Summary: sequel to A Ride on Horseback. OK. Yep, we've moved into full-on plot. Emma and Regina discover there is magic in a little restraint when they get together. The women end up in a place and encounter a situation that could change everything.

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Taking the Reins

Regina led her stallion out of the copse of trees where she had been hiding, rested the reins against Volare's withers, and spoke to the blonde approaching on horseback. "You're late."

"I had to convince our son not to follow me." Emma swung from her saddle, landing in the tall grass.

She had become much better at riding over the past month, due to almost daily instruction from Regina. Their routine included Emma riding out to their secret meeting place early in the afternoons, or as soon as Henry left for his lessons with the fairy teachers. Following each secret rendezvous, the blonde princess did her her best to be back at White Castle, pretending to restlessly lounge in her chambers, by the time the child returned from his combat training with James.

But today, Henry had been grooming his horse in the stables when Emma had finally escaped. Snow White had begun a motherly inquisition after lunch, which Emma had barely avoided, leaving her late to meet Regina. She wasn't about to bring that part of the story up, however. Regina and Snow would never be friends.

"You didn't tell him about me, did you?"

Regina's tone and face indicated several conflicting emotions at the mention of Henry, including fear and longing. Contradictory, perhaps, but their situation was complicated. Over the last month, the women had discussed the boy often. At first Regina had met Emma's updates about Henry with pangs of sadness and loss. Soon, however, Emma had noticed Regina's anticipation of news. She had even noticed the woman's tiny, but growing, joy at Emma calling him their son.

As they approached each other now, Emma tugged off her riding gloves and shoved them into the belt of her tunic. She reached for Regina's face, searching her lover's soft brown eyes for any news, anything she should be concerned about. She wished, not for the first time, that the weird cyclone that brought them all here had waited just a little while longer. She and Regina had only just begun to build their trust for one another in Storybrooke, Emma having only recently convinced the mayor that she really wouldn't take Henry away, when POOF! The damned thing hit, transporting them all to the Enchanted Forest, and changing their lives, once again. Emma had been positive before the storm that the former "Evil Queen" had been well on her way to reforming her relationship with their child. Emma wondered fleetingly, not for the first time, if the Universe just wasn't interested in Regina's happiness.

Well, Emma was determined to claim her happiness, damn it! As the White Knight, the Enchanted Forest's savior from the curse, she deserved it. She had lived her childhood, tossed from foster home to foster home, not belonging to anyone, not having anyone whose heart belonged only to her. Even as an adult, she'd had no one, had convinced herself she wanted no one. And most recently, she had given up everything she might have had in a world she knew, only to bring people back to what they'd had in the world they knew. Absolutely insane.

Emma loved Regina. The woman was her True Love, she was certain of it. But it was exhausting to keep their encounters secret, to be unable to shout her love from the rooftops. She wanted Regina in her life permanently. And openly. More than that, she needed Regina. If she couldn't have Storybrooke and the familiarity of a world that didn't have such stark lines between good and evil, she needed Regina, the one person – in either world – Emma felt completely comfortable around.

Kissing Regina, Emma drew the woman tenderly into the crook of her neck, smoothing her fingers through the woman's thick dark brown hair. "Henry has started wondering where I go so often."

"I don't want him to see me like this." Regina shook her head and set her jaw as she pulled away from Emma.

"But isn't that the goal, Regina? For all of us to be together, to be a family?"

Regina turned away, head down, hands twisting her riding gloves between them. Emma watched as the woman's gaze fixed on a faraway point somewhere inside herself where Emma could not follow. She'd started toward Regina when the brunette finally spoke again, her voice small and fragile, wholly unlike the woman Emma had met in Storybrooke. Gone was the defiance and superiority. "I'm afraid."

Emma wrapped her arms around Regina from behind, kissing behind her ear, before turning the woman to face her. She captured the other woman's delectable mouth in hers, tasted the tears streaming down Regina's cheeks. "Afraid of what?"

Emma watched quietly as Regina clearly struggled to put her fears into words. Emma knew from her own experience, though, that the only way they would be able to deal with what was bothering Regina was if the brunette could voice her thoughts. "Face it, Regina. Say it. Let me prove to you it's manageable. Let me share your burden." Rubbing Regina's back encouragingly, Emma waited.

Emma counted forty-seven heartbeats of silence before Regina spoke, barely above a whisper. "I'm afraid that he'll see me." Regina bit her lip. Finally she added, "I'm afraid that he... he will call me mother." Regina swallowed. "But he will never... call me mom."

"You are his mom. I told you when we first met out here, Regina, he misses you. He doesn't say it, but it is evident in so many other small ways. How he looks out the window at night before bed. The way he looks at every broken mirror."

Emma continued stroking Regina's back. "He focuses on his studies, but sometimes I catch him turning to ask me something. Whatever it is, though, never comes out. He just shakes his head and turns away. I know it's because he is thinking 'mom knows the answer.' But when he turns to face me, he realizes I'm not you. He misses you. He misses the way you were always there for him when he was first learning about the world. A child never outgrows that look over his shoulder for his mother, Regina, for his mom... not when she's always been there. You made him feel secure. That's the real love of a parent, Regina, that security. You've always given it to him, and he knows that. In his heart, he will always know that."

Regina's lips had begun to quiver as Emma spoke. When Emma fell quiet, Regina huddled into her embrace, her body shaking with the force of her sobs.

Emma let the torrent fall, holding Regina close and massaging the nape of her neck. Gradually she felt the heat in the brunette's face cool and the tension in her back release. Her lover had certainly needed this. Emma hugged Regina to her tightly. After a few moments, however, Emma stepped back a little and quipped, "So, can I tie you up, throw you over my saddle, and take you home?" She held out Regina's arms and wrapped the leather reins from her bay around the other woman's wrists.

"Emma..." There was a note of warning in her tone.

Smiling deviously, Emma continued holding Regina's wrists together with one hand and dipped her mouth to the brunette's, only skimming the luscious lips. She unhooked the reins from the bridle and brought Regina's hands between their bodies to tie them more securely. "I could force you."

"Miss – " Regina's frustrated exhale warmed Emma's cheek just before Emma nipped the brunette's pulse point below her left ear. The exhale became a soft sigh of pleasure. "Swan..."

"I always know when I've gotten to you. You use my last name." She parted Regina's riding clothes and pushed the coat off her partner's slender shoulders. "Regina." Emma felt her own arousal growing, felt she needed to speak the brunette's name to keep herself from scrapping this little game and jumping to her favorite part. Focused, she parted the bustier and pushed down the linen, Regina's perfect breasts finally laid bare to her. The blonde unconsciously licked her upper lip before taking the brunette's right breast into her hand, her lips meeting the other. She began sucking the nipple, first lightly, then more deeply, while massaging the other stiffening bud between her fingers, occasionally flicking it gently.

Regina could only respond with a moan.

Letting go of the dark nipple with a moist pop, Emma whispered in Regina's ear, "Do you believe me when I tell you I love you?"

Regina swallowed, a tiny grasp at retrieving self-control. "Yes."

"Do you believe I would ever tell you something that isn't true?"

Regina shook her head and dropped her chin, hiding her eyes from Emma's inquisitive look. Emma lifted Regina's chin with her free hand and recaptured the dark honey gaze. Next Emma skimmed her palm down to cup Regina's left breast, letting them both feel the power behind the rhythmically pounding muscle within. It was several seconds before the blonde spoke again.

"Do you believe I will always keep you safe?"

Regina met Emma's gaze, searching them. Emma could see the struggle in her eyes. "I know you will try."

"Do you believe I will make your dreams come true, if necessary, with my very last breath?"

Emma steadily held Regina's gaze. The brunette's eyes shimmered with tears, her face flushed, her throat tightened. She nodded. Emma smiled at her lovingly as she guided them both to the ground, stroking the gorgeous body before her, persistent to strip her bare.

"Please let me build a life with you... together... with our son."

"Where?" Regina asked. The note of hope was cautious, but it was there.

Emma's smile widened against Regina's hipbone where she was kissing the skin recently revealed by stripping away the brunette's black leather pants. "Inside my mind we're already there. Just come with me. Wasn't it you who said True Love is the most powerful magic of all? It creates happiness."

Regina's lips turned downward until Emma kissed the corners. She knew she wasn't playing fair, that she was bending the truth. It had been Snow who had told her of Regina's words when she confessed her role in the death of Daniel, Regina's first love.

She lifted Regina's hips, adjusting the lithe, muscular legs over her shoulders. Inhaling, she caught the scent of arousal rising from glistening folds. She recaptured Regina's gaze before lowering her head to the feast beneath her lips. Emma held her lover's restrained hands with one of her own, then whispered her final request into the woman's wet heat.

"Let us create our happiness, Regina. Close your eyes. And let yourself dream again."

Emma captured Regina's clit between her lips and stroked at it with the tip of her tongue. That was all it took. The force of Regina's orgasm shook the brunette's body and Emma grabbed her hips to hold her in place. Light erupted around them, accompanied by Regina's gasps and cries as her pleasure overcame her. Emma tingled, her skin suddenly hot though not uncomfortably so. Her hair lifted from the back of her neck; she thought she could feel Regina's light touch there, fingertips caressing.

Regina's femoral pulse slowed in the thighs she had pressed so hard against Emma's head, and slowly her legs fell open, releasing the blonde. Emma had continued licking and nibbling at Regina's clit until she was certain Regina had fully expended herself. Now she lifted her head and looked up, enthralled by the rapid rise and fall of Regina's chest, her swollen lips gasping for air. Before she could find the brown eyes she sought, however, she noticed a fire roared in a hand-hewn stone hearth not three feet beyond Regina's head. The crackling noises of wood drying while being consumed and the scent of apples reached her ears and nose. Instead of chilled earth, they lay on a pure white plush rug. the glade in which they had lain was gone. The glade in which they had lain was gone.

She look over her left shoulder to see a huge bed, four posts holding a canopy high above it, The linens appeared to be an older style, frilly, girlish in complementary hues of greens. "Where are we?"

Regina sat up slowly and made a circuitous study of the space. "It... it can't be."

"What... what did we do, Regina?" Emma asked.

Brown eyes met green. "This is... well, was..." She shook her head before continuing, "Um, this is my bedroom..." she paused. When she continued, Emma heard the overwhelming awe. "My childhood bedroom."

Emma pushed to her feet, looking around intensely. Approaching a vanity table and chair, she noted the chair had a small brush on it. She lifted it, running her thumb pad over the bristles. Several hairs tangled around her fingertips. She had a sinking sense that this was not a past place so much as a present place, and that unnerved her even more than when she discovered she and Regina made magic back in Storybrooke.

The rapid tattoo of booted feet approached the room. Just before Emma grabbed Regina's shoulder and pulled her into the wardrobe in the corner of the room. Just before the darkness enclosed them, Emma registered an expression of utter terror on her lover's face. From between the small space between the doors, Emma spotted the profile of a woman entering the bedroom.

"Regina!"

Emma felt Regina try to press herself into the back of the wardrobe. Too bad this thing didn't go to Narnia, Emma thought, knowing Regina's instinct to flee her mother and the why behind it since the entire cruel story had come out when they defeated the witch who had come to Storybrooke.

But Cora Mills was dead. Emma sharpened her gaze, trying to figure out the source of the trick - if it was a trick. But before another breath, Cora had cursed under hers, spun on her heel and quit the room, slamming the door shut so hard it continued to rattle in its frame as Emma tugged Regina from the safety of the wardrobe.

It seemed clear now. Emma asked Regina, "When in the hell are we?"

While straightening her clothes - the riding habit Emma had only half removed during their lovemaking - Regina went to the vanity, studying the many little items scattered on its surface. From there, she strode to her bed, shoving her hand beneath the mattress below the pillow. She withdrew a book, quickly flipping through its pages.

"Well?" Emma prodded when Regina stopped flipping, staring at a particular page, but still said nothing.

"Today is the day I rescued Snow from her runaway horse." She held out the book page. "This is the entry I made the day before, dreaming Daniel would ask me to marry him, and take me away from here. I wrote it the night before... which, it seems, was last night. There aren't any other entries after."

Emma's brows drew together. "And the next day you rescued Snow, an act that ended that dream before it could even begin." Quickly she asked, "So, Snow White is out there right now on a runaway horse. Where were you and Daniel?"

"On a hill overlooking the valley, having a picnic."

"Now?" Regina responded to Emma's question by going to the window and looking out at the sunlit sky.

"Yes, I'd snuck away before tea time. Mother must have been coming to get me for tea just now."

Emma leaned against the frame of the door, opening the door just a crack to peer into the space beyond. Turning to take in the sight from all directions, she finally closed it, settling it without a sound back into its frame. "So what do we do now?"

"This can't be real," Regina protested. "I can't be reliving the worst days of my entire life!"

Emma rapidly closed the distance, taking Regina in her arms. "Sh, whatever's happened, we'll figure it out together. No matter what, remember you are no longer the 18 year old girl under her mother's thumb. We've ended your mother's threat once. We can do it again."

TBC