let me blow your mind

by nonsequiturvy

Regina makes her way to the forest, knowing just who will be hunting her there. A Shattered Sight AU.

The Snow Queen's spell descended upon Storybrooke much like one of Regina's own curse clouds, roiling with enough electricity to shut down entire worlds (though one, of course, would suffice for now). With it came night, and the dreadful thrill of knowing what – knowing who – awaited her out there, once the air cleared and she came back to herself on the mausoleum floor.

The moon rose high, losing itself behind the thicker patches of forest spread westward of her vault, and she let Swan lead her on a wild goose chase – the irony of that struck her as absurdly fitting – for several minutes in relative darkness before she began to grow bored. There were only so many places to seek refuge in this miserable little town, and the Charmings – their precious savior daughter included – were nothing if not painfully predictable.

She had time.

And she had other, far more compelling scores to settle at the moment.

Almost lazily now, she strolled amongst the trees and bramble, plucking apart various flowers and raising them disdainfully to her nose before discarding them underfoot, her heels grinding the color out of them as they sank into the soil.

She cared little for how much noise she made as she cut through a path choked in vines, brusquely swatting aside the more daring branches that reached across to snag at her hair and clothes.

He would find her soon enough.

It was a credit to his skill as a hunter that he came to her without warning, the forest and its surrounding stillness betraying nothing of him until he was already upon her.

"Your Majesty," he growled, the edge of his knife notched firmly under her jaw.

She smiled.

His dagger pressed closer, and she licked her lips to feel the rest of him follow, his body strong and treacherously warm against her back.

"Didn't they teach you, where you come from, not to keep a lady waiting?" Her voice came out in a purr despite the blade angling deeper into skin, its sharpness growing bold enough to bite, and the sensation of it cut deliciously into her.

"Is that what you'd have me believe that you are?" Robin murmured over her throat, darkly amused, all heat and stubble creeping upward as he nudged his nose behind her ear in some mockery of a lover's caress. "I see no lady before me."

"And I would certainly never mistake you for a gentleman."

His answering chuckle was a low, humorless thing, so many shades darker than what she had presumed him capable of, and she found herself intrigued by her discovery – this untapped side of a man who had always, unfailingly, acted out of some notion of honor.

"Fortunately for both of us," he drawled in a whisper, "I've never claimed to be any such thing."

She hissed out a warning when he adjusted his hold on the dagger, but there was no real danger she could sense in the way that he held her, only a hunger she suspected might mirror her own, a thirst to feel each other's most jagged edges and know how well they fit together.

He inhaled deeply, lips poised just above her skin now, and she dug her fingernails into the trunk of a tree beside her, tense with anticipation. She thought for a moment that he might try to kiss her, but then he was snaking his free arm around her middle instead, jerking her roughly backward into him. Shards of bark splintered out from underneath her fingers, and she welcomed the sting, delighting in it.

He spread his palm across the flatness of her belly and then dragged upward, fingers splaying possessively over her ribcage, thumb sweeping over the swell of one breast. She moved to grasp at the back of his head in retaliation, cupping his neck almost tenderly before weaving into his hair and wrenching downward with a vindictive pleasure, relishing his grunt of pain.

His grip on her slackened, just enough for her to turn and croon at him, sultry and taunting, "Don't go soft on me now, thief."

"You know I wouldn't dream of it," he growled in reply, driving her forward until she was fairly pinned between him and the tree, thick hard lines erected all around her.

Satisfied, she tilted her head sideways to open her throat to him further, letting his knife tip find her pulse point, greedy to know how far he was willing to go. Somewhere, trapped within the innermost parts of her heart where even the blackness couldn't quite reach, was the knowledge that he had no true desire to harm her any more than she did him – but oh, how she would like him to try.

His breath was hot on her neck, ragged little puffs of air as he slid the flat edge of his blade along her jawline, forcing her to look at him. His features were half-thrown into shadow, but there was an unmistakable hardness to them that he wasn't bothering to hide from her, and his eyes pierced through with a light of their own, chillingly blue in the twilight.

Fascinated that she should be the one who sparked such darkness in him, she craned closer, lashes growing heavy as he bent to meet her in kind. Their lips grazed in the barest hint of contact before she pulled coyly back, allowing his dagger to scrape audibly across her throat. She felt him stiffen against her, a groan rumbling low in his chest, and his fingers tightened, sliding back up to grip just beneath her breast again.

Mother would have berated her for playing with her food, but there was something so maddeningly desirable about him like this, all smoldering triumph and raw, predatory appeal, presuming to think her the prey when truly the night belonged to them both.

She reached for his scarf, gathering the fabric into her fist and pulling him down by the neck, setting teeth to stubble if only to learn how quickly he bruised. He made a strangled sort of sound, shifting behind her as she arched back into him, their bodies drawing flush. She leaned back to watch as his Adam's apple bobbed on a thick swallow, observing all that skin exposed above his collar, and she resisted the urge to mark him in other, more permanent ways.

The icy blue in his eyes seemed to burn everywhere they touched, but then his gaze dropped again to regard her mouth, and she felt a different kind of warmth begin to spread as he spoke her name, soft but strained as though it had come out of him against his will.

"Regina…"

The sound of it broke through whatever trance had held them suspended in each other, and she became aware of it a split second before he did, seizing her opening before he could fully come back to himself.

She twisted out of his arms, shoving her magic to her fingertips and slamming them into his chest. The power behind it propelled him backward, landing him with an impressive thud into a tree across the path. The dagger dropped out of his hand as he doubled over with a great choking gasp.

"Now that's more like it."

She sauntered forward, rather enjoying the sight of him kneeling on all fours in front of her. His shoulders were heaving, broken sounds issuing out of his mouth without any sign of relief – Men, she thought with a sigh, so delicate – but as she drew closer, she frowned. They were not sounds of agony at all, she realized, but something inexplicably like elation.

The thief was laughing at her.

"You know," he panted once he found the breath again, lifting up a devilish brow to regard her, "If I hadn't heard the stories, I would never have taken you for the type to prefer your men lying docile at your feet."

Her teeth ground together with such violence that she could hear the sounds echoing inside her head.

"Rather takes all the fun out of it, don't you think, Your Majesty?"

He inclined his head at her, insolent.

She sneered.

The grin he threw back her way was rakish, growing more and more crooked by the second as she stalked up to him. She bent to retrieve his dagger, coming to a pause within inches of his body. He was still half-slumped forward with his hands braced on his knees, but as she approached he pushed himself upright, smiling at her with something like dastardly affection when she brought the blade tip to her mouth.

She bit down on the edge, contemplating.

He smirked at her. "Are we going to stand around staring at each other all night, then, or do you plan on actually using that at some point?"

"I could," she mused, and she slowly leveled the blade to his throat. He held himself still as she trailed it down past his collarbone, his gaze hungry on hers when she glanced through her lashes at him. His teeth dug into his lower lip as she carved out a path to his sternum, carelessly nicking her way through his shirt and scarf as she went. She paused then, veering left to just pierce the skin over his heart, and they both watched, transfixed, as a single droplet of blood bloomed outward to darken the forest green fabric.

Shifting upward, she traced the bridge of her nose over his jawline, feeling it clench, her lips hovering near his earlobe as though about to kiss him, or bite him, or both. "I think we can both agree that there are other, more enjoyable ways of making you beg for my mercy."

Robin moved closer, letting his knife dig further into him as her grip on its handle tightened in turn.

Despite the additional three inches of height that her boots afforded, he still had another two on her at least, using them distinctly to his advantage now as he stepped over her – into her, it seemed – all chest and muscle and unrelenting heat.

"I'd hardly have guessed the Evil Queen to be of the merciful sort." His response was but a gravelly hum, falling to scratch most deliciously away at her skin.

"That's the idea, thief."

His mouth was suddenly just over hers, the space between them now unbearably crowded and still. She knew, with a dreadful sense of anticipation that edged a little too close to panic, that he meant to kiss her at last.

He didn't make the mistake of uttering her name again, but his impudence as far as this…other matter was concerned was not about to go unanswered. Before he could lower his mouth any further, she gave a twisting flick of her wrist, and he was slammed back into the tree once more, scraping bits of bark loose and scattering them all over the forest floor.

"We're not doing that," she informed him, coolly dismissive, as if the thought of it appealed to her about as much as having tea with Snow White.

To her everlasting exasperation, he merely barked out another laugh, eyeing her with something dangerously like understanding as he slowly straightened himself again.

"No, naturally not," he agreed easily, settling back against the tree trunk and watching with a lazy sort of hunger as she renewed her approach, swinging her hips until she came close enough to slip a knee between his thighs.

He made to lean forward, but it was as though he'd been secured to the tree with an elastic band, the recoil sharpening with each attempt he made to reach for her. She gave him a sly, knowing smile when he eventually stilled, leveling her with a mildly accusatory look.

He let his arms fall away to his sides, palms turned out in a gesture of mocking surrender. "And what is it you plan to do with me now?" he drawled, with such patronizing indifference that he might have been humoring a mischievous child who'd done no more than tangle his bootlaces together.

"Well," Regina considered, fingers dancing across his chest to mark out his steadily beating heart. He didn't flinch away, simply gazing down at her with a vague sort of curiosity even as her hand closed in, ready to take what was rightfully hers. "If you think I'm so lacking in ideas—"

"What I think," he cut in, and he actually had the audacity to sound impatient with her, as though he thought she were only stalling, "is that you're afraid to find out what I'm capable of, without your magic to shield you."

It was her turn to laugh at him, a black, humorless sound that sliced through the air and lingered between them, haunting, as she bared all her teeth in an incredulous smile. "Is that a threat?"

"A promise, milady."

Perhaps he meant to throw her with these names he'd once fashioned out of something like tenderness for her, using them now in a tone of derision. Unmoved, she sank her nails deeper into skin, her words softly menacing. "You're very confident, to believe that I'm the one in need of protection."

He smirked, wholly unconcerned by her own thinly veiled warning.

"You think your heart safe from me, Your Majesty?"

She scoffed at him – how like a thief, to make such claims on her heart when his was in more imminent danger – but something traitorous inside her reared its ugly head, and she couldn't account for it, the sudden flare of uncertainty that had her palm flattening, caught, to his chest. "And you think yourself such an expert?"

But in this he'd always known too much – how wildly her heart had pulsed for him every time he held it out to her, her weakness for heroes and for wanting to find her place in their world – things she had been foolish to give him access to, and now they both understood the gravity of all that she'd revealed to him.

"I imagine few others have had the honor of holding the Queen's heart in his hand."

"Few have seen it and lived."

He seemed to take this as a testament to her attachment to him more than anything else, his smile developing a firmly smug edge that burned her to see. "And yet here we are." There was a distinctly fiendish glint in his eyes when she glowered up at him, and his voice proceeded to drop several octaves. "If you wish to run now, I promise not to tell." He winked.

"I run from no one. Least of all you."

"Well that's debatable, isn't it? I seem to recall there was a time when running was something you were quite good at doing." He watched her process this, his expression pleasantly blank while hers tightened uncontrollably, and she found herself sorely regretting that she'd let his heart go on beating this long beyond her control.

"Not anymore."

"Good. I'm counting on it." He lifted a daring hand, knuckles brushing up her jawline before twining around a lock of hair that had fallen loose during their back-and-forth against the trees. There was something almost flirtatious about the gesture that made her feel hopelessly young, and oh how she was going to enjoy making him pay for this moment.

His other arm had wormed its way back around her waistline, drawing her into him inch by inch until nothing remained but her hand like one last obstacle between them. His dagger was already half-forgotten at her side despite the fact that she'd had no memory of letting it drop. She felt his stubble like a whisper across her forehead, his every exhale stirring warmly at her lashes, though he made no attempt to kiss her again.

He cupped his palm to one side of her face, stroking a thumb over her cheekbone while she let her fingers stray, exploring the well-muscled contours of his chest, down to the side of his ribcage where his heart beat the strongest. The irony of how they must look, held captive as they were by one another, was not lost on her; anyone a reasonable distance away might have mistaken them simply for lovers, stealing into a moonlit wood for a bit of romance and privacy.

As if such small-minded things as romance could even begin to cover what lay between them.

"Go on," Robin urged her quietly, after several seconds of simply taking each other in, both of them briefly content to let demons lie before they came out to play once more. "Have at it."

When she only arched an eyebrow at him, his touch fell away from her cheek to press purposefully over her hand instead, curving her fingers firmly over his side. Her nails slotted between his ribs as though made to fit nowhere else, something like instinct pooling magic to her fingertips until they itched to rip through him and end this once and for all.

"What use have I for it now?" he wondered, with a noticeable hitch in his breathing as her magic pressed deeper and deeper into him. "It's already yours."

He leaned hard against the tree with a pained grimace, but his grip on her never wavered, traveling up the bony spine of her corset and around the rigid-high velvet of her collar to close over the back of her neck. His fingers deftly wound their way into her hair, tampering with the pins holding it up, and lock after lock began to unravel, silk-like, all around them.

Even wincing and partway collapsed in his agony, he somehow managed to look intensely satisfied with himself, biting into his lower lip as he trailed a mischievous finger down one strand of her hair where it curled to end just above her breast.

His eyes had darkened to some turbulent shade of deep sea blue when she raised a coy gaze to his, the sight of them almost tempting to drown in if only she could pull him under with her.

She licked her lips, and he smiled.

Her hand was halfway buried into his chest now, the tips of her fingers just beyond reach of his heart. The pounding intensified to a palpable thrill that seemed to spread and settle within her own chest, until she couldn't be sure anymore whose heart she felt more, where one started and the other began.

They froze together, breathless.

"Do it." His voice had grown heavy, weighted with want.

Her fingers twitched, inching closer, and he groaned.

"You do still have what it takes, don't you?" He shifted beneath her, shamelessly pressing. "I was—" the words caught on another pained gasp as her hand closed around him, squeezing, "—I was under the impression that the Evil Queen had returned, but perhaps I've been mistaken."

Regina bared her teeth in a smile before ripping out of him, and he ground his back into the tree with a harsh, guttural yell, arms straining against the hold of her magic.

She lifted her hand, making a careless inspection of her fingernails while his whole body heaved, and he moved to feel his heart still beating inside of his chest. "Keep it," she told him, managing to sound almost bored as he lifted his gaze to search her for answers. "It's worthless to me anyway."

It was several seconds before he spoke again, and she clenched her jaw to hear the delight in him as he panted, "Oh?"

"Even the most incompetent thief would recognize that there's nothing to gain in taking what's already been given to you."

The insult landed far from its mark, and it soon became infuriatingly clear to her that he hadn't absorbed a single thing that she said. "You really can't do it, can you," he marveled, his tone half-curious, half-smug with the revelation. "And so it appears that the great and terrible Queen's one weakness is love." He snickered the word as though it amused him, as though it meant nothing but a way to destroy her.

"And yet here you are," Regina scoffed in return, everything in her sparking now, deadly. "With me, when you should be mourning your wife. Did you think that I was the only one with darker impulses to hide? That this curse would find you so innocent?"

"Then let me go," he replied evenly, "and find out where my heart truly lies."

She hesitated, long enough to provoke a knowing smirk out of him, but it lacked all the gentleness she'd let herself grow used to, and she sneered to remind him of who she was.

He relaxed his full weight into the tree, head cocked sideways as he told her, satisfied, "You fear that I'll leave you again."

"Don't flatter yourself."

Robin gave her a smile that did not touch his eyes, and it looked wrong on him somehow, unkind. "Tell me this, then," he carried on, in a maddeningly conversational tone. "How many men have bedded you willingly? How many of them were actually given the freedom to accept you and mean it?"

The flames rose from her palm, unbidden, and the blade of his dagger glowed red-orange, searing through skin in a way that her magic never had before. She let it drop, taken aback more than she cared to admit, but even in darkness he saw right through her, and for the first time she began to wonder if he wasn't the more dangerous one of them after all.

There was a sizzle of metal hitting wet earth, the burnt smell of grass smoking upward in tendrils as their eyes locked together once more.

His voice took on a darkly sensual quality, intimate yet somehow sinister too. "You and I both know I'm the only one who's ever chosen to stay."

"And what does that say about you?"

"I know what I want." His gaze crawled down her body, dragging his tongue along one edge of his smile to take in the sight of her, lingering over lips and breasts as heat flared, traitorous, just beneath her skin in response. "And I intend to have it."

She pressed the length of her body into his, snarling, "You think that I don't?"

Robin angled his head down to meet her in kind, and she looked up to find his eyes half-hooded in hunger, his breathing shallow as he bent to bring their lips closer. "I think…" He trailed to a pause, poised over her as though he had every intention to kiss her at last, and how sorely she would make him regret having the gall, soon enough. "…you don't know how without forcing my hand."

"Fine," Regina hissed, "have it your way." She cast her arm into the air, the movement sharp enough to sting through her, and he stumbled forward from the violence with which her magic tore away from his body, abruptly releasing him. "Show me your worst, thief."

His shoulders rolled back, and he straightened to his full height, his mouth suddenly hot by her ear. "With pleasure."

The world spun for a moment, and the breath was knocked out of her as he drove her back into the tree, pinning her down with all of his weight. Her hands flew to grasp at his arms on instinct, clutching there as he set his teeth to her throat.

She gasped, nearly losing her mind when he nipped at her skin, and she wrapped a leg around his backside to steady herself, her other snug between his thighs. He bit into her again, a not-quite-kiss meant to claim her as his, and for one delirious second she almost wished that he would kiss her, and so begin a new kind of torment.

His hands, in the meantime, were doing absolutely criminal things to her body, grasping and squeezing all over, fingers digging into her skin with an almost painful insistence that she had never known Robin to use on her before.

It was, in short, divine.

She arched and sighed out in lustful abandon, threading her hands through his hair and pulling until he groaned and dragged his teeth lower in answer. Her breath gave an audible hitch as he worked his way down to the edge of her corset, setting his mouth there and sucking, hard.

Well that was going to leave a mark, she thought with only a vague sense of displeasure, her head falling back into the tree, breasts swelling on another sharp intake of breath. Robin took full advantage of the opening she gave him, laving his tongue over her skin, exhaling hotly each time he pulled back, stubble scraping in a way that he must have known would make her shiver.

He palmed one hand up her rib cage, warmly cupping her breast through her corset before slipping a finger inside. He straightened again, forcing her gaze back open as he moved over her, mouth just-grazing her ear.

"I missed having you like this," he husked, and the admission might have given her pause but there was none of his usual tenderness in it, only that predatory glint in his eye as he smirked down at her. "Those evenings alone in the forest…these ridiculous gowns that I could never wait to rip off of you…"

She sneered in return, trying not to think of the fact that even now, with his darkness getting the better of him, this part of Robin still craved those long, intimate nights they'd spent under the stars, during that year they'd all once forgotten.

"Please," she scoffed quietly at him. "You were always too much of a gentleman to try any such thing." She raised her eyebrow, half in boredom, half in challenge, and he did not disappoint, curling his finger into her corset and tugging her up against his body.

Her lips fell within inches of his, and she couldn't ignore the heat spreading through her, the way she clenched with anticipation when his gaze grew molten as it always did before he leaned in to kiss her.

"A gentleman after all?" he mused, the words mocking her for how they brushed over her lips like a would-be caress. "So you do think rather highly of me."

"You have your tolerable moments." She ran her hands tellingly across his chest, feeling the muscle there tense to her touch, and she made a low, appreciative sound in her throat, stretching onto her toes and letting him sway her back into the tree again.

Her lips parted, inviting, and he bent over her, lowering his mouth down to hers when she put up her hand to stop him, as though he'd just done so without her permission.

"Don't even think about true love's kissing your way out of this curse," she breathed into the air between them, pressing him back with one finger sternly held to his lips. They curved upward into a devilish grin, his gaze turned appraising as she forced herself to meet his eye. Regina couldn't be certain the curse even worked this way, but more than anything else she couldn't be certain that what they had, like this, was true.

And she was not about to find out.

Regina gazed through hooded lashes at him, half-daring him to defy her, and something unpleasant, something like fear, began to inch its way into her core when she thought of how easily he'd always been able to read her.

His eyes were alight with a dark understanding, that smirk of his falling away as he vowed to her lowly, "I wouldn't dream of it."

He gave her corset another tug, eyes never leaving hers, and he pressed another finger inside to tease out her nipple, lazily rolling it under his thumb. She arched her spine before she could help it, digging her nails into the tree bark to keep from looking so desperate for him.

The thief was toying with her, she knew, and it wouldn't do to give in before she had a chance to repay the favor.

But she couldn't hide the way her breathing had quickened, the slight gasping sound that she made when he dipped his head down to replace his fingers with his tongue. Desire bloomed through her – what a mouth this man had, when he put it to good use like this – and she clenched her thighs against the heat gathering between them, wishing for a different kind of friction there.

Every inch of her ached to have him against her, to feel his skin sliding with hers as she stretched and the night opened itself up to them. It was clear that he craved the same darkness, to bask in it with her, and there was only so much left to stand in their way. Without slowing down, he moved his hand toward the middle of her corset, where the lacings came together at a deep vee, grasping one edge and then pulling it roughly away.

Perhaps it was the sound of the stitching as it came loose, the violent ripping of fabric as he all but tore it off her body, or perhaps it was the way that his mouth closed back over her nipple and sucked it hard between his teeth – but Regina had never felt more alive with the need to have this man, to claim him, to never let him go.

There was a fire beneath her skin for him, pooling heat down low in her belly, and she let herself go weightless for long seconds while he did away with the rest of her corset, those wide-draping sleeves and that high, embroidered collar, until her torso was bared to him.

He didn't pause to simply admire her for a moment the way Robin always did, with a reverence that somehow felt thrillingly foreign each time he took in the sight of her. But then, she couldn't say he'd be able to do the same now, if he were made whole in his goodness again, to see her for what she truly was.

(I'm not afraid of you, Regina.)

But for now, this side of Robin was too impatient to care, and frankly, so was she.

He took both of her breasts in hand, kneading as he stepped back in, mouth poised over hers again. She glared out a warning at him, but he only chuckled, murmuring hotly down the curve of her throat, "Oh, believe me, I've no intention of kissing you," before parting his lips over her skin and nipping, not so lightly, with tongue.

She grasped at his shoulders, frowning when she only managed to grab up fistfuls of thick fabric instead. "I really despise this coat of yours," she groused, yanking with more force than was necessarily warranted until he shifted to help her remove it.

"How else am I to keep you from freezing?" he wanted to know, sounding genuinely perturbed of all things, and Regina felt some traitorous part of her warm at the thought of him caring.

"If you're so at a loss for other ways, then I think we're going to have a problem," she told him, winding a finger through the loose knot in his scarf and dragging down, down, until it unraveled and dropped away. Her hands slid beneath the hem of his sweater next, rucking it up as she trailed her fingertips over his abdomen, feeling the muscles there tighten.

"Fair enough," said Robin, roughly palming her breasts again, taking the hardened peaks of them between thumb and forefinger and squeezing. "Allow me, then, Your Majesty," and oh how he made it sound like a curse, to be what she was, but if this was her fate then she couldn't regret any of the things that she'd done to get here.

Regina grabbed at his sweater again, licking her lips at the bare swaths of muscle revealed as she tugged it unceremoniously off of his head. The motion pulled his hands away from her breasts for a moment, exposing herself to the air, but she'd barely made a sound of protest when Robin stepped in to press all that skin of his into her, heating her body in more ways than one.

"Better?" He snaked his arms around to her backside, gripping and lifting her just off the ground as he stepped even closer, pinning her into the tree.

She hummed her satisfaction, wriggling up against his body, not missing the way his lashes fluttered closed for a second when she brushed a leg into his erection. She let her gaze drift coyly downward, admiring the way her breasts swelled where she'd crushed them to Robin's chest. He bent over her, the tip of his nose grazing the open part of her throat, and she dropped her head back, stretching her body up to meet his with a sigh.

It felt right somehow, sinfully so, that they were spending their darkest hour like this, torturing one another while the rest of the town tried to tear itself apart. Let them, she thought, it would certainly save her the trouble, when she had more enticing matters to attend to for the time being.

For all his talk about love and second chances, this other side of Robin was driven by his own selfish hunger, just like any other man – she would make him just another man to her, use him and toss him aside before he could think to do the same to her, and who would be the weaker one then?

He groped his hand beneath her thigh, dragging down to her knee and hooking it around his waist to bring himself flush with her center. She indulged in a moan, reveling in how incredibly hard he was for her, how his jaw seemed to come halfway unhinged when she rubbed herself more firmly over his length.

"Regina," he gasped, and for a moment he looked like her Robin again, his gaze on her soft simply from wanting to hold her, his hand reaching up to gently touch her cheek, and oh, how much fun she would have bringing this man to her knees for his lies.

With the hint of a smirk on her lips, she ground her hips against his some more, waiting for his breathing to stutter, for his body to lean even further into hers and his eyes to draw closed when he found himself unable to keep from kissing her at last.

His mouth came within an inch of hers, and she bit her lip in anticipation, feeling another sharp burn of arousal at the thought of denying him.

He had her pressed into the bark until it dug, but she'd never felt more powerful, edging closer and closer to the sweet release of claiming her victory, lips parting to welcome and scorn him in the same breath.

Robin paused, the air between them growing heavy, and then without warning he was pulling away from her, startling her gaze back open. She blinked and blinked, unable to stop the sudden hollowing sensation inside of her, like some dark weight had been dropped but could only fall and fall without a place for it to land.

He was smiling at her when she looked up at him, though it left his eyes untouched, and the knuckles he brushed across her face now felt like a mockery of the tenderness that he'd shown her not minutes earlier.

Feeling distinctly unsettled and hating herself for it, Regina set her teeth together, determined not to let him walk away unscathed from this. But he'd caged her there in all of his coldness, his eyes calculating as they gazed down at her, and she suddenly longed for nothing more than to feel his lips warm on hers, for him to kiss her like he meant it.

He ran a thumb over her bottom lip, looking thoughtful.

"Why are you so afraid of this?" he wondered, his tone mildly curious, like she was nothing more than a puzzle to him.

"Afraid!" she sneered, with a look that would have brought down any other man than this one. "Guess again."

"You're trembling," he noted.

"It's fucking cold out here," she grit through her teeth, "and if you're going to be this useless to me in that regard, then I—"

"Would you like to know what I think?" Robin cut in, leveling her with a smugly meaningful stare as he wrapped himself more firmly around her. Their hips pressed together, and she despised how her body betrayed her in that moment, heat flaring through her again to feel how hard he still was for her, how much this callous sort of foreplay aroused him.

"By all means," she hissed, grinding herself against him, entertaining a sliver of grim satisfaction when his breathing shallowed ever so slightly. This was a game she had no intention of losing.

"I thought, at first, that you were afraid we wouldn't prove strong enough to break this little curse," he murmured, taking a lock of hair between his fingers and twirling it slowly, his knuckles brushing up against the side of her jaw. "But that's not it at all, is it?"

"Do enlighten me, would you?" said Regina, the words dripping with sarcasm.

He traced the bridge of her nose with his, a taunting echo of the morning they'd spent in her vault. His voice grew soft, taking on a tone of something like fondness as he swept a hand beneath her chin, tilting it up to hold their gazes together. "You fear the opposite. That only the darkness in me is capable of loving you as you are now."

She felt herself going rigid all over as his touch became uncommonly gentle, the farce of it somehow contemptuous and loving at once, and it was, she realized, what she had feared she deserved all along.

"And what am I, exactly?" she asked, brittle.

"Damaged. Parts of you gloriously unsalvageable." He smiled. "It's really quite remarkable, how you've managed to let everyone else convince you otherwise."

"Well then I suppose the joke is on you, Robin." She spat out his name like a poison, nails biting into his arms for good measure. She couldn't temper the accusation in her tone when she reminded him, "You're the one destined to be with me."

He bit down on his lower lip, clearly delighted to see her so vulnerable. "Does it look like I'm complaining, love?"

A breeze picked up the ends of her hair, throwing them over his bare shoulders, but he only seemed to draw more strength from the chill, lifting her onto her toes as though she weighed next to nothing. What a sight they must have made together, locked in some kind of passionate embrace, as if they hadn't both twisted the meaning of love beyond all recognition.

She wanted him, and she wanted him to suffer, but was there a difference between the two, really? Their story was always bound to end, one way or another. He would leave her again, once he came to his senses, but she saw no reason to let him go quietly this time.

He bent back over her, raising goosebumps along the lines of her throat as he breathed her calmly in.

"Do you remember," Robin asked conversationally, "that moment I walked away from you in your office?" and she suddenly felt as though he'd pulled the very earth out from under her feet, something breaking inside of her as she swayed helplessly into him.

She could never forget that moment he'd turned away from her by the fire, when the light in him was all that she'd longed for, all that she'd wanted to simply choose her.

Regina looked back up at him, face tight with barely-held fury. She'd only ever felt warm in his arms until now, with those blue eyes passively regarding hers, almost cruel in the way they no longer crinkled at the corners when he smiled at her again.

He cupped her cheek in his palm, fingers threading into her hair, coaxing her closer to him. Their lips nearly touched. "Had I been under this curse," Robin breathed, like some dark promise of all the things she truly deserved, "I never would have left you that day."

"Enough!"

The word clawed its way out of her throat, the sound of it ragged and desperate, nearly choking her as she reached for his chest and shoved him blindly off of her. Her eyes burned as he stagger-stepped back, fingers coming away damp when she took a furious swipe at her cheeks. She turned on instinct to shrink against the tree, arms winding tight over the front of her body to keep herself from shaking apart.

He'd gotten what he wanted, she thought – not to profess his sinful, impenitent love to her, but to make her suffer for hearing it, for realizing there was no honorable way that he could ever be hers.

For making her believe that she cared.

She whipped her gaze back over her shoulder, feeling half-wild with the need to destroy him in every way that she could. But something was off, she could sense it the moment she turned, and that urge to make something break in him gave way to confusion instead.

He looked as though he'd been stunned, clutching his chest where she'd pushed him away from her, blinking hard like he'd just woken up from some horrible dream. It didn't make sense, she hadn't used magic – showing her weakness for this man was a curse of its own she would never be able to break, so it seemed – and yet she couldn't explain what had come over him.

But the moment he'd broken her must have jostled him up inside too, knocking things loose, and he fought to catch his breath, glancing around them with a truly bewildered expression. She watched as the light began to dawn in him, something miserable settling into his features, and she felt the air in her chest closing when he looked up to meet her gaze at last.

She recognized those eyes. She would know them anywhere.

"Robin?"

"Regina," he whispered, and she fought the urge to shut her eyes for a moment, to hear that reverence in his tone again, laced as it was with what she thought might be despair.

He blinked again, seeming to take in her state of undress, the way she was holding herself away from him, and his voice broke a little as he rasped to himself, "What have I done?"

He moved forward, wincing as she recoiled.

"Don't touch me!" she burst out, and he faltered back, as though the words had dealt him a harder blow than any magic could have done him. She let her voice soften slightly. "Please."

Robin bent slowly – cautiously, she thought, so as not to alarm her – and retrieved his coat from the ground, eyes never leaving hers. He held it out to her, entreating. "May I at least…?"

She jerked forward with a violence that startled him back a step, a pained look shadowing his features for a moment and then shifting, stilling, as she uncrossed her arms. Her hair had fallen demurely over her bared breasts, and she saw his throat bob on a heavy swallow, jaw tightening with the effort it was clearly taking him not to let his gaze roam down her body.

He gestured to her with his coat, eyes holding steady with hers. "It'll warm you," he said, his voice but a rasp.

Regina advanced on him with measured intent, igniting a single ball of flame in her palm. "If you come any closer to me with that thing—"

It shook a small laugh out of him, but there was no malice or mockery in it, his mouth quirking up in a slow, tentative smile as he asked her, "You're really going to set this coat on fire, you hate it that much?"

"I could choose to miss and kill you instead," she retorted.

His smile fell away. "It would be nothing short of what I deserve, Regina."

She stared unblinking at him, but the flame in her palm flickered, visibly wavering, and he lifted his coat toward her again, eyes soft and imploring.

She had found a part of herself wondering if this could be another ruse, another side of Robin meant to expose her somehow, and she feared now that she might not be half-wrong about that. Those eyes had never looked at her any other way before – loving, like she was the one worth protecting – but then, they'd never encountered the Evil Queen either, not like this, not truly.

Robin took another step toward her, carefully draping his coat over her shoulders when she didn't move away from him. To his credit, he didn't let his touch linger long, just enough to gently grasp her hands through the fabric where she'd tugged the sides of it together, and then he let go.

His arms hung loosely by his sides, fingers giving the slightest twitch as though fighting the instinct to reach for her when she straightened, angling her face away from his.

The thought of looking into his eyes and seeing all that remorse she'd never wanted from him was frankly unbearable to her at the moment.

"I suppose this means you've managed to keep your word in some fashion after all," Regina said in a tone of bored acknowledgment, primly rearranging his coat around her body, like she might contract some disease if she weren't careful enough with it. "You may as well go now."

She sensed more than saw him shake his head as he moved over her, sounding genuinely baffled when he asked, "Why would I leave you?"

She shrugged, dismissive, stopping just short of rolling her eyes. "Why would you stay?"

"You can ask all you like, but I'm not going anywhere." He spoke firmly, almost as though he were addressing a child, and she made a small, impatient noise, glaring haughtily off in some other direction until she felt him sigh. "Regina, will you please look at me?"

"It's Your Majesty," she snapped, raising her eyes to glower in challenge, ready to undo him with the truth of what he would surely see in her then. But he seemed resistant as ever to these blistering little displays of her anger, and so she would have to try harder, go darker, to show him. "In case you hadn't noticed, this curse hasn't broken for me."

"I'm aware," Robin told her, but no, he couldn't be, not if he was still refusing to leave her side.

"Then stop looking at me like that!" She stepped in to fill any remaining space between them, her entire body thrumming with a helpless sort of rage.

"Like what?" he asked her quietly.

She pressed her lips together, unable to answer him for a moment without feeling her voice try to break. The anger was leaking slowly out of her, and it was hard to remember how to hold on to any of it with him refusing to walk away from her. "Like I'm not just the Evil Queen."

"You are, and you aren't. But not 'just.'" He touched a lock of hair by her ear, brushing it back before dropping his hand down to gently cup one of her elbows. "You will never be 'just' anything to me, Regina."

Her eyes were burning again, which was making it difficult to keep looking at him. "You're the one who said it earlier. You told me…"

Robin looked sick at the mere thought of it. "I know," he admitted, his voice low and aggrieved. "I said what I knew would hurt you the most. But that doesn't make it real." His other hand rose to warmly grip her arm. "It doesn't make it any more true than what I told John, when I ran into him whilst hunting you down – that he would have served a more useful sidekick had he remained one of those flying monkeys instead."

"That is what's supposed to convince me?" scowled Regina, and the look on his face was half-affectionate, half-exasperated with her.

"I knocked my best mate out and left him chained to a tree," Robin deadpanned. "I think it's safe to say that I've not been my better self with anyone I care about today."

She made a scoffing noise. "Well if you feel the need to stay in order to prove something to yourself, allow me to save you the trouble. As I said, you're free to go." It was a more-than-generous offer on her part, one that he ought to know she would never make lightly. She leaned into him, eyes narrowed in warning. "Don't make me change my mind."

But he was uncooperative as ever, holding her there with his hands seeking hers, those blue eyes bright and impossibly earnest. "Being with you is not some kind of trap," Robin told her emphatically, grip tightening like he was near-desperate for her to believe him. "I chose this. I choose you."

"You forget who you're talking to, thief." She tried to shake him loose, finally jerking herself out of his grasp and straightening to her full, rigid height, effectively staring him down even though he was still half a head taller than her. "I'm not the woman you left your wife for. I'm the one who killed her."

The words cut visibly into him, and she felt a hollow sort of satisfaction in seeing him forced to gather himself again. Her mouth almost curved into a smile, a bleak, wretched thing, but then he was lifting his gaze back up to hers, and a dark rush of confusion overtook her instead.

She felt oddly breathless, like all the air had been sucked out between them as Robin stepped close and took her face in his hands.

"I can't ask or expect your forgiveness for the things that I said, but I need you to understand something." He spoke with a quiet sense of urgency, and she would have been terrified if she had known better. "You think I don't love all parts of you?"

Regina swallowed, hating how the words sounded as though they had to scrape their way out. "All the unsalvageable parts, you mean?"

He shook his head, despairing. "We all come a bit broken inside."

"Some more than others." Her voice came from somewhere low in her throat, carrying the hint of a threat as she gazed almost coyly up through her lashes at him. "And with sharper edges."

"Be that as it may, none of us are all good or all bad, Regina. You and I are both living proof of that." His thumbs caressed her cheekbones, fingers burying into her hair and nudging her closer until their foreheads nearly touched. She found that she couldn't move away from him even if she wanted to; the way he was looking at her derailed every last one of her instincts to make some kind of scene, to fight him, to hurt him.

To give him a reason not to stay.

"Well I wouldn't count on it. Not with me." She tried to look elsewhere, adopting some vaguely bored expression, but he gently ducked his head down to capture her gaze back to his, almost knocking her back with the intensity behind it.

"I'm not asking you to," Robin said quietly.

She bristled, preparing to argue with him, and he pressed his thumb to her mouth to stop her, letting it drag over her lower lip for a moment. He would be the one to shush the Evil Queen and live to talk about it, she thought, feeling half-delirious from how he hadn't stopped holding her yet, or looking at her the way he always did.

"I'm only telling you what I know, Regina." His voice cracked a little, dropping to a low rasp, and she could sense the weight of his need for her to hear whatever was coming, feeling almost mesmerized by it. "And what I know is that this thief loves you – every last little corner of you – with all his crooked heart."

She blinked and blinked, unable to speak for a moment, as if saying anything at all might somehow change his mind. Loosening her hand from inside his coat, she touched her palm to his rib cage, where she could feel it beating the strongest. Even now, she couldn't contain the sensation of lightness rising up in her chest when he moved closer instead of flinching away.

Curling her hand protectively over his side, she lowered her gaze, not bold enough to look too directly into his eyes as she told him, softly, "Your heart is not crooked."

She felt him nudge his nose into her hair, a smile forming now that he wouldn't be able to see it. His hands settled warmly over the curves of her neck, thumbs tracing either side of her jawline as he murmured to her, "Whatever shape it may come in, it's yours."

Regina longed terribly to kiss him then, but something like shyness – not that, not quite – kept her suspended in place, one hand still pressed to his rib cage.

"You feel cold," was all she said.

His chest rumbled in laughter, and he drew back to regard her with a mischievous look on his face. "You could warm me up, if you like."

She gave a disbelieving shake of her head, something lodged in her throat at the thought of him flirting so outrageously with her like this. She wanted to be soft with him back, to somehow show him the same winking lightness that came so easily to him around her. But the Evil Queen in her didn't know how to do any of that, and she could only stare rigidly at him, feeling helpless and unsure for a moment.

Robin's smile gentled, going slightly lopsided in a way that rooted her even more firmly into the ground, while impossible thoughts of staying like this forever with him threatened to lift her away.

She gazed up at him, wondering, as he breathed out her name and smiled again.

"Regina…" His eyes were deep enough to fall into, his hands unbearably tender where they cupped her cheeks and threaded into her hair. "I'd very much like to kiss you now."

She fought to breathe past that lump in her throat, feeling raw and ridiculously lightheaded as she told him, "I suppose I won't stop you."

He tugged his lower lip between his teeth, eyes crinkling as he shifted closer to her.

Regina parted her mouth expectantly, already half-rising onto her toes to meet him, when he bent over her forehead instead, pressing a kiss just above her eyebrow. She felt something crack open inside of her, spilling warmth into her chest and spreading as he made his way down lower.

His lips grazed her cheek, his nose brushing against hers for a moment – time always seemed to slow whenever he did this, and her eyes closed, everything floating – as he touched his mouth to hers at last.

That curious warmth had continued to fill her, light and heavy all at once, until she thought she couldn't contain it any longer. But the way he was holding her, kissing her with that soft, steady sureness of his, made everything possible, and perhaps she would let it consume her, this glow.

She wanted this, for as long as she could have it with him.

He cupped his hand around the back of her head, gently grasping and coaxing her sideways as he parted her lips with his tongue. She hummed out a small, satisfied sound, letting him deepen the kiss, stroking his tongue against hers, sliding an arm down her spine to gather her closer to him.

Regina stretched herself up along the length of his body, meaning to warm him, feeling his coat begin to slip off one shoulder as she wrapped an arm almost possessively around his side. She feared the moment this came to an end, but more than that she feared getting caught, if someone were to see, to stumble upon Robin embracing the Evil Queen as though he might be in love with her.

He was, she thought.

He was.

Her chest ached, and as she eased her mouth away from his, trying to catch her breath back while he did the same, she heard a strange, distant sound, like glass being shattered. Her vision blurred, head swimming with the sensation of so many things breaking at once. Robin's grip tightened around her as she swayed, the world holding steady in his arms while she found her balance again.

"Regina," he breathed, and the sound of it felt like coming home without realizing she had one until now, his face alight with a magnificent smile when she blinked dazedly up at him. "Have you come back to me?"

She reached for him, touching a hand to his jawline, tracing the curve of his smile with trembling fingertips as it widened and widened. "Robin," she said, voice wet, and suddenly her feet were leaving the ground as he lifted her, a breathless laugh escaping them both.

He pressed his forehead to hers, noses brushing back and forth in light, teasing motions. "My love," he whispered, and then his mouth was warm over hers, kissing her with a fervor that almost sent everything spinning again. She wrapped herself around his waist, and it was all she could do to simply reel for a moment, sinking into his kiss while he held her.

Their tongues met, tangling together, and Robin let out a low groan, slanting his mouth sideways over hers. He was kissing her like he was desperate for her to understand how he felt, and the relief that filled her was dizzying, to realize that she already knew.

They were both gasping for air when they parted, her mouth gently grazing the tip of his nose while he adjusted his hold over her. She'd managed to half-free herself from his coat, his arms around her all that kept it from falling away, and she became acutely aware of her bare shoulders, and bare…other things.

"We are…not wearing much," she said with some chagrin, trying not to dwell on all the things they'd done to each other.

Robin was nuzzling another kiss to a sensitive spot below her ear, his stubble scratching over the curve of her throat as he murmured to her, "We were being very naughty earlier, weren't we?"

She breathed out a laugh, letting go of the tension she didn't realize she'd been holding, her heart doing a stupid little flop in her chest when he pulled back with a rueful sort of grin. It made him look almost boyish, one corner of it going crooked, dimples winking down at her as she touched a hand to the side of his face.

He leaned into her palm, turning slightly to press a kiss there without letting his eyes leave hers. His gaze had gone soft at the edges, his smile fading into something more solemn and wondering, like he was the one who couldn't believe she was real.

"How can you even look at me this way, after how I treated you?" His expression grew tight at the memory, and her chest ached for how miserably he was looking at her, clouded over in a desolation that she understood all too well.

"Look at you what way?" Regina asked, hearing her voice crack and caring not in the slightest. She smiled at him, feeling something soar inside of her when he brushed his thumb over her mouth in a half-mesmerized fashion. "You mean with love in my eyes?"

He shook his head at her, marveling, and she found herself at a loss for what to do with him like this – wanting her forgiveness like it was a thing she had already earned, like he'd been the only one capable of inflicting true harm.

He rubbed their foreheads together, sighing as though this small touch alone would be enough to sustain him. "Whatever it is that I've done to deserve you, Regina, I'm—"

"Stop," she said softly, cupping his face into both of her hands now. "Please."

He lifted her as she rose up to kiss him, lips parting upon contact and moving warmly together. She was content to simply stay still for long moments, her whole body relaxing into his as they took their time with each other, tongues sliding and stroking until she was breathless all over again.

They parted briefly, Robin tucking back a lock of her hair while taking her in with molten blue eyes, and she bit her lip against the sudden urge to smile.

"What is it?" he asked, with a curious tilt of his chin.

"You wanted to kiss the Evil Queen," Regina told him, still managing to make it sound half like a question.

"Ah," said Robin, wrapping his arms more firmly around her, dipping back down to brush a kiss to her ear before murmuring, "Among other things, yes."

A treacherous little thrill chased up her spine at the thought of it, of Robin wanting her even when she'd been…like that, with all of her darkness on full display. It had settled back into a corner again – not tamed, not exactly – but that edge of unrest in her burned less and less, and Regina sighed contentedly into him, everything humming.

He worked his way down her throat, trailing slow, open-mouthed kisses over her skin as she shivered and closed her arms more firmly around him. He paused at her collarbone, and she felt him frown for a moment, his hands hovering uncertainly over the lapels of his coat, as though he couldn't decide whether to tear the thing off or wrap it tighter around her body.

"Robin?" she prompted, moving her hand to flatten over his abdomen, enjoying the way the muscles there clenched.

He huffed out a warm breath, looking torn as he muttered, "This blasted thing is most inconvenient."

She gave him a pointed look, questioning, "What have I been trying to tell you?"

The smile he gave her was the kind that stopped time, and she basked in its glow, feeling endless and radiant. Slowly, with another sly arch of her brow, Regina pooled a bit of magic to her fingertips, heat seeping out and blanketing over his skin.

"Oh," said Robin, catching on, voice pitched low as he smirked back at her. He gave a slight shiver as the warmth spread up his back, closing his eyes with a mmm of content. Her magic wrapped around to his front side, a faint luminescence clinging to all that bared skin, before moving to settle over her too.

She gazed demurely through her eyelashes at him, feeling warm in more ways than one when he sank his teeth into his lower lip and teased his coat open an inch. It was nothing they hadn't done before – getting naughty with one another in the middle of the woods – but there was a certain shyness she couldn't deny in this moment, like learning she'd never stop finding ways to fall in love with this man.

Their noses touched, her eyes fluttering shut as they breathed each other in. She felt his jacket dragging down, down and then falling with a soft thud at her feet, Robin's hands circling warmly over either side of her rib cage before coaxing her into him.

A night breeze swept by with its chill, but with the gentle heat of her magic cocooning them both, Regina found herself shivering for entirely different reasons, sighing as Robin's hands slid up and up to graze the curves of her breasts.

His touch lit a fire under her skin, everything tingling, her nipples tight and deliciously sensitive where they brushed up against Robin's chest. He lifted one hand to grasp the hair at her nape, the other winding around to cup over her backside.

"I do hope John hasn't come to and managed to free himself yet," murmured Robin, looking at least partially serious.

"Mm," said Regina, and then, with a coy nudge of her nose to his cheek, "If he has, why not give him something to gossip about?"

Robin's grip on her tightened, a playful sweetness to his gaze as he let out a low chuckle. "The thought of it is admittedly rather tempting."

"Then allow me to tempt you," she breathed, dragging her teeth over his jawline and biting gently down.

"That would be, dare I say, quite a villainous move," he informed her with a barely held groan, swallowing heavily before regarding her with a soft sort of smile. "And impossible to resist, I'm afraid."

Regina felt her cheeks warm as he gazed down at her, his thumb brushing tenderly back and forth across her skin for a moment, and then he was lowering his mouth to hers. She sighed into him, sliding her hands up his chest to touch the stubbled sides of his jaw while he deepened the kiss.

A small, sensible part of her thought she might indeed feel a bit mortified were John to catch them like this – though certainly not any more mortified than poor John himself, and with the way Robin was kissing her now, the criminal thing would have been to stop.

She pressed herself up against the front of his body, delighting in the feel of him all warm and solid around her. She couldn't deny her wilder impulses, the need to ravish one another as they had done earlier, but it no longer felt like a path into darkness so much as a path toward embracing the sun.

Her eyes fluttered open when they parted for a breath, drinking in the sight of him looking all winded and half out of sorts. His hands roamed freely over her back, finally settling down by her hips and hooking a finger into her leather waistband.

"Can these come off?" he asked her, voice scraped thin with desire.

She moved her hands down to toy with the zipper of his trousers in answer, brushing her fingertips over the growing bulge there and smirking to hear the hitch in his breath. "You first."

He splayed his fingers over her waist as she reached for the first button, letting them wander back up her sides to palm and squeeze her breasts. Catching a nipple between each thumb and forefinger, he tweaked and rolled them idly back and forth and back again, shooting sparks of heat through her core.

He was not unaffected himself, his breath shallowing as she undid the zipper and slipped a hand in to grasp him, feeling him harden even further to her touch. His fingers slowed their movements, his entire body seeming to shudder and still for a moment while she maneuvered his cock free.

His mouth found its way to a spot by her temple, planting a warm kiss there before working down her jaw to the curve of her throat. She lolled her head back to grant him better access, pumping his cock while he reached for her waistband again, tugging it carefully down over her hip bones.

He was rigid in her hand now, thick and deliciously smooth to the touch, moisture beading at the tip as she pressed a thumb there and swirled. Robin swore under his breath, pressing a tongue-filled kiss to her collarbone, and then, hands gripping over her hips, he pivoted her back towards that tree, steps faltering each time she moved her hand over him again.

He bent her backwards, moving one arm to slide his palm along the length of the trunk and shield her skin from its bark. She released his cock in favor of hooking a leg around his waist, pressing herself against the hard length of him with a sigh of approval. She stretched and canted her hips into his, craving that friction between her thighs, where the leather of her pants had begun to slide against the warmth building there.

He dipped his head further down with a groan, sucking open-mouthed kisses over her breast as their lower bodies pressed and moved together. A small bruise had formed on her skin from his earlier attentions, and he slowed to gently lave his tongue over it now, something tender in the gesture that only made her ache for him grow.

Robin dotted one last sweet little kiss there before lifting his gaze back to hers, looking ready to beg her forgiveness again, but she only settled her arms more firmly around his shoulders, unable to fight a sly smile as she leaned in and whispered, "I can think of a few ways you can make it up to me."

"Is that right?" he teased, bending down over one nipple, eyes twinkling and steady on hers. "Like this?" His breath ghosted warmly over the skin pebbling there at the center. "Or…this?" and his tongue flicked out across the peak, sending her arching and gasping into him.

"I think you liked that," he murmured, with a low chuckling hum when she looked indignant with him for stopping to speak. He closed his mouth over her nipple in answer, licking and sucking with fervor before kissing his way across to the unattended side.

Regina pressed her hips more insistently into his, relishing the way his groan seemed to vibrate right through her, frissons of heat pooling down in her belly. His mouth was working its own kind of magic, as though determined to make up for all the kisses she'd denied him earlier, all tongue and teeth and – "Oh!" she gasped as he bit down and tugged, her hands flying to grasp at his hair.

He straightened for a moment, taking her by surprise as he cupped her face and planted a heady kiss on her mouth. Their lower bodies had worked up a rhythm, his erection snug between her thighs and rubbing against her clit with each press of their hips, a moan escaping her lips as he delved his tongue in deeper—

And then all the pressure was dropping most regrettably away, Regina blinking in an affronted sort of confusion before registering the feel of his mouth between her breasts again, and then lower, lower, as he sank down onto his knees in front of her.

Her stomach tensed as he swirled his tongue over her belly, trailing hot kisses along the edge of her black leather pants. He adjusted his hold on her, hitching that leg she'd draped around his back to hook over his shoulder instead. Curling a finger into her waistband, he started to tug, pressing more kisses to each exposed bit of skin until the leather refused to budge any further.

"Could you…" he husked, gazing up at her with a hungry look in his eyes.

She swallowed, and breathed out an "If you like" as he licked his lips in anticipation. A plume of smoke rose out of the ground, purple tendrils of magic coiling up to her waist and leaving behind smooth stretches of skin as it vanished.

Regina thought she would never tire of the sight of him like this, all slack-jawed and warm-gazed with desire for her, how he kissed the inside of her thigh in a slow, reverent fashion before nudging closer. His beard scraped over the more sensitive parts of her skin, little shocks of pleasure pinging up her spine as he kissed and kissed his way toward her center.

A small moan escaped her, body clenching with want when she felt his breath wash warmly over her, and then the low hum of his own appreciative groan before he dipped his tongue between her folds and gave her a firm lick.

Her head fell back into the tree with a gasp of "Robin!", the rest of her arching reflexively into him as he found her clit and bit down. Her vision went black at the edges, one hand thrown upward to dig into the bark as her leg quivered and threatened to give out on her.

Robin pressed closer, banding an arm over her belly to steady her there, his shoulder warm and solid beneath her. He moved his other hand to grasp at her thigh, adjusting his hold as he laved his tongue against that bundle of nerves and left her weak-kneed all over again.

For long, luxurious seconds she lost herself to the sensation of him, the scratch of his beard as he moved, the exquisite pressure of him passing over her clit in broad, flat strokes of his tongue. She felt weightless above him, writhing into the tree with reckless abandon, filling the air with one rapturous sound after another.

Through the haze of her burning, she glanced down, and the sight of him buried between her thighs, looking insatiable as he ate her out, had a low moan tumbling from her mouth again. If this was how they were going to make up every time their darker sides came out to play with each other, then perhaps it wasn't such a…mmm…such a bad thing…

Her fingers tightened, unearthing small shards of bark when he switched to a quicker rhythm, short fluttering licks with his tongue angled just so, and oh, God, yes, just like that—

She hadn't meant to say it aloud but she felt the rumbling of the groan he gave her in answer, picking up the pace with his tongue, licking and rubbing that side of her clit exactly the way he knew she liked, and she was so, so close, so – oh—

Robin relinquished his grip on her thigh, his fingers suddenly pressing and spreading her open, slipping one and then another between her folds without letting up on his tongue. He sucked and sucked at her in earnest, and the slick slide of his fingers moving inside of her tipped her over that edge into ecstasy.

She arched with a cry of his name, waves of blindsiding pleasure rippling and rippling through her, Robin's body beneath hers all that kept her aloft as she shuddered and came apart around him. He slowed the motions of his tongue to something more luxuriant, stretching out that last bit of bliss until it was almost unbearable to her, and she eased him back with a soft, sated sigh.

He pressed a damp kiss to the inside of her thigh before rising back onto his feet, trailing more kisses up her skin as he went. Regina weaved her fingers through his hair, gently coaxing him along, aching to feel his body all warm and solid against hers again. His erection pressed into her belly, thick and hard as ever for her, his breathing labored as he reached her mouth at last.

She wound her arms behind his neck, heat spreading all over to know how very aroused he was.

She could taste herself on his tongue, and it only made her kiss him harder, mouth slanting over his and drawing him further and further into her. Their hips were grinding shamelessly together, chasing after that exquisite friction, and he groaned into her mouth when her hands wandered south to dig her nails into his waist.

"As much as—" Robin gasped, his voice going deliciously hoarse as she pressed and pressed into him, sliding a leg up his thigh, "as much as I want to keep taking my time with you – gods—"

Regina maneuvered a hand farther down, gripping the length of him and guiding him home. She dipped the tip of his cock into her wetness, canting forward and feeling herself part to take him inside. Her head dropped back on a barely-held sigh as he sank into her, tantalizingly slow, stretching her full with a low-throated sound of his own.

He started to move, once they had a moment simply to revel in the sensation of coming together like this, and then he was fucking her in earnest, full-bodied thrusts that felt somehow as though he was burying himself deeper and deeper each time. She keened with the movement, relishing the way her back scraped into the tree hard enough to nearly break skin, and maybe, just maybe, the Evil Queen would always be a little bit closer to the truth than she thought.

But then Robin slid an arm behind her, bracing himself into the tree bark instead, his other hand coasting around to grasp at the curve of her ass and anchor her there with each upward drive of his hips. She closed her eyes to feel herself floating, nothing but Robin to keep her grounded in all this darkness.

Her senses honed to a point, until she was hovering right at the edge, everything demanding to be felt, to help bring her closer to that all-consuming release. His body warm as it surged against hers, the lustful sounds coming out of her throat, the slick, wet slide of his cock each time he pumped in and out of her. The thought that she had never felt more whole than this.

She opened her eyes, and the stars went out of focus as pleasure bloomed in the core of her belly, rising and rising until her entire body trembled with the ache of her orgasm. Robin quickened the pace of his thrusts, muttering warm things into her neck until his breath began to splinter, and then he was coming apart, spilling into her with one last forceful jerk of his hips.

Regina cushioned her head into the crook of his elbow, still tingling all over in sharp little bursts as their movements turned languid, rocking into each other until the high of their ecstasy finally began to settle. He eased his softening cock out of her, teasing a finger over her clit as he did, and she jerked into him with a small gasping sound.

"I think I'll need another minute," she told him, playfully scolding, and Robin flashed those dimples at her before leaning in for a kiss.

"We should probably head back, as it stands." He sounded resigned to the prospect, but she snuck in another kiss anyway, pressing her body to his for good measure. He tugged her gently into him, folding his arms over her backside in what she assumed to be an attempt at some modesty.

With a reluctant wave of her hand, their clothes sorted themselves back out, the warming spell lifted as she adjusted her corset, Robin shrugging into his sweater before gathering her back to him. "You know. Rescue our friends and family from themselves, and all that."

"Just another Tuesday in Storybrooke," she quipped with a sigh, and his eyes crinkled at her, the blue in them immeasurably warm.

But then he sobered for a moment, looking slightly pained as he pulled back to ask her, "Are we all right? The things I said to you…"

"We both said things," she told him firmly, cradling his face in both of her hands. They were things that had come from dark places, but more than anything else she was beginning to learn that that darkness was not always unloveable after all. "Do you forgive me for mine?"

"Regina." He said her name with such softness, like she would never need to ask that of him, and he took her hand in his, bringing it down to flatten over his chest. "Know that this—" and he tightened his grip, their hands pressing together, "—this is true. And that I am with you. Always."

She felt the steadiness of his words, and found that she couldn't speak for a moment, her face breaking open with a smile as she gazed up at this man who was hers, who'd seen her heart and loved her for it.

"I like the sound of this always you speak of," she told him, and he laughed as he drew his arm around her shoulders, never letting go of her hand.