Emma moved along the edge of the club foor, sticking to the shadows, seeing the room with the red velvet curtain drawn closed, waiting for her. A sense of dread knotted in Emma's chest and she tried to puzzle Regina out before she'd be confronted with the brain-smashing presence of the Mayor.
Was this a move to humiliate her? To entrap her? To prove that she could be bought? But why these crazy mind games when surely Regina could decimate her so much more by simply exposing her secret?
Emma bristled, too, at being told to keep quiet. She'd keep Regina's secret and had no problem with the non-disclosure agreement she'd signed…but not talking to Regina? She fully intended to walk into the room and open by demanding what the hell that was supposed to mean.
But when she opened the curtain just wide enough to slink inside the small private room, she saw Regina sitting in the wingback leather chair and inaudibly gasped. Regina sat, her head high, her shoulders back, as though resting on a throne. She was dressed in a black silk dress with a deep v that exposed her collarbones and the smooth skin between her breasts. She was stunningly beautiful, that was the first impression Emma had, but that's not why she gasped. It was the terror and fear on Regina's face. Did she think Emma would laugh? Would turn around and walk back out?
As a matter of fact ,Emma realized, standing before her, she had to go back outside, to attach her mp3 player to the ipod dock just outside the room. She turned on her heel and stepped out, quickly cuing up a playlist. One of her favorites, "Under Your Spell" by Desire, the Drive remix, started to fade in as she went back into the room.
Regina's shoulders had dropped when Emma came back in, a look of anguish on her face that made Emma want to tell her it was okay. As it was, the click of her heels announced her arrival as the music started swelling, and Emma saw an uncontrollable flicker of some emotion cross Regina's face when she realized Emma hadn't left.
"I had to start the music-." Emma breathed, gesturing behind her. Regina, sitting up fully straight now, swiftly put a finger over her own red, perfectly shaped lips. The gesture made Emma's whole body feel flushed with hot blood, but she nodded. Emma looked at Regina with a face that did not laugh, that did not smile. She took her place in front of the brass pole and looked down at Regina as Regina stared unblinkingly at the woman in front of her, her face falling in a careful and unreadable expression.
Emma started moving a leg in time, letting her large curls fall in front of her face. She took her cue from the music, and let herself start moving around the pole, arching her back and demurely and distantly fixing her eyes on: the spot just above Regina's head. The point where black and white tiles met on the floor. The brass call button so near Regina's hand. A silver bucket of ice on a table near Regina, where a bottle of Dom Perignon was chilling. But she couldn't look into Regina's face. Not into those scalding, searching eyes.
Dancing for a crowd of anonymous guys had felt daring but impersonal, like any performance in front of a crowd. Removing her clothes, in stages, as she moved in front of Regina felt more intense, more intimately revealing than any sexual encounter she could remember. As she slid her shorts down to her knees and let herself fall down to a squat before unhooking a long heel expertly through the leg opening, she heard Regina's sharp intake of breath. And when she arched her back as she came back up, she heard Regina exhale in a moan.
The conundrum: Normally she'd throw her clothes into the crowd, but she couldn't even imagine Regina's rage at getting some damp panties thrown at her. Instead she let them fall in a small pile by the door, letting her big curls fall in front of the thickly-lined eyes that made her too-large eyes swallow up her face. The last time she did this, exposing her whole body in just a gold ribbon of a thong again to Regina, she let her eyes flit to Regina's face. Regina was staring hungrily, her face unsmiling, carved ridges along the arms of the leather chair dug under each immaculate fingernail.
As much as Emma thought she would smart under the no-talking rule, she had to admit it came as a little bit of a relief. With no mocking, hateful insults spurting out of Regina's perfectly formed lips, she could concentrate on the undeniable lust in the Mayor's searching eyes, the latent heat in her expression, the tension that seized her from head to toe, filling the room like summer humidity. Emma herself couldn't undermine or contradict the words of the song as they repeated between the two women: I don't eat, I don't sleep, I do nothing but think of you…I don't eat, I don't sleep, I do nothing but think of you…you got me under your spell, you got me under your spell, you got me under your spell…
As the song wound down, there didn't have to be any defensive explanations, they didn't plunge headlong into bickering. As the song wound down, Emma noticed out of the corner of her eye Regina's hand move down to her slender, tan knee.
And she tapped it.