A/N: This is a repost of an old story. It was written as a gift for descaliers for a holiday exchange. The song quoted is "Take Me To Church" by Hozier. The story is three parts and a coda. Please heed the rating for this fic!

PART ONE

My church offers no absolutes.
She tells me, "Worship in the bedroom."
The only heaven I'll be sent to
is when I'm alone with you.

I was born sick,
but I love it.
Command me to be well.

It starts with a look.

A glance across the room full of modern aristocrats brandishing champagne flutes and pretention in a polite clash of wits. She wears a fitted black floor-length gown, simple except for the open back dipping down, down, down. When she catches him ogling, her crimson-lacquered mouth curves into a smirk and steals the breath from his chest.

"Who is that?" Robin asks his companion, though he tries to keep the awe from his voice.

"Who?" David follows his gaze to the woman in question. "Oh, her. That's Regina Mills—Leopold Blanchard's widow."

Robin frowns. Where has he heard the name Leopold Blanchard before? "Mary Margaret's father," he says when he recalls. "That's her stepmother?" She's too young, certainly. Though, at the same time, not young enough.

"Estranged stepmother," David corrects. "She's got an iron fist on Mary Margaret's trust."

Robin nods, eyes going to her again. She's laughing now at some unheard joke, and he unconsciously wets his lip. "She's—"

"A viper," David finishes for him. "I avoid her as much as possible, but she does a lot of business with Albert."

Albert Spencer, David's father, though he never calls him by that familial endearment. He's adopted his mother's maiden name in a fruitless rebellion against the man who holds David's livelihood in the palm of his hand. Robin well understands the desire to break free of patriarchal shackles, though he's done a better job of escaping.

There's small talk and introductions (not with her, not yet) and fielding questions about school and future plans. Robin answers with polite humility in the posh British accent acquired during his Eton days. It's been years since the melodic dips and peaks of his true origins have hinted in his timbre. Not that they wouldn't be beguiled by that accent as well, but he would be relegated to "quaint" rather than a product of the old world gentility they worship so ardently. Throughout the often inane chatter, he's very aware of her in his periphery. Never near the circles he weaves through, though he feels the cumbrous press of her presence all the same.

Finally, finally when the evening begins to wane, when conversations grow louder, less delicate, when others slip off to dark corners and pretend they are far more sophisticated than the plebeian masses as they engage in the same activities that occur behind closed doors at frat parties—this is when a whisper of her perfume reaches him in a ghostly caress. Light, but neither fruity nor flowery. Weighted with illicit things and Cimmerian promises.

He plucks a pair of full glasses from a passing tray and advances toward her with a confidence belied by his thrumming heart, his quickened breath. He has no business putting himself in her path; he has nothing to offer her other than callow adulation, but if he could just hear her voice, he'll be satisfied.

She sees him coming, brushes her hand over the arm of her companion and excuses herself, gaze fixed on him. The way her hips sway as she closes the short distance between them, the way she makes him the center of her singular attention exsiccates his tongue, constricts his throat. Her smile broadens as she takes the proffered champagne, fingers grazing briefly over his. She knows the affect she has on him—likely he isn't the first to be lost to her stunning beauty. (Likely he won't be the last.)

"You're David's friend," she says in a sonorous alto. She holds out a slender hand to shake.

"I am, indeed." He brings her knuckles to his lips and places a soft kiss there. "Robin Locksley at your service, milady." That was, perhaps, a tad over the top, but if she were privy to his thoughts, she'd know he's no gentleman.

She huffs a quiet laugh as she withdraws her hand. "Well, aren't you a charming young man?"

The term "young man" grates on him. He doesn't want to be dismissed out of hand merely because of his age—not by her, at any rate—but then her dark eyes make a languorous tour from his face down to his smartly polished Oxfords and back. He grins. No, not dismissed. Not yet.

"Are you at Harvard as well, then?" she asks.

He considers fabricating knowing David through other means than university. Or saying that he's a graduate student rather than a fourth year undergrad—anything to make him appear older than he is, worthy of her interest. He discards the notion, however. He has the feeling she would ferret out the lie as soon as it crossed his lips. "I am," he answers truthfully. "I'm studying the history of art and architecture."

She raises a brow. "Culture over business," she says. "An unusual choice among this crowd."

"It is," he agrees, though she has no idea. He braves a step closer to her and is pleased when she doesn't retreat. "I prefer to follow my passions."

"Do you?" She tilts her head in amusement at his dilettante attempt at a subtle come on, but she doesn't discourage him. "You're a connoisseur, I take it?"

He nods. "Very much so."

She looks him over again, heat trailing in the wake of her measuring gaze. "I have a few pieces in my private collection that you might find interesting," she says. "You should stop by sometime and take a look. I'm free tomorrow afternoon."

As she begins to walk away, he catches her arm—just a touch of fingertips against exposed skin. "I'm afraid I don't know where you live."

Her smile turns rapacious. "You're not going to let that stop you, are you?" And then she's gone.

David finds him at the end of the soirée, asks him what Mary Margaret's wicked stepmother wanted. "Art" is the only answer Robin gives him.

She lives in Chestnut Hill. With the sparse weekend traffic, it only takes him twenty minutes to arrive in his Austin Healey. He inherited the car from his granddad and restored it himself. But he's content to let the bluebloods believe Daddy special ordered the vehicle for a birthday like theirs had. He never lies about who he is—lying about his past is an entirely different thing—but he doesn't always correct their misconceptions. Perception is such an easy thing to manipulate.

He doesn't doubt that she'll see through him, though—that she already has.

The address leads him to a tall, wrought-iron fence. He presses a buzzer, gives his name to the voice coming through the speaker, and the gates part for him. Beyond is a graveled avenue, hedged by rows of elm trees. It's a minute or two before the path opens to a circular driveway in front of a sprawling mansion. He parks to the side, rubbing his damp palms on his thighs before climbing out of the car and making his way up the steps.

The viscid swell of anticipation stirs in his stomach as he rings the doorbell. She answers rather than the help, and she's breathtaking in the simple shift dress and impish grin she wears. Lips still blood red.

"So, you found me," she says.

"As you said," he replies, "I wasn't going to let not having your address stop me."

Her grin stretches wider, baring straight white teeth, and she is dazzling. He passes close by her as she steps aside to allow him entry. He knows he's being too bold, too presumptuous, but he wants—needs to be near her. She is a goddess, though not the pure and chaste kind from Judeo-Christian traditions. No, she hails from Greek mythology, a combination of Aphrodite and Athena and Hecate.

"Would you care for some lunch?" she asks, walking ahead of him and giving him the most pleasant view. She glances over her shoulder, smirking as if she knows his thoughts. "Or did you want to skip straight to the tour?"

He bites his lip as he considers his options. "Perhaps the tour and then lunch after?" He's quite fond of the way her gaze travels over him at the barest insinuation of something salacious behind their banter.

"We'll do the tour," she says, "and then we'll see."

He smiles, understanding the implications. Perform well and be rewarded. Oh, these are deadly waters he's treading, and they are precisely where he wants to be.

She takes him from room to room in her gargantuan home, presenting every bit of art hanging from the walls. Some of the pieces are pedestrian, purchased from local artists for decorative purposes rather than investment. But she was right about having a few paintings of value. She seems to favor the Post-Impressionist era with Cézanne and Picasso and Kandinsky. Robin asks to snap a few photos, and she gives him an indifferent wave of her hand. As they chat about color and composition, he forgets that he's barely twenty-three, that she's at least a decade older, if not more—though he'll never ask. He likes this, how mature, how cultivated he feels in her presence.

She leads him upstairs, explaining that her most cherished piece is displayed up there. He does his best to listen, to not be distracted by where the concave of her waist meets the convex of her hips. He wants to explore her symmetry with brush and paint against canvas (fingers and tongue against skin); he hasn't had that inclination since the year he spent in Paris between private school and university when he drunkenly fancied himself the next Renoir.

They are through a set of double-doors into a cavernous bedroom designed to be stark, yet refined with a sparse palette of white and black, accented with deep mahogany. His eyes are drawn to the only pop of color in the room, Picasso's Les noces de Pierrette hanging over the fireplace mantel, and all lascivious thoughts of his hostess flee as Robin steps closer to examine his favorite painting from the artist's Blue Period. Such an exquisite disparity between what's meant to be a beautiful event—a wedding—and the dark hues, the somber expressions of the guests, of the bride and groom. A groom who seems to be wearing a mask to cover something unseemly about himself.

Robin knew this piece was in the hands of a collector and never believed he would be able to see it in person. He could spend hours studying every stroke, speculating over the nude figure in the foreground, the gentleman blowing a kiss to the celebrated couple while holding something (a dead flower?) behind his back. What an incredible opportunity she's given him. He pulls out his phone, takes as many hi-res photos as his SD card has memory for.

"Are you impressed?" she asks behind him, awakening him from his rapture.

He turns, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he gives her the kind of frank appraisal he'd given the pinnacle of her collection. "Infinitely," he says. "Are you?"

She returns his smile with a canted brow. "The jury is still out."

He takes a step toward her. "Is it?" Another step and another as his heart drums in time to a rapidly surging crescendo. "I suppose I'll have to better plead my case, then."

"I'm all ears."

At once, he feels wholly unworthy of this moment. He knows how to charm his guileless female peers with his accent, with a dimpled grin, with the lost art of chivalry. But she's worldly, too cunning to fall for such simplistic ploys. He hasn't the first idea how to discern what a woman like her wants, what will turn her boneless in his arms, and he doesn't want to fumble his way through this encounter.

He has no other choice, though. Not if he wants to have her. (Oh, how he does.)

Donning a façade of absolute fearlessness, he traces the line of her jaw from her chin to her ear and farther, entwining his fingers in her silken locks. He tugs gently—more a request than a command for her to tip her head up, and she acquiesces. He doesn't kiss her, not yet, though he desperately wants to. Instead, he grips her waist with his free hand, pulls her flush against him, and already he doesn't know if he can bridle the sudden inferno radiating through his limbs.

When his lips finally touch hers, he tries to hold back, to keep the contact nothing more than a caress, but need overpowers him, demands that he slake the gnawing hunger she inspired in him from the first moment he laid eyes on her. When the last of his resolve crumbles beneath the tide of relentless want, he inhales her, crushes her into him, but there is no relief, no satisfaction. Only an ever increasing appetite for more.

She lets him taste her, lets his hand wander from her waist over the curve of her rear as she grips the front of his shirt. How does any man do it—enact a languid seduction when offered such a savory feast? He wants to be one with her already, her arching against him as he takes her to the most beautiful heaven that hell has to offer.

She breaks off the kiss, planting her hands against his shoulders. "Not bad for a boy," she says, more air than voice in her cavalier tone.

"I'm not a boy," he argues, despising the reminder of their age difference as he leans forward to enjoy the hollow of her neck.

"Yes, dear, a boy," she counters, though she tilts her head to allow him better access. "One who still has a lot to learn."

"Then teach me, Regina." He likes the shape of her name on his tongue.

And she does.

She shows him the virtue of restraint, the sensuality of fingertips grazing down an arm, warm breath fanning over bare skin. There's hunger in the way her nails scrape over his chest, but not frenzy. Each touch, each kiss is a languorous waltz at odds with his accelerating pulse.

He struggles with being the humble student—not only because every cell in his body is pulled taut like a drawn bowstring. But because he's never been docile, no matter the assumptions others make from his relatively unobtrusive demeanor. And he thinks that perhaps she knows this too, by the dare written in her hooded gaze.

He grins as he wraps his arms around her and lifts. She makes a surprised noise at the sudden movement, half-squeal, half-laugh, and he realizes that there might be a girl hidden inside of her who very much wants to be had by a boy like him. He drops her on the bed, thick down comforters billowing out around her. She is quite possibly the most striking creature he's ever had the privilege of laying hands on.

"I do have a few tricks up my sleeve," he says, kneeling at her feet and pulling off her stilettos one at a time.

"Do you now?" She raises a brow in a challenge. "By all means, give me a demonstration."

"Gladly."

He won't be the most experienced lover she's had, and likely not the best either (though he's loath to make that concession—at least, this time). But he will be memorable.

This will surely be memorable for him.

And it is. Oh, god. It is.

The taste of her, the feel of her pressed up against him, the rasp in her voice when she tells him not to be smug after the first time he sends her to the heavens. ("I wouldn't dream of it," he replies, unable to keep a triumphant smile from his lips.) He didn't know it could be like this. This white-heat that devours him, remakes him, and leaves him as weak as a newborn babe in its wake as she falls again, taking him with her.

It's an eternity before he's able to prop himself up and take in the rose coloring her cheeks, her eyes glassy with pleasure. Her lipstick is gone, and she appears younger, more vulnerable without it. (He did that.) "The verdict?" He pants the question.

She tries not to smile. "I suppose you can have lunch."

He laughs and gives her an indelicate, open-mouthed kiss. "And another round after."

She shoves him onto his back. "Don't push your luck, boy."

He will, though. As far as it goes. (And he thinks it'll go far with her.)

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! XD If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!