If there is anything that any of you want to see in this story, please let me know! ideas help fuel the muse! So happy that you are all still reading! xx


As days had turned in to weeks, distrust and sorrow turned in to happiness and passion. While Regina still couldn't say she trusted her shepherd entirely, she believed him when he said he loved her and she believed that perhaps they did have a chance at a future together. However small it may be.

And as the uncertainty began to fade away, her feisty nature and confidence returned in full force. She felt like herself again. More like herself than she had in years. And as her shepherd pinned her to the barn door with all his strength, kissing her senseless with his hands in her hair, Regina felt more alive than she had since Daniel had done the same to her so many years ago.

His breath hot on her skin, his hands feeling her figure, pulling at her clothes, his teeth scraping down her neck, her legs around his hips, her hands in his hair now, panting against his ear, it felt like home. It felt like in his arms was where she was meant to live and die.

"You are fucking amazing," he panted roughly, entirely enthralled by her as he nipped at her jaw and her hands messed through his hair, his heart racing in his lust for more of her.

"Fuck me and I'll show you amazing," she retorted through her heavy breaths and when he started laughing, she fell in to laughter right along with him. The pair of them grinning with closed eyes and laughing hopelessly in to one another, it was lighthearted and happy, utterly honest as they held one another close, their arousal not dampened in the slightest, only mixed with humour.

"Well then consider me prepared to be amazed," he laughed against her and then kissed her grinning teeth, her laughter only growing louder as he did. Then he pulled her away from the door and she let out a whoop of laughter as he scooped her in to his arms and carried her away.

...

David's most favourite way to pass the time was to watch his queen. She could be doing anything, it didn't matter, but one of his favourites was instances such as the one he was in now. Watching her get dressed after letting him fuck her in his bed. Still on a high from the sex, unable to wipe the smile from her face, trying to get a grip back on reality as she shrugged her dress back on her shoulder just so he could envision pulling it off her figure once again.

She was happy in moments like this. Before the worry began to seep back in, before the walls came back up, he got to see her. It was becoming more and more frequent and he didn't have to work as hard to find her joy, they were both so much more relaxed than they had ever been in one another's company before and he never took it for granted.

"We are going to be late meeting Richard and the kids now," Regina chuckled lightly and David breathed a lighthearted sigh that had her smiling back at him over her shoulder. His bright blue eyes made her heart skip, the afternoon sunlight pouring in through the loft window making them pierce her even deeper than usual.

"I'm sure Richard, like any hot blooded man, will understand given the circumstances," he teased and Regina smiled even wider and laughed as she raised an eyebrow.

"And the children?"

"Have a remarkable capacity of forgiveness toward you, your majesty," he answered seamlessly and she threw a pillow at him with a laugh and he caught it with a laugh of his own.

"Out of bed, shepherd," she commanded as she crawled over him and he smiled at her with those sparkling blue eyes bribing her to come closer and stay with him.

"Or what?" He taunted playfully.

"Or I will leave here without you and you may find yourself replaced with another hot blooded man," she threatened with a playful grin and laughed as she leaned in and kissed his grin before he could do anything more than raise his brow in mock offence. She kissed him slowly, pulling him in to her, calling him closer, urging him to follow her as she sat up, straddling his lap with his head in her hands and his on her hips.

"Well we can't have that," he breathed playfully against her lips and she hummed in agreement and kissed him once more.

...

"You are rather quiet this afternoon," he remarked as he walked beside her, their steps slow and mindless as they strolled aimlessly through the town behind Richard and his three children, "everything alright?"

Regina simply gave a halfhearted shrug of one shoulder and kept her eyes down and her hands behind her back. The last three weeks with him had been like something out of a dream. He had been wonderful to her. Kind, tender, loving, he made her laugh every chance he got and made it his life mission to keep her smiling. Whether it be through a giving of a single wildflower or his hand sweeping her hair from her neck so that he may kiss her skin. And no matter how hard she tried to let him sleep in the barn, she always failed and urged him in to her bed instead where she fucked him to her heart's content and then let him hold her until morning.

But surely it could not last forever.

"I am waiting for you to leave," she replied quietly and plainly, avoiding eye contact at all cost.

For a long time he said nothing at all. And that offered her absolutely no comfort at all.

"I am not leaving you," he assured gently, readying himself for the heavy conversation that had been long overdue.

"Yet."

"Ever," he countered her small voice with certainty but she only shook her head in the smallest refusal to believe him. He understood.

"Hey," he called her softly, gently catching her wrist in his fingertips as he stopped walking so that she would stop too, neither one sparing a glance toward Richard and the children to see if they had noticed they had stopped following.

"It is not fair of me to expect your trust," he began and she listened with her dark eyes on his mouth, "I have caused you so much pain and heartache. I have given you every reason to distrust me, it would be unreasonable to ask you to simply forgive me. You letting me be here is more than enough for me right now."

"It is not enough for me," she breathed and he nodded.

"I know," he told her softly and let his eyes wander her beautiful face, soaking in every perfect feature.

"You know, it won't be because of a large event or a dramatic spectacle or gesture. It will creep in slowly, entirely unnoticed. We will go days without even realizing it. But one day, in one moment, you will look at me when I am doing something insignificant, and I will look at you when you are paying no mind to me at all and it will suddenly dawn on us," he told her as he softly gathered both her hands in his.

"What will?"

"That we are all the other has ever needed and will ever need. That I can trust you completely and you, me. That everything else in our lives has been so completely insignificant because all we need is this. This love that we have been so violently throwing in one another's faces, that we have been accusing one another for having and hating that we have returned it in full. One day, when I am sighing at another project you are having me fix, when you are scowling at a baker charging too much for your favourite pastry, we will realize that this truly is nothing to be fought. Nothing to fear. Nothing to mistrust. But that it is exactly what we have always needed."

"Is that so."

"I am certain."

"Why? Because that is how it happened with Snow White?" She prodded crassly and scorned herself for it as soon as she heard it. David hardly flinched. Merely took a deep breath and lowered his tone ever so slightly in irritation.

"That is a trap, Regina, and it is hardly fair," he scorned and if she was sorry, her years of practice at masking her expressions certainly didn't show it. Regardless, he chose his words carefully, "perhaps, to a certain degree, I could say yes. However, there was very little that was slow between Snow and me. What I said came solely from my experience with falling in love with you. And reflecting on how you had fallen in love with me," he told her and only because he knew her, only because he was watching her, did he see her start to crack.

"There has been nothing fast or sure about any of our progress. It has taken us years to get here. Here where I can touch you. Here where you will not attempt to kill me. Here where I will hear you and where you will hear me. Here where you no longer hide behind your power. Here where I love you. Here where you love me," he told her and she swallowed but wouldn't dare break eye contact.

"I don't know when I fell in love with you. Like everything else between us, it happened so slowly I didn't notice until I had completely fallen. And then I resented it."

"Why?"

"Well I have come to the conclusion that despite it moving so slowly, there was no warning. No time to prepare. No time to come to terms with everything that goes with falling in love with someone let alone someone who is the last person in the world that you would expect. It felt as though my heart had betrayed me by being so adamantly in love with you. The Evil Queen, the woman I should hate most of all. I held on to that for so long. I held on to the names Prince Charming and Evil Queen and how they simply didn't fit together, how their pasts were so different. It took me a long time to let my shallow judgement slip away, to see you as Regina, as a person, and not a title. And then it took even longer for me to no longer be afraid of you."

"I instilled fear in everyone, dear, that hardly makes you special," she pushed back out of habit for he was hitting a little to close to her broken heart for her liking.

David only smiled for a moment and shook his head, "I don't know that I was ever truly afraid of the Evil Queen. I think I hated her too much. No, what I meant was, I was afraid of you, Regina. Not the Evil Queen, but what laid within her, at her core. You. I was afraid of you," he confessed and she was left confused and wary, watching him with a frown and furrowed brow.

But he only watched her for a moment longer before his eyes dropped to his fingers drawing lines over her hands, "I truly believed I had felt love before I met you. I was sure I had everything figured out. My life was set, it was predictable, it was planned. I had hardship, I found a woman, I fell in love with her, I pledged my life to her, her enemies were my enemies, you needed to be defeated. I help her try to do so, we get rid of you, we are left in peace, we have a family, we live happily ever after. It was simple and easy to follow. And then something came over me and when it was time to get rid of you, I diverged from the plan. I did not wash my hands of you, I did not let the world fall in to peace with you gone and because of it, you started dropping breadcrumbs.

You dropped them and I followed. Curious and naive, I clung on to every last one that slipped from your grasp and suddenly the breadcrumbs stopped falling and I was left standing face to face with the most terrifying thing. You. A woman who was not who I thought she was. A woman who would take the perfect and simple life I had built for myself and burn it to the ground with nothing but a single whisper should I let her. A woman who would drag me in to the dark abyss of the unknown. A woman who wanted me. A woman I wanted more than anything. But I had to give everything up to have her, absolutely everything. So I kept fleeing her. I kept fleeing you. I was never brave enough to accept the risk that came with choosing you. You terrified me because you changed how I saw the world. You set me spinning and you were the only one who could make everything make sense again. But in order to have you, I had to give up everything I had lived for previously."

"Snow."

"Yes."

"And have you? Given her up?" She prodded, her heart sore and the back of her throat tight with the desire to crumble and fall in to him. His answer came far too slow for her liking. He had to think about it and she did not care for it.

"I will never stop caring for her Regina, that is quite simply impossible. Just as it is impossible for you to stop caring for Daniel," he told her gently and she dropped her eyes from his and irritably shifted her weight but didn't say a word otherwise.

"You can't leave her," Regina told him quietly, her eyes refraining from rising to his gaze.

Confused, David furrowed his brow and cocked his head, "what do you mean?"

"It will ruin her."

"Since when are you her advocate?" David asked with a light humour but was still heavily confused.

"I care not for her heart," she snapped back but he didn't flinch, only listened. So she adjusted her posture and quirked her head, softening her tone to indifference, "I simply mean if you leave, you will be feeding her to the wolves. Without a man standing beside her, the throne is no place for a woman with her temperament. The surrounding kingdoms will eat her for breakfast, starting with George," she shrugged, "she won't last the winter before she is overthrown."

"...Is this a ploy to try and push me back to her?"

"It is the truth and you know it. Without a king at her side, Snow White is no one in this patriarchy and she will be removed. The love of the people can only carry one so far."

"Your throne was never questioned," he noted and he caught her point well before she made a face at him.

"Are you seriously comparing my ruling patterns to Snow White's?" She asked incredulously and David shook his head and rubbed his face with one hand, "sure, if she starts slaughtering villages in my shadow, by all means I'm sure she will be just fine."

"I meant that you carry knowledge that could aid her in-...what's with the face?"

"In what world do you see me willingly sitting down with Snow White to offer life advise? And in what world do you see her accepting such an offer after I have fucked her husband out of her hands?!"

"...In a letter perhaps?" He offered pathetically, truly not knowing why he approached such a topic. Regina only rolled her eyes at him and turned to walk away, "no, no, wait! You could change your face, you could go to her as a stranger and become an advisor of sorts, she would never have to know!"

"I would have to be waiting off her every whim! She would move me in to the palace and then I would-"

"Why would you even bring this up then if you didn't want to help?"

"Because I don't want to wake up one morning to find you leaving me again in a fucking panic over Snow White!" She shouted at him as she spun around to face him. And then a shuddering breath left her lungs and her furious posture slackened in to one of defeat and vulnerability and her voice went quiet and small, "I cannot lose you to her again. I know you love her and I know that you care about her wellbeing and I know that you would go out of your way to keep her safe because that is just who you are. I am trying to come to terms with that, however, I cannot handle you doing so at my expense."

There was a moment of silence that seemed to drag on for forever. He simply stared at her with a firm set mouth and she wondered if she had said something that had upset him. But what she didn't know was that at this point there was little she could say to him now that would upset him.

There was once a time where he would hesitate before he did such a thing, but there was no hesitation when he took his lover's head between his hands and pulled her in for a kiss that radiated throughout his whole body. She hummed shortly in surprise but was so quick to settle in to him and accept his kiss that it made him step in to her just so he could be as close to her as possible. He kissed her slowly, threading his fingers through her long hair, pressing his body to hers, lingering against her lips as they shared a breath before he kissed her again.

And then he parted from her lips but stayed close enough for her to hear him when he promised ever so softly, "your happiness will never again come second to her's. I promise you this."

"Are you certain that that is a promise you can keep?" She questioned softly, her mind foggy in the best way over his closeness.

"Yes."