She clings to you afterwards, her sweat covered forehead pushed into the crook of your neck. Normally, you would sneer at such behaviour and push her away, but this time around you find that you just can't. So instead you try and ignore the fact that you have been trying to work up the courage to push her away, like you normally would. You try and ignore how wonderfully she fits against you, every curve and dimple corresponding with your own. You try and ignore the feeling of rightness that is blossoming within you, because you know that it shouldn't be there. Your heart is cold, you shouldn't feel any thing for this, this girl.

So as you lay together, after your latest session of what is fast approaching love making, her clinging to you, your legs entangled and for once you don't try to push her away. For once you allow your mask to slip, you allow yourself to become just Regina once again. There is something so beautiful about moments like these, something dangerous and rather unexplainable yes, but utterly beautiful too.

You know that you shouldn't let these moments happen, you shouldn't let her in so far. She's the only person in so many years who has managed to slip past your guard and scale the many walls you have up to protect yourself. You didn't even know it was possible for you to feel, not after so many years of hatred and a never ending coldness that had settled inside your soul. These moments are more precious to you than any other memories you have, because the sheer amount of feeling that you find bubbling up inside you for the woman nestled into your side is astonishing.

Many times over the past months you have tried to convince yourself to stop, you have tried so hard. You had left with no explanation, only to find yourself drawn back by the trance that she has held you in since the first moment you saw her. You're supposed to be the Evil Queen, unfeeling and hateful, cold and callous, calculating and uncaring, but you're not so sure that's who you are any more. She has changed your entire world, and all it had taken for your life to be turned upside down was a smile.

A sweet smile, timid but beautiful, one side slightly lower than the other as she bit the inside of her lower lip. She had gazed at you with those big green eyes, so full of uncertainty and hope, and in that moment you had felt the whole world as you had always known it slip from beneath your feet. Of course, you had tried to fight it. Valiantly, you had fought with all of your substantial power against the pull she had on you.

You never wanted to love, love was weakness and weak was some thing you could never again be. But gods do you love her, so much that it makes your heart ache. Filling it to the brim and spilling over, seeping through the cracks in your armour. You know that she sees, but you have yet to admit it. You know that she is yours and yours alone and will be until the day that you both die, she has told you as much, but you're still too terrified to say those words to her. It would make it all far too real, and reality has a history of tearing down all of the carefully laid dreams you've had.

In this moment though, with her clinging to you as though she will never let go, you find that almost none of that matters. For her, you find that you are willing to risk being burned by the world, she would be worth the pain. Any pain inflicted in her name would be exquisite torture, pain worthy of a queen. You would endure it over and over so long as you get to keep her.

You find that the words are on the tip of your tongue. Declarations of love, words so sweet that none of the like have left your lips for more than a decade. Words that belong to her and only her when they fall from your lips, like her name, a mantra and a prayer gasped in breathless wonder in moments that the world will never witness. The words halt there, not because you don't want to say them, but because you don't want to break the magic of the moment.

There will be plenty of time in the future, plenty more stolen nights like these, in which you can whisper such words as you worship her. Tonight is a night made for the kind of silence that only occurs with bliss, only the sound of your breathing piercing the air. For the moment, with her nestled into your side, you find yourself happier than you have ever been, and so the words can wait. She knows that she is loved, and that is what matters.