought you had a burning question that needed answering?"
The brunette blinked a little then and when the grand room came back into focus, realised with irritation that she'd allowed the blonde to wrest some of the control away in this situation. Which was not acceptable.
Not acceptable at all.
Standing up ceremoniously behind her desk, brushing her tight-fitting shirt down, Regina let a single fingernail run along the table's spotless edge as she sauntered around towards her guest. Searching those feline green eyes for hesitation or weakness.
There was none so far.
Which just added to the entertainment.
"As I was asking, before you ruined my train of thought with your inane babblings…" she said, a natural husk developing in her tone, "…was if you happened to play chess. Being such an intellectual powerhouse and all."
Emma watched as the older woman stalked forwards a few steps until they were less than a foot apart. Swallowing at the unexpected and unbreakable look of lust shining back at her, she had to tell herself to hold her position as she considered the question.
"I…uh…I…"
Oh crap.
Scrabbling around for suitable words of any kind, she raised her chin as if that could make up for the embarrassing shortfall and licked her lips.
"I've played a few games."
"Excellent." Regina cocked her head. "So tell me, Miss Swan, which is your favourite piece?"
Breathing in the shadowy scent of cider and static that emanated from the woman in front of her, Emma's brain short-circuited completely for a moment. Truth be told she could do little more than stand there open-jawed as the brunette grinned at her.
"Myself I have to admit to having an undisclosed affinity for pawns." The mayor reached out a manicured nail and ran it delicately down Emma's forearm, not viciously enough to leave a mark but clearly leaving the hairs standing to attention in its wake. "They're easy to manipulate and even easier to throw away when they've lost their usefulness."
Oof.
The blonde's stomach muscles jerked at the older woman's grin but she fought to keep them down, locked in place as she leaned forward herself.
"Are you sure it isn't that you just have a thing for small shiny headed bald guys? You can admit it if it's true, I won't tell anyone." A pause. "I always knew there was a reason you ran around with Sydney…"
As her words hit the air, a small sliver of irritation flitted through the brown orbs in front of her and Emma cheered victoriously inside her mind for a brief second. It wasn't something that happened very often, getting the upper hand over the Evil Queen but damn it felt good when it did.
At least, it felt good right until the brunette gave a growl and suddenly lunged at the blonde, slamming all the air out of her lungs as she pushed her backwards, five steps, ten then slammed her hard against the cream papered wall.
"You still didn't answer my question Sheriff and I don't like to be ignored."
Regina's breath was coming out in hot gasps, wetting the pulse point on Emma's neck and the sight of the woman caught in a moment where she was out of control, existing purely on corporeal instinct rather than strategy sent strange exhilarating shivers down the younger woman's spine. As if something inside recognised a kindred spirit and responded of its own accord.
"Miss Swan! I won't tell you again. Eyes on me."
Emma gulped as a pair of strong fingers dragged her face down to stare into a pair of irate chocolate pupils. An angry mouth pursed below.
"Which. Is. Your. Favourite. Piece?"
"Uh…"
"I..."
Trying to think of a witty comeback was like wading through mud, especially with Regina's other hand resting lightly on the waistband of her jeans. But Emma wasn't willing to lose the game quite so easily either and tried to draw together the fragments of her thoughts into some semblance of order.
"uh…Why don't you guess?"
"You don't want me to guess, Sheriff."
She sucked in a ragged breath. "Why not?"
"Because I might just be right that you favour the good and powerful knight…thus proving that you're as predictable as you are feeble."
Wriggling around at the newly released spite in the other woman's voice, more than a little stung, Emma bared her teeth.
"Don't underestimate the knight, Madame Mayor, he moves in interesting and mysterious ways." She shoved the arm away from her. "Kind of like God."
"Well no-one could accuse you of lacking hubris, I'll give you that."
"But since you asked, actually no, the Knight isn't my piece of choice. And it's certainly not the royals either. I think I've had just about enough of grand-standing self-indulgent monarchs lately thank you very much."
She couldn't help herself, Regina felt the rumble of anger roll through her stomach and pushed herself up as close to the blonde as was possible. Slamming her lips onto hers, she snaked her hand around the surprised Sheriff's neck and clawed at her hair, allowing a few ringlets to slip between her fingers as she kissed her as hard as she could. At first, her conquest squirmed and writhed about as she fought to push the woman off her, infuriated by the cheek of it, by the sheer arrogance of the move when she'd just been accused of a similar thing herself. The problem was that her body was acting on it's own volition. As much as she tried to drag herself away, the skin on her stomach that touched Regina's shirt was practically coursing with fire and her mind had started to whirl with shivers of desire.
The effect pretty much turned her muscles into mush.
And she couldn't stop herself from kissing back then; her own lips devouring the others with rampant need. They were surprisingly slick and she ran her tongue along the lower of the two until Regina granted her entrance and they both managed to steak the taste of each other. Consuming it. Wanting in the most visceral way possible.
That was the moment though. The second when the mayor's unbreachable walls were down, at least a little and Emma knew she had to take her chance. Biting down a little on the brunette's lip, she pressed the sole of her boot back against the wall and pushed off with as much strength as she could muster. Both of them were propelled backwards, a quickly buried look of alarm in the older woman's eyes until her back came into contact with the roll-top lip of her desk and they stopped, Emma's hands grinding down onto the hipbones directly in front of her.
Pushing them both downwards.
Looking up with a grin, she locked eyes with a furious mayor.
"Miss Swan, what in the hell do you…"
"I'm the knight right? I move in mysterious ways, remember?" Leaning down, Emma gave her a hard kiss, knocking her nose against the brunette's as if to prove her point before resting a little more of her weight downwards. The mayor's muscles gave a livid jerk.
"Remove yourself at once!"
"You can't stop in the middle of the game, Madame Mayor, that's not how the rules work."
"I make the rules, you heathen! Now get off me!"
Kicking out with her heel, all the mayor managed to do was knock over the freestanding brass lamp that stood to attention next to her workspace. It fell over with a clank, its chubby head luckily coming to rest on the muffled carpet rather than cold tile.
"You concede?" asked Emma.
"In your dreams, Sheriff."
Regina huffed impatiently as she struggled against the impervious weight on her, although she didn't feel quite so eager to get away when Emma dropped her hips and ran a searching hand across the groin of her trousers. In fact, it was all she could do to keep her head facing forward and to stifle the unconscious moan that threatened to escape from her mouth.
Emma saw though. She also felt the beginnings of warm wetness underneath her hand.
"That's a bold statement of intent, your Majesty," she whispered, pressing the heel of her hand down harder causing the Mayor to suck in breath.
"And yours is a minor victory; enjoy it while it lasts," replied Regina through gritted teeth.
It was a throwaway line. A spur of the moment thing. But that particular retort riled the blonde more than she would have thought. She'd been dismissed as unimportant and worthless her whole life, by foster parents, by street hoodlums she'd hung about with who thought she was little more than a schoolgirl for sticking to petty crimes that hadn't required a victim. Even the judges in the couple of abuse claims that had been filed; they'd sat there on high with their black robes like vultures on a perch frowning at her uncouthness as if she knew perfectly well the appropriate way to act in court and simply refused to adhere to it.
All of them had thought her rebellious. Unteachable. Stupid.
And now Regina too, it seemed.
Letting her frustration coalesce into a gelatinous mass in her stomach, she clamped her hand down roughly on Regina's warmth, eliciting a loud keening gasp then pulled it away a second later, retreating backwards into the middle of the room.
She wasn't sure who was the most dissatisfied with the move; her own body was screaming at her to go back, to forget about the stupid little insult while Regina's eyes had widened into impossibly large pools at the cool air that now hung around her, devoid of any human heat.
Panting a little, Emma stared at her. They both stared at each other, breaths ragged and fury stoking some strange shared defiance; the room expanding between the two of them as they tried not to count the number of steps it would take to close that distance.
"What's the matter Miss Swan, can't the big strong law enforcer of Storybrooke handle a little good natured dissent?"
Emma let a sneer cross her face. "Think what you like, I'm just more of a delayed gratification kinda gal. Think of this as my middlegame."
Regina snorted gracefully. "That's a little presumptuous isn't it?"
"Judging by the hard time you're having catching your breath, I don't think it is," threw back the blonde.
Regina however didn't seem to find it quite so funny. Clamping down painfully on her lip to the point that it pinched into an off white colour, she let her hands drop down to smooth out her jacket and trousers, all the while maintaining unbroken eye contact with her counterpart. Then she took a step forward.
Moved from ones small square of smooth marble to the next.
Emma eyes narrowed in response.
But the smirk was already back on the older woman's face as she took another predatory step across the floor towards Emma, a clear purpose and calculation in the sway of her body; nervousness flashing through her target in a heady wave.
Regina was no fool and she knew exactly how to use the momentary lapse of concentration on the blonde's part. Making her move, she stalked forwards until she was squarely within the Sheriff's personal space, their bodies an inch from each other. She didn't stop there though, despite the expectant twitch in Emma's limbs and the noticeable sheen of sweat on her upper lip. She kept moving to the right and veered off sharply, away from Emma's confused and exasperated face, her heels clicking across the floor as she wandered away and out into the shadows of the hallway.
"Goodbye Miss Swan."
Then she was gone, lost in the darkness of the atrium.
And the Saviour was alone.
Alone and incredibly frustrated.
"Real cute, Regina," Emma murmured to herself then raised her voice.
"You know this makes you no better than a common tease, right?!"
She waited for a moment.
But there was no sign of the other woman. And there was no sound except silence and the buzz of the chandelier above. Or it might have been the hum of her own excited skin, it was getting kind of hard to tell.
"That's right, I said common! No offence intended! "
Still nothing.
Not even the clack of muffled heels.
Just an awkward hush draped over the luxuriant hemp and leather furniture around her.
No, wait it wasn't hush that was swathing the chairs. It was dim light.
Specifically dim car headlights powering up on the street.
And suddenly it hit her. That Regina was leaving.
That was her move- to rile Emma up with her manipulative words, to give her a taste of something simultaneously sweet and deadly then duck out before she could offer any kind of real satisfaction. The realisation swung at her forehead before she could stop it and in its wake was left a tide of bile and acidic rage that threatened to bubble up and out of her throat. It was true. She was alone in the mansion with nothing but her tingling nerves to keep her company.
The freaking nerve of that bitch!
That was it. She was well and truly done with this game.
Balls to winning.
Vaulting over a footstool, Emma sprinted towards the front window of the lounge, not caring that her boot heels scratched the flooring underneath. Dragging the long linoleum curtain out of her sightline, she peered angrily through the glass at the street. It was empty. Completely devoid of any human signs except the flickering of the orange streetlight every few seconds and the shadows it threw out.
Still nothing though.
Emma huffed feverishly and watched her hot breath steam up the glass in a fleeting ellipsis. A strange almost alien pattern made up of saliva and torture that almost hissed as it met the frigid pane. She hoped it would leave a mark. Hoped it'd leave some reminder of her presence in the house at least, once she'd grabbed her stuff and marched her way out of that damn…
Suddenly, just at that moment, a hand clamped over her mouth from behind and she gave a loud squeal as her head was dragged backwards.
Hot lips journeying to her ear.
"Did you miss me?"
Regina? She thought more than a little thrown.
"You don't think I'd give up on the game so easily, do you?" The blonde felt a warm tongue lick the shell of her ear. "Especially when I'm winning."
A delicious shiver ran through the blonde's entire body as she felt the hand move away from her mouth, and a single manicured finger trail its way down the curve of her throat. The combination of that motion and the warm mouth nipping at her ear lobe was almost too much to cope with.
"Y…y…you know that's kind of ch…cheating."
"Not at all. It's called tactics, dear. I simply told my housekeeper to rev her engine a little before leaving and to make sure her exit was…visible."
"Pawns have their uses then."
Regina let her finger slide down into the warm, wet valley between Emma's breasts. "They do tend to bring a bit of depth to the game... "
She ran it tantalisingly underneath the curve of the left one causing the blonde to squeak again, as another wave of unstoppable desire shot through her.
Oh God.
"Wouldn't you agree?"
Emma simply nodded- all coherent thought dissolving as she felt a gentle tug at her nipple.
Every hair on her body instantly stood to attention and she tried her best not to let out the groan building in her. Not to give Regina the satisfaction.
"Can you feel it? I think we're getting close to the endgame now…" the brunette whispered gruffly behind her. "And I'm almost in position to strike…"
She didn't realise it at the time but that was the one mistake that she made.
It was the arrogance of that very sentence that cut through Emma's reverie, dousing her skin with something colder than ice and pulling her back to the world outside of her own longing.
Because no matter how tempting the offer, she wasn't one to lose if she could help it. And hell she still wanted to win this game at all costs.
So she decided in that one second to play sneaky.
Opening up her body a little more by elongating her spine, she silently encouraged the snaking hand on her chest to inch lower, tightening her stomach muscles as it crossed them, forcing the astonishing sensations spreading across her body to the back of her mind.
It might have been the most difficult thing she'd ever had to do. Especially with the expert motions those fingers knew by heart. But she reined herself in as kisses slathered her neck. As she felt the mayor's breasts pressed up against her back, warm and so close.
She compartmentalised all those miraculous sensations.
Still holding back as the wandering digits slipped down... down.. and ever so slightly underneath her jeans waistband she gave a moan without thinking about it but somehow set her plan into motion. Using the movement of Regina's hand as starting point, she span round on her heel, finding herself face to face with two brown eyes that were blown wide with lust.
Bopping Regina cheekily on the nose, she proceeded to wrap her arms tightly around the lithe body in front of her and pushed them back a metre until the pair of them landed firmly on the desktop. Untangling an arm before the mayor could even protest, she grabbed her thin wrist and pinned it back behind the brunette's head. She then brought a knee up and pushed it brazenly between the legs in front of her; not concentrating so much that she didn't notice the heat streaming from that particular area.
"Miss Swan!"
Emma couldn't tell if the way her name exited Regina's mouth was a rebuke or a moan; either way it sizzled on her skin. Assuming she wasn't lucky enough for it to be considered some kind of concession, she decided to go all out and used her other hand to bunch up Regina's shirt, revealing taut, silky skin and a coating of sweat dappling the top. Glancing up, she noticed that there was a glaze of something similar covering Regina's hooded eyes and couldn't ignore the fact that her breathing was erratic. It was a wonderful sight and she rewarded it by dragging her hand across her opponent's stomach, the sweat feeling like dew on her fingertips. Then slipping it down underneath the woman's silk panties, she slid three fingers down across her opening. The woman underneath her arched furiously, which did nothing except make the blonde do it again.
She was always telling people that she was nothing if not consistent.
"This...does not..."
Emma grinned at Regina's attempts to speak as she lay back on the table pinned under her.
"I'm sorry Madame Mayor, I didn't catch that..."
Regina growled, even with her head thrown back. "This does not mean that you..."
Before she could finish the sentence that Emma desperately wanted to hear the end of, there came a booming and stern knock at the front door to the mansion.
Three raps.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"You've got to be kidding!"
Emma looked up with complete exasperation and tried to see who might be there through the narrow window beside the door. Unfortunately she shifted her weight as she did so and the mayor was able to free her wrist and in one movement roll to her side, releasing her from her prison. Quickly straightening up, taking a step away from the blonde's long reach she tidied her clothes and gave the blonde a terse taunting stare before she walked away. Out of the room, and into the foyer to open the door.
"Hey we weren't done!"
Dashing after her, Emma ran a hand through her tangled mussy hair as she skidded to a stop next to the heavy wooden door. It was already opening and as she craned her neck to see exactly who had interrupted their moment at the most inopportune moment possible, her jaw dropped as she saw an old man in flowing purple robes standing there. He had a soft round cap sitting atop his hairless head and a large chain complete with crucifix dangling casually from his neck, as if it was the most probably place to keep such a thing in this day and age.
"Emma, I'd like you to meet the bishop."
Emma simply stared at Regina unsure she wasn't having some kind of breakdown. Well one of them. Or both.
She wasn't entirely sure.
"I asked him to come round today on the off-chance that I might need his...spiritual assistance. If you understand my meaning."
"Charmed to meet you Emma." The man said with a firm nod of the head.
"Pleasure's all mine, Your...Honour?"
As if that was all the introductions required, Regina began ushering the man inside the house with promised of hot coffee and pastries then proceeded to grab the Sheriff's arm a second after he had turned towards the kitchen, half pushing her out the door with a malicious smile pasted on her face.
"Wait, I'm leaving?"
Regina nodded as if she was confirming the most obvious thing in the world. "Of course you are, dear. The game is adjourned. Call it a recess if you must."
Reaching out to straighten the blonde's collar, as she stumbled down the step, she tutted.
"Tactics remember Miss Swan."
Spluttering, the younger woman could only blink, "So...you asked him to come as a back-up. An interruption?"
There was no response.
"So if things had turned out differently and had gone your way, you would have..."
"Well there's no need to give away all my secrets." Regina winked at her as she started to close the heavy door, rolling her shoulders a little to get the stiffness out of them. "Besides, I'm sure you'll find out soon enough. Always a pleasure Sheriff."
There was a brief glimpse of her dark hair then she was gone.
And Emma was alone on her porch.
Alone and completely turned on.
FML she thought miserably.
And started to take the long walk back to town.
In no way formulating a plan for the next round she knew was coming.