A/N: Thank you for your patience. This chapter took a while, and I didn't want to ruin something so important, so I went with what I knew I could convincingly convey. Sorry if it isn't what some of you were hoping for; it's a first attempt and it's a delicate balance I didn't want to destroy with these characters, so I was slightly on the cautious side.
Thank you so much for the amazing reaction I've had from everyone!
Chapter 37:
Regina Mills had become Queen Regina, wife of Kind Leopold when she was eighteen years old.
At eighteen she had stood motionless and emotionless as dozens of seamstresses, like ants, swarmed around her, stitching and pinning and pulling the white fabric that trapped her. At eighteen she had walked slowly, the weight of her dress and her future dragging her down, towards the end of the aisle. At eighteen her mother had sold her to royalty, and she had bound herself to it through a few simple words and a ring. At eighteen, she had experienced the terror of an unwanted wedding night.
The bed she fell upon was as soft and swallowing as it had been then. The cloaking darkness of night was the same. The weight above her was the same, as was the pounding of her heart, the rushing of her blood, the twisting of her stomach.
However, she would never compare that hideous night that still creeps across her nightmares to this.
She'd lost track of time. She didn't remember moving at all, but she was suddenly horizontal and something inside was screaming at her, telling her that this was dangerous, so dangerous, and vulnerability was weakness, and weakness was danger. It took a moment for her to realise that the "something" had taken the voice of Emma Swan.
Emma Swan…
Because the weight wasn't the same; it wasn't aggressive or frightening, it was soft and tough in all the right places and the touches were ghosts, testing the water, tender and gentle and not the least bit threatening. The bed didn't trap her; it welcomed her. The night wasn't crushing; it was lulling. Her heart wasn't thudding in fear; it was anticipation and thrill and something altogether new.
Emma Swan kissed like she lived; committed and wild and thorough and firm. There was something rogue in the taste of her; feral and natural and endearing, and like the forest she was so familiar with, the Queen got lost in her at some point, and blonde hair felt like the softest anchor and the thief's practiced hands moved from her face down to her waist, and burned marks against her skin. It was suddenly too warm, and the flush of her cheeks spread to her entire body, causing her to shiver against the silk sheets.
The fact that Emma was a woman briefly flitted through her mind. After a second of consideration, she came to the conclusion that she didn't care even a little bit. She knew herself, well she thought she did, and she knew Emma, well…she thought she did. She knew that some thought it unnatural, and she knew that she was more than a bit shocked at this outcome. She knew this, and it made no difference.
The horizon narrowed, and the air was heavier, both struggling to drag enough into their lungs. Regina felt the flamed heat of Emma's hands on the skin of her thighs, and poured as much of her energy into her kiss to avoid a magical outburst that would inevitably destroy the room. She briefly felt a little awkward in her inexperience, a sensation that swiftly passed with the teeth and tongue on her neck, sliding sensually down to the hollow of her collarbone.
She let herself be undressed, and pulled at Emma's clothing until the blonde got the message. The silence was still palpable, emotions and worries and fears and experiences swirling in the space between them. The Queen watched at the thief's gaze swept over her, and her eyes were like caves of glittering exhilaration.
There was something undeniably tender in the way Emma touched her skin, a softness to the way she pressed down onto her, the way she placed deliberate, lingering kisses on her throat. Somewhere irrelevant at that point, Regina was terrified. A word, a term, a commitment, an emotion, brimmed so close to the surface that she was painfully aware of its existence but still uncertain, and it rang through her mind as she met wide green eyes that looked down at her with lust, and something akin to wonder. She wouldn't deny herself this. She wouldn't retreat back into her shell. The tension was too much, this indescribable ache in her very being, like her whole body was a coiled spring. Her grip on Emma's waist was severe, clinging on for dear life, and whenever Emma drew back even a fraction, she followed instinctively, like they were tethered. She finally felt like she fit into this world of doubles.
A flock of birds flew past the window as Emma's kisses drifted down her chest. Shadows flickered in the corners of the room, making the thief's skin glow as golden as her hair, and Regina's eyes slid shut, the blonde's image imprinted on her retina. Emma found herself slowly but surely addicted to the taste of Regina; the sweep of her neck and smooth skin of her breast and the heat between her thighs as the wind howled and the embers trembled along with the Queen. The palace was a vast infinity of emptiness as Regina gasped and whimpered into stifling air, her fingers going from sifting through blonde curls to tangled firmly in them. The ache in the pit of her stomach got worse, and this was all new to her, an invigorating, thrilling, maddening kind of bliss, something she never reached with Daniel and was never even offered with the King. Her spine arched off the bed and her eyes slammed shut against the world and her gasps started to sound more and more like the blonde's name.
Emma was torn between victory and dread. She had no idea what the implications of this were, but they weren't good. In fact, she had likely just made everything infinitely more complicated and difficult, but she couldn't have found the strength to stop herself even if she had genuinely wanted to. There was a smugness to her thought pattern as she briefly recalled the siren's taunts, but they were chased away by desperation; to please, to feel, to worship every detail of the beautiful body beneath her. She knew she was a slave to Regina's looks, her lust had slowly driven her mad ever since she first put that name to the burning behind her eyes and boiling of her stomach, but this was tinged with something else. The scorch that Regina's touch left on her hips, her chest, her stomach, didn't only sear, but warmed. There was a worrying tenderness to their kisses; no longer flagrant and desperate, but deep and heated as tongues clashed and lips pleaded.
Emma decided she had waited too long, and soon was kissing down the Queen's stomach and then lower and lower until she had the brunette pleading and writhing beneath her. Regina felt her entire being seize up, like her blood had turned to stone, then relax and explode in the most incredible way, lights popping and muscles tensing and sounds getting caught in a throat that had forgotten how to speak. She'd never felt anything like it; it was like pure white magic was supposed to be, the sort she had never been able to conjure, tinged with an utter hopelessness that she tried so hard to resent.
It was something of the soul that night, something that hours of entangled limbs and entangled tongues enforced again and again. They had always been stubborn; both refusing to say anything, even when the words were choking them, trying to force their way out to put a label to this, to make sense of what currently didn't. Regina could feel a hum under the pad of her fingertips when she traced the hard lines of muscle on the blonde's stomach, the dip of her hips and the warmth further down, her power crackling and responding to the shared adrenalin and euphoria. She thought she could perhaps tear the castle down at that moment if she wanted to.
The fire burned down, like the heat was being transferred from it directly into the room's occupants. Emma's hands slid firmly into dark hair, grounding herself to familiarity as she gasped against Regina's shoulder. Purple-red bruises blossomed on pale skin in the wake of teeth, and Regina grew in confidence with every set of lines drawn down her back.
It was slightly clumsy, and certainly strange, and both knew somewhere that they had willingly made things so unnecessarily difficult that the rest of the trip would be a whole new level of unusual, but the tension in the Queen's shoulders seeped away and the worries buzzing in the back of the blonde's mind quietened to imperceptibility.
Regina pressed delicate kisses to Emma's throat as toned arms tightened around her, something sombre and slightly mournful in the tangible shift in them both.
The Queen and the thief fell asleep firmly wrapped up in each other.