She doesn't like being the other woman.
It feels deceptive, and sinister, and selfish, and not like something heroes would do, but Regina has never been all that great at heroics anyway, and she fell too hard and too fast to just walk away from him. Not if he'll still have her.
And despite his best efforts, despite his horribly guilty conscience, he will still have her.
Late at night, he slips away, he pulls out his cell phone and calls her, and she's had to teach him how to delete his call history, because she's a homewrecker now, and that's what they do. He calls her, and the phone is already in her hand, waiting, because he'd looked at her that way when they'd bumped into each other at Granny's this morning, and she knew the waiting was almost through. The godawful waiting, the hours, the days - two whole weeks one time - that his resolve is strong enough to keep him faithful. But then they see each other (or they don't, and that's almost worse, because then the calls are "just to see how you're doing" or "making sure you haven't run off and skipped town," and who wouldn't wonder that about someone they feel so strongly for? Who wouldn't call?), and the tension snaps between them, a live wire of a thing, zinging from him to her, and it calls up the most terrible, aching want. And then he calls.
He calls, and he tells her he needs to see her - just to talk. He just wants to talk to her, that's all. This time. It's always "just to talk."
She's bold tonight, and her stomach is twisting with guilt and self-loathing, so she tells him, "We both know if you come here, we won't end up talking."
He falls silent at that, and she wonders if maybe she's pushed him too far - pushed him toward sense and fidelity instead of tugging him closer to her and the connection that neither of them can deny. When he hangs up on her without another word, she thinks she really has pushed him away this time, but not much later she's being woken again by the echo of her doorbell, and he's there on the porch. Scowling, head hung, but there just the same.
She lets him in without a word, and this time there's no pretense. His hands are on her before she's even shut the door behind him.
He's got a grip on her hips, is turning her so he can crush his mouth against hers, kisses hot and angry - with her or with himself, she's not sure. Probably both. She can't say she blames him, or that she doesn't feel the same. But he's here now, and she's been dying for another chance to look at him, to taste his mouth and smell his skin, and she knows where this is going, so she steers them toward the staircase. Robin is tugging at the belt of her robe, peeling it open and then pushing it down her shoulders.
She almost trips over it when it falls to the floor at the base of the staircase, but Robin steadies her - and then sends her off-kilter by swooping in to suck kisses along the column of her neck, just the way that she likes. The banister digs hard into her spine, but she ignores it. Maybe it will bruise, and he'll linger on her skin for days. She's pushing his own coat off his shoulders, tugging at the buttons of his shirt, and if she yanks one loose in her haste and leaves it dangling, well, he'll just have to explain that to his wife, then, won't he, and maybe she'll finally leave and Regina won't have to do this anymore. Not this way. It's the same reason she wears heavier perfume these days, the reason she freshens it when she knows they're about to meet. The reason she doesn't limit herself to smudge-proof lipstick anymore, and doesn't bother to be careful not to leave a hickey anywhere on his warm, inviting skin. Marian has taken what is hers (even though he was Marian's first - but she tells herself these days that's only the case because Regina herself was too scared to snatch him up all those years ago) and she'll lay whatever claim to him she can for the hours he returns to her.
His palms are skimming the silk of her nightgown, inky black with red lace trim, and he murmurs something into her skin about her being a temptress, and she wonders if he blames her for all of this. Maybe he should. But then again, isn't he the one who's married? Isn't he the one who made vows? There was no til-death-do-we-part for her, and there was certainly no I-will-surrender-to-Marian-what-is-mine. So she breaks the kiss, knowing he'll take the opportunity to look at her, and he doesn't disappoint.
She watches him take her in, watches the silk bunch and shift under his palms before he lifts them to cup her breasts. Her nipples were already stiffening beneath the thin fabric, and he finds them - both at once - and begins to tug and gently twist through the silk. Regina feels the echoes of it all the way down into her belly. She's not sure how they make it up the stairs, with her weak-kneed from his attention and him once again consumed with devouring her mouth with his while he toys with her breasts. But they do, they make it to the top, and she stumbles them toward the bedroom, but gets pushed against the wall a foot shy of her goal.
Robin drops to his knees in front of her, and she's glad that Henry is at Emma's tonight, because there's nobody to catch them here in the hallway. Nobody to happen upon the scrap of black lace he tugs from her hips with a groan and then discards right there on the floor. Nobody to care when he hooks her thigh up over his shoulder and dives in, flicking his tongue quickly and firmly over her already-sensitive nub. He usually saves this particular rhythm for right before she comes, but Regina isn't complaining that he's brought it out early tonight. She's practically climbing the walls, face scrunched in acute, relentless pleasure. And nobody knows but them (and Marian. And Henry, and the Charmings, and Emma, and every other person in this town who is not blind).
When his fingers slip into her and crook just so, and he starts sucking at her between every few flicks of his tongue, she know she's a goner. Just as long as he doesn't stop she'll be okay. And he doesn't disappoint, doesn't stop, not even when the pleasure swamps her, and she calls out his name and smacks her open palm down to the wall next to her to steady herself. Her fingers press hard against the cool surface, and he is relentless, pushing over and over again against that spot and his mouth never lets up, and she's coming again and this time he lets her relax, nips his teeth against the inside of her thigh and presses his forehead to her belly.
"I need you," he growls, and it's filled with misery and weakness, and she wants to care that he's so tortured by this, but she just can't.
"Then take me," she breathes, and he groans quietly, then pushes himself away, and up, and kissing her hard again. All tongue, and teeth, and then he's walking her toward the bedroom and tugging her dress up at the same time, and by the time they have to separate for him to pull it over her head, her knees are hitting the edge of the bed.
He's entirely too overdressed, she realizes. Still in his pants, his shirt open but still on. She makes quick work of the shirt, pushes it to the floor as he busies himself with running his hands over her naked skin, then she sits on the bed in front of him. She reaches for his pants, smirking triumphantly at the sight of him, hard for her, straining against the fabric. Good. She likes that she affects him this way. Belt open, fly down, a shove at his waistband, and then he's in her hand, and moaning softly. She watches his face as she rubs him lazily, his eyes shut, jaw dropped just slightly, and feels a rush of power, of excitement. She does this to him - her - and when he tangles their fingers and forces her to stop, tells her he won't last long, she grins.
Maybe she can't control their relationship, maybe she can't get him to leave his wife, but she can get him weak-kneed and about to come with just some black silk and the steady rhythm of her hand.
He's kissing her again, his fingers tangled and fisted in her hair. It anchors her against him, lets him guide her down slowly until she's on her back, her hips at the edge of the bed. She lifts her thighs, wraps them around his waist and tightens until his cock is pressed snugly against where she's wet and aching for him. He thrusts against her once, twice, again, and then reaches between them and guides himself home.
He's angry tonight, all worked up, and for half a second she expects him to just start pounding away inside her, but he doesn't. Instead, he gives her several smooth, measured thrusts. Controlled, giving her a moment to adjust to the invasion. And then he starts fucking her in earnest, and it's good, so good, a little rough around the edges, but nothing that skirts toward painful. His hands leave her hair, find her own fingers and weave into them, then press them to the bed above her head. Regina grips him tightly and tries to hike her hips a little higher.
It does something to the angle, ratchets the pleasure up a little higher, and soon she's moaning and panting his name, and he's telling her how he can't get enough of her, and how he's waited so long to do this again (4 days this time - hardly a record, not even throwing the curve), and how he's about to come and god she feels so good.
He finishes before she gets a chance to - and she was close, painfully close, so close she'd thought those last few thrusts might have done it. But he's not unwise to her dilemma, even with his breath coming fast, his body spent. He pushes his hips hard against hers and grinds against her, pumping his hips against her body in a quick, hard rhythm that gives her enough external stimulation to compensate for the way he's beginning to soften inside her.
It's enough, and she comes again with a strangled cry of his name.
After, he climbs up onto the bed and she lays next to him, his arm across her belly, and her fingers swirl over the inside of his wrist, again and again. Coasting over the lion tattoo that marks him as hers. He's her destiny, the man she's meant to be with, and when there's sweat on her skin, and his come leaking out between her thighs, and her body feels golden and thoroughly seen to, she has no doubt that pixie dust tells no lies. She scratches her nails lightly over the marred skin, and wonders what it would be like right now if Emma Swan hadn't decided to play the hero and ruined everything. When she looks at him, he's watching her hand, and she knows they're both thinking the same thing, so she lends voice once again to what she knows to be true: "She's not supposed to be here."
Because she's not; she's supposed to be dead - and at Regina's own hand, no less, although she leaves that part out, because she's sure it won't gain her any brownie points with Robin. If it wasn't for Emma Swan, Marian would be just another casualty of vengeance that Regina has to suffer silent penance for. Just another life she destroyed, like so many countless others.
Robin drops his head to her shoulder, and breathes out a heavy, despondent sigh. "But she is here," he reminds her, and not for the first time.
"And you're here," Regina points out, as if layering more guilt on him will help pile some off of her. Her fingers press against the tattoo as she squeezes his wrist lightly. "Where you're meant to be. She's the one who's out of place."
Robin rolls onto his back with a loaded exhale, hand squeezing his forehead in frustration as he stares at the ceiling. "I can't just leave her."
"You could."
"Roland," is all he says, and the guilt slices into her gut, sharp and hot. That's the thing for which she feels the worst - putting a wedge between that sweet boy's parents. Being a mistress she can almost live with, but tearing a family apart - tearing Robin's family, his most prized possession, apart - that is what makes this whole situation nearly unbearable.
He feels too far away from her - the chasm between them is spreading again, more than rapidly-cooling sheets and pillows knocked askew. The shame, and the secrecy, the guilt and the lies, they're spreading like an oil slick between their bodies, choking out the good, destroying everything. Regina hates this part, hates the chasm, so she shifts her leg until her ankle hooks over his. At least their bodies will remain close this time. For now.
She doesn't know what to say to him - has no retort for the price his family is paying for these dead-of-night meetings - so it's a long time before either of them speaks again, and when words come, they're his, stilted and reluctant. "She's not... as I remember her. After she passed - when I thought she'd passed - I spent hours... trying to remember every little thing. The curl of her hair... the way her skin glowed in firelight... her kiss... the way her eyes danced when she laughed."
Regina wishes he'd stop. The last thing she wants is to lie with another man who waxes poetic about the incomparable beauty of his wife - she'd had years of that with Leopold, and has frankly had her fill. And she's about to tell him so when he confesses, "But then I grieved her, and now that she's here... she's not as I remember. Every precious bit of her is... real. Duller. She's still beautiful, but I remember her eyes brighter. I remember her laughing more often, remember her humor being sharper. When I look at her now... I still love her, there's still so much that -" It's as if he catches himself, then, because he finally looks at her, full of remorse. "I'm sorry, Regina, but it's true. I still love my wife. But I wonder sometimes if in death I made her into even more than she was. Is. And the woman I'm with now... "
"Then leave," Regina whispers, buoyed up by his secrets. If Marian isn't everything he wants, then why on God's green earth are they still doing this? He should tell her the truth, leave, and come here to spend every night in her bed, touching her body, breathing her name as he comes.
"You know I can't."
Temper flares in her, suddenly, and Regina pushes herself into a sitting position and props her elbows on her knees, drags her fingers through her hair, and bites, "You can. You just won't."
"I married her."
"So divorce her," Regina hisses, "It happens in this world all the time." He opens his mouth to say something, and she doesn't want to hear it, so she forges ahead before she gets the chance. "And if she isn't the woman that you want..."
She lets that hang there, loaded and weighty, and then he breaks her heart for the millionth time by admitting quietly, "She is the woman that I want."
Regina looks away from him, shaking her head slightly and telling herself firmly and repeatedly that murder is not an acceptable answer to her problems anymore, and neither is ripping out hearts and hoarding them for fun, or enacting vengeance of any, any kind. She may not be much of a hero, but she won't be a villain anymore either. Even if she really, really wants to be.
But then his fingers are coasting down her spine, and he's whispering, "But she's not the only woman I want," and Regina hates herself, and hates him, and hates that she finds the confession so soothing. He sits now, too, and presses a kiss to the bare skin of her shoulder. Then once again, then in the crook where her shoulder meets her neck. Regina turns her head, reluctantly but sharply, their cheekbones bumping.
"You need to make a choice," she tells him, and even though it's true, and the right thing to say, the fact that she has the gall to say it makes her hate herself even more. She knows that he is too loyal, and too honest, and that he will choose Marian, and she will be left alone and gutted. "We can't go on like this forever. You need to chose." She adds, "Soon," and he nods, rests his mouth against her neck, not really a kiss, just a pause, a moment of contact, his breath washing over her skin.
"But not tonight?" he asks, and she knows the right thing to do would be to say yes, tonight, right now, but damnit, he's hers, she's destined to love him, and she's spoken against her own self interest enough for one night. She's protested, and insisted, and played her part, but he's here, and he's hers, and maybe he was Marian's once but those days are over - should be over - will be over - and so Regina just nods, and nudges his face with her chin, kisses him when he lifts his head, and lets him pull her back down to the mattress and another round of desperate, miserable, unbelievably exquisite sex.
She hates being the other woman. But if she tries hard enough, she can convince herself that it's not she who's the interloper. It's not she who is stepping on destiny. It's not she who is in the wrong place with a man she no longer has rights to lay claim to.
Regina may not like being the other woman, but she likes it more than being alone.