Chapter 14: Shame.
Fire wouldn't burn a dry forest in summer as fierce as the blood burning under the skin of Emma's cheeks when the brunette sat up in bed looking down on her with her hand still cupping her clearly aroused breast.
"Emma?", the brunette asked, her hand still cupping the girl's breast, she looked confused between her hand and Emma's flushed cheeks, "what's going on?", she queried when she regained enough self-control over her muscles as to move her hand away from the blonde.
Emma couldn't find the connection between her tongue and her brain. She laid there, gasping for air like a fish out of water.
"Hold that thought", Regina said when she realized the blonde was not going to answer anytime soon, and she couldn't ignore the constant reminder that there was someone else in the room needing immediate attention any longer. The fact that attending to Henry's needs also allowed her to hide her increasingly growing blush from the blonde was a mere coincidence. Especially now that her head had cleared after waking up, and she understood the situation perfectly. It wasn't the younger woman who owed the explanation in the current events. Her actions while sleeping were the ones that were going to be brought to account, not Emma's. She neither wanted to explain, nor she felt like she could do it. "Hi baby, what's wrong little prince? Do you want some milk? Yes you do, mommy is gonna warm some formula for you", Regina took the baby in expert arms, rocking him softly in her arms as she walked towards the bathroom where she usually dealt with Henry's increasing hunger.
She started warming one of his baby bottles under the warm stream of the faucet, her embarrassment growing proportionally to the temperature of the bottle exposed under the running hot water.
"Can I help you?", Emma said suddenly, leaning against the frame of the bathroom door.
"I can manage on my own", chocolate eyes met emerald ones through the reflection of the bathroom mirror. The interaction lasted less than a fraction of a second and yet long enough to let an unsettling feeling seep into the brunette heart.
How many years had she wished to catch those emerald eyes again in the reflection of her mirror? Waiting in the shadows every day, hoping to witness that fraction of a second, the Blonde deemed enough time to check her appearance in the mornings. And now she was right behind her back, and Regina felt still trapped in the shadows, unable to look her in the eye, condemned to steal glances from a distorted reflection.
"I know that, but you no longer need to do it on your own", the Blonde replied. The invisible pull of the girl's bright green eyes was almost impossible to ignore, poking her in the back of her head like an annoying migraine. The only reason Regina's look remained stuck to the bottle in her hands was that this annoying migraine was easier to bear than the shame of the recent events.
"You can hold the bottle under running water, while I check his diaper", Regina offered after a moment of consideration, allowing herself to take one peek at the Blonde. Another stolen fraction of a second through a mirror. Emma was already halfway to the sink when their eyes met through the reflective glass. It took Regina less time to instinctively place the bottle on the sink's countertop and squeeze herself out of the bathroom than it took Emma to reach the brunette's previous position.
"It wasn't hunger or the need for a change of diaper what woke him", she overheard the blonde say through gritted teeth when she was halfway to the bed and decided to ignore it.
Regina unzipped the onesie and stripped the still sobbing baby with the ease of an expert, only to find out the Blonde was right and the diaper was all clean and dry.
"Here is the bottle", the Blonde said, walking into the bedroom after a minute.
"Thanks dear, you can go back to sleep, I'll feed him and put him to sleep", The brunette offered, not lifting her gaze to meet Emma's eyes even once, although she was plenty aware of emerald eyes tracking her movements.
Maybe Emma would let go of the subject. Let her have this moment without pushing her towards the shame of apologizing for her unconscious actions. Spare her from gulping down the bitter taste of unrequited love when she confessed the reason why her subconscious reacted to the woman lying next to her the way it had.
"Shouldn't we talk about you know—, what happened?".
Maybe not.
"It's two in the morning anything we have to talk can wait for a few hours", Regina's hand made a dismissive movement, and she turned to place Henry on his crib, ultimately ignoring the girl behind her.
Henry took the bottle in his little hands and was fast asleep after a few moments. The blonde had been correct. If hunger wasn't what woke up the baby, then what had? The more she thought about the subject, the more the embarrassment grew inside of her. Perhaps it had been her who had awoken the baby, and that realization only made things increasingly worse.
Emma decided that it was best to do as she was told instead of pushing the subject. The reasons why the brunette wanted to ignore what happened were apparent in her head. She was embarrassed for getting into such an intimate situation with a girl she had always seen as a daughter. Emma's arousal state when the brunette woke up only made the events even more awkward now that both of them were aware of her reactions to the brunette touch.
The morning came at a slow pace. None of the women could sleep a wink after they went back to bed but pretended to believe each other's unconvincing show of slow breathing and restrained movements for hours until the first rays of sun seeped into the room.
Regina was the first to get up that morning. Emma followed the brunette's moves with her eyes as she walked around the room collecting her clothes for the day, finally jumping in the bathroom and closing the door behind her. Something caught the blonde's eye as she observed the closed wooden door. On the table beside the bathroom door, a set of keys shimmered under the sunlight, now lighting up the room, the keys to the bedroom door. She wondered for a moment if the key to the bathroom would be there as well. But maybe she didn't need to use it at all. Perhaps the door wouldn't be locked. Mayhap she just needed to walk there, yank the door open and force the brunette to hear her out, explain her love for her. Maybe, if she wished hard enough, Regina wouldn't walk away from her as she had when she was just a kid.
It felt like it took her hours to get up from the bed and walk to the closed door and some more minutes to gather the courage to lift her hand to give the doorknob a try.
She held her breath all the while the silver handle turned in its place. What she didn't know was that the brunette inside the bathroom was also holding her breath for the exact same reason.
"Emma! What are you doing here?", Regina looked at her in shocked disbelief, a towel wrapped around her body as she waited for the bathtub to fill up with warm water. The blonde, however, could see something hidden behind the woman's eyes, and she wasn't sure what it was, but she would bet all her money that it looked a little bit like hope.
"The door wasn't locked", was the first thing that came to her mind, and so she spoke her thoughts.
"Yes, because I thought I could have a bath in my hotel room, without having to worry about locking the door to the bathroom", the brunette said hastily. Something about Regina not being able to look her in the eye as she spoke made the blonde believe she wasn't being strictly honest.
Maybe Regina was hoping to be interrupted by the blonde? Or perhaps the girl was just delusional, seeing what she wanted to see out of a messed up situation.
"I think you owe me a talk", The Blonde replied, leaning against the door with folded arms and closing it again with the weight of her body.
Regina's hand grabbed hold of the hem of the wrapped towel around her body, suddenly conscious of her situation and the reduced space surrounding her and the blonde, space almost as scarce as the amount of fabric covering her naked body from emerald prying eyes.
"I meant over breakfast not my bathing hour", the brunette responded, scanning the blonde for any indication of why she was really here.
Emma seemed undecided, like she was trying to decide her next move, so Regina waited. That bubble of hope only growing in her chest, blown to be crushed in a minute, she was sure. There was something apart from hope growing inside of her at a worryingly fast pace. Heat in her lower abdomen, heat that was rapidly trying to escape between her legs. She pressed her legs together, intently watching the blonde to see her next move and hear her following words.
"Regina—", she started, pushing herself away from the door and walking towards her.
"Yes dear?", Regina's tone sounded almost unconcerned. That being the part she decided to play, however, she felt her legs go weak under her weight as the girl walked closer to her exposed shape.
"Please forgive me for doing this", the blonde answered when the distance between their bodies reduced enough so that it could only be sliced by a string of hair.
"Wha—?", The brunette could not finish posing her question because thin pink lips crashed against her own mid-sentence. She was paralyzed, shocked like a teenage girl who faced the precise moment when the boy she liked steals her first kiss from her lips, completely unaware that her feelings were reciprocated.
"Emma?", she pushed the blonde away when she regained control over her limbs again. The bubble in her chest was so big it was crushing her lungs and made it extremely difficult to breathe. The blonde smiled sheepishly at her from a close distance, and it was then that Regina decided that if the hope was going to vanish soon. At least she would make it a happy memory to grab on to when the day came that she needed something to hold on to for dear life.
Her hands moved to Emma's rosy cheeks, ravishing her eyes in the flushed expression of the young girl. She placed one of Emma's unruly curls behind her ear and pulled her close for another kiss. A kiss that wasn't one-sided this time, that much was clear to her when young hands clasped her hip bones over the thin fabric of her towel, making it slide slightly up her legs.
There were no words, only slow kisses and soft caresses, both of them scared that the bubble would pop if any of them dared to speak their thoughts, and they kissed for what felt like hours until they were interrupted by the warm feeling of water at their feet.
"The bathtub is full", Emma spoke first.
Regina forced herself to separate from the girl and take care of the running water. When all she wanted was to say let it pour and keep enjoying the moment she feared would break with the fragility of the cristal bottles she used to throw at the walls at home when she was upset.
"I should get that bath going before Henry wakes up", she spoke, still facing the full tub, afraid to look back at the blonde only to find out her moment of hope had blown out. She run her fingers over the brimming water for a while longer before dipping her arm in warm water to pull on the bathtub stopper enough time to clear the excess.
"You really should", Emma replied after a moment, confirming her fears without her having to turn back, "by all means do take that bath", the girl's tone was hoarse, and Regina finally gathered her courage to turn around to look at her again.
Emma's face was bright red, and she was leaning against the sink countertop with crossed arms over her chest. It was then when that Regina understood what she had just done. She had bent over the bathtub wearing only a towel to uncork the stopper, and she could see in the blonde's face that she had shown much more than the young girl was prepared to see.
Evil spread through her body with the ease it had in the enchanted forest, faster than her curse back in the day when she cast it, devastating all the land in its path.
"As a matter of fact I will".
The thin fabric of her towel fell silently to the floor at her feet, being immediately soaked by the puddle of water that was now the bathroom floor. A deathly hush took over the place only interrupted by the splashing sound of the water as she entered the tub.