Chapter 8 – Marked
The Enchanted Forest, Then…
The Huntsman's eyes did not snap open when he thought he heard something.
Instead, he only parted his lips to breathe through his mouth and hear it less and raised his head from the pillow of the Queen's chest.
His eyes opened last, the colour of frosted green leaves, and he scanned the room thoughtfully.
The evidence of the Queen's play the night before was plain.
His clothes had been shredded, by magic and –as her focus had deteriorated from what she'd had him do to her- by hand or knife. He bore shallow cuts from where her aim had faltered due to a lick here or a bite there. Bruises matching the span of her fingers marked his shoulders, hips and back.
The sheets were torn from her clawing fingers, scorched in places from magic, blood from bites spotted them, the candelabra on the table beside her bed had been knocked over, he had smashed the mirror there with a kick of his foot for he did not want to be watched by the spirit within.
He would pay for that dearly.
Still, none of that was unusual, what had woken him?
After a night like last night, he would usually sleep until well past dawn and she would allow it for she did not want to break her favourite toy, but dawn was nothing but a lilac idea on the horizon beyond the window.
The Huntsman pondered it. Something had certainly wakened him. He slept like the dead with the warmth of a body beside him. Even if she was a hateful abomination of a woman –the act of sleeping with company reminded him of his pack's den.
Glancing down at the Queen, he studied her.
She lay on her back, curled against him, one hand had been buried in his hair but had slipped away when he had raised his head and now was curled around his shoulder. Her other arm was curled up around her head, those fingers tangled in her own hip length raven hair. She wore a gown of white. Sheer silk that did very little to hide the bounty that lay beneath.
The Queen may well be a monster, but she was a comely one.
Still, he liked her best when she was asleep. Not only because it meant she wasn't about to torment him but because she looked softer. Younger. They were the same age, he thought, but it did not show until she was without the war mask of her kohl rimmed eyes, the blood red paint of her mouth or the sharp clothes she wore for the world at large.
What had awoken him?
The Queen's eyes snapped open half a moment before his answer literally burst screaming through the door.
"DEATH TO THE PRETENDER!"
The Huntsman flipped over onto his back and took stock of the situation even as he rolled to a crouch at the end of the bed.
A group of over half a dozen men had kicked the doors off their hinges and stormed the Royal bedchamber. They each held weapons; knives, clubs and swords. Well made. Their faces were young, their clothes expensive.
Idealists. Rich. Aristocracy.
Idiots.
Still, they were idiots intent on murder and the Queen and Huntsman both were without clothes never mind weapons.
Besides, the Huntsman had views on murder before even breakfast.
With a roar, the Huntsman surged to his feet on the mattress of the bed and launched himself at the foremost of the mob. He flew through the air, batted the boy's sword away with a rap of his knuckles on the flat of the blade and gripped the boy's face in both hands. He swung his legs out, wrenching his body to the side and landed behind the boy. There was a tearing crackling sound and the boy fell stone dead to the marble floor.
His head had been cranked so far around by the Huntsman's attack that it now faced completely the wrong way.
The Huntsman wasted no time in admiring his handiwork and tackled the next lad around the middle, lifting him off his feet and slamming him into the boy directly behind. There was a meaty sound of a friend's knife being buried in someone's flesh. A wet cough over the Huntsman's head from the boy he held and he crushed them both to the floor.
The Huntsman straddled the first lad's chest, crouched over both of them, gripped his head, lifted it and used it to beat the other boy about the face with his comrade's skull.
The Huntsman snarled when a blade ripped across his back but he had been with the Queen for a while and they would have to do better than such a little lovebite to keep the Huntsman down.
He bounded off his latest victims and his hands curled into claws, his lips peeling back over sharp white teeth. His eyes gleamed, pupils reflecting eerily silver in the dim light and a low and terrible snarl rumbled from his chest and thundered through the room.
One of them came at him with a mace, a weapon they had not been trained how to use, and the Huntsman easily dodged. He ducked in, wrapping his arm around the younger man's and wrenching until something popped and the boy gave a ragged scream.
His friends rushed to help him at such a panicked sound of agony and that was their last mistake.
The Huntsman's hand lashed out, his thumb finding the corner of the boy's eye socket and gouging deep. He pushed hard until something popped wetly over his hand and the boy went slack in his hold. With that as a firm handhold, the Huntsman hauled and slammed the lad's corpse bodily into his comrades.
There was a symphony of grunts and gasps of horror as they all tumbled to the floor under the weight of their dead friend.
In the lull that granted him, the Huntsman darted to the corpse of one he had already felled and lifted a stiletto blade and a short sword from his belt.
So armed, he turned to face the rest of the party.
"We'll kill you too, beast." One of the men snarled.
The Huntsman's growl was bigger and it showed in the whites of his opponent's eyes.
"Growl like the animal you are. We are men willing to die for the cause not for the want of a witch." The man spat.
His companions flanking him darted a look at one another. It was quite clear that they would much rather survive but had no idea how.
The Huntsman's lip curled in contempt. There was nothing to say as far as he was concerned. Words were useless when there was blood in the offing.
"Die!" The leader of the remaining three attackers launched himself at the Huntsman, sword upraised in both hands, swinging powerfully down with enough force to rip the Huntsman from stern to stem.
The sword made a rattling clang when it hit the marble flooring and the Huntsman was so close to the boy that he felt the wet spatter of blood on his face when the lad wheezed his last breaths.
The Huntsman tackled him full on, a blade in each hand, and found both of the lad's lungs with them. He snarled with the effort, sliding the now stunned man back several paces, and his shoulders bunched with a strength that was horrifying. The Huntsman's snarl grew into a growl when his arms flexed. He hoisted the boy up by the blades buried in his chest, his toes scuffing off the floor, blood raining down on the Huntsman.
The growl rumbling like thunder from within the Huntsman's chest grew to a roar and then a haunting howl. He wrenched both arms wide and tore both blades from his victim's torso with enough force to nearly cut him in half. Blood splattered down over the Huntsman's head and shoulders. The corpse fell to the floor with a meaty thud and split completely apart.
The Huntsman rounded on the last two and their eyes were wide, staring at this blood painted horror that prowled ever closer to them. Low snarls rumbling from within his chest, his dark hair plastered to his head by blood, the whites of his strange eyes burning from within that red mask. He was no man. He was a monster.
"Mercy!" The first shrieked and cast his weapon down on the floor.
"Mercy!" His companion threw his arms down a half moment later and they both fell to their knees. Begging for their lives.
The Huntsman growled, advancing, sword and knife raised.
"Wait."
He froze like her words were connected to his bones and they might well have been.
"If you kill them all, we'll never find out who sent them." The Queen slid down off the bed, tousling her long hair as if she hadn't been so rudely awakened. She fisted the skirts of her long gown in one hand and daintily picked her way through the blood spatter.
The Huntsman lowered his blades and tilted his head, considering the men that had so rudely awakened him.
The Queen stood at his side, measured the path of the blood dripping down over the serrated lines of the Huntsman's naked body. Her lips kicked in something of a smirk and she turned back to her guests.
"Majesty!"
The palace guard arrived with a clatter and it was only then that the Queen realised how little time had passed. It had been all of two minutes since the doors had been flung open and they had been first attacked. Not a bad response time considering there were no guards on this floor, only the ones above and below. She liked her privacy.
Looking back at her Huntsman…well, where most are concerned.
"All is well. Take them away." She waved at the corpses littering the floor and her guard recovered themselves quickly, rushing to do her bidding. She reached over and tapped a finger onto a survivor's nose with a smirk. "Put him in the dungeon, I shall see him at my leisure. Throw the other from the ramparts."
The guards were smart enough not to ask questions and gathered up the dead men and the remaining survivors. The one who had been sentenced to a plummeting death screaming and struggling but it was an act ignored by everyone. He was quickly stifled.
The guards were no stranger to the wroth of the Huntsman. He was the Queen's favoured weapon, after all. The man closest to her in all things. Considering how formidable she was just by being, the fact that she relied on the Huntsman to guard her spoke volumes of him.
Volumes of blood if the repainting of the floor was to be believed.
All too soon the Huntsman was left alone with the Queen and he braced himself for whatever she might do. He had no idea how she might react to having been attacked, no matter that he had thrown them off. She was mad. She could not be predicted.
The Queen appeared to ignore him, still hitching her skirts up out of the blood, she picked her way to the centre of the room and held out her free hand, spinning on her heel in a tight circle.
Magic washed out from her, sweeping the room clean of the blood and destruction. From the attack and from their bedplay the night before, she erased it all. In fact, the only thing that looked like it had witnessed a bloodbath was the Huntsman himself. He still slowly dripped blood. It had travelled as low as his hips now, in seeping rivulets that crept over his skin with an insidious slither.
She stood with her back to him for a long moment and finally turned to look at him with a thoughtful expression on her face.
The Huntsman tensed and it did not lessen when a slow smile spread across her mouth.
"Seven men, fully armed –and clothed for that matter- and they barely made it in the door." Her voice was thoughtful. "Impressive, even by your standards."
The Huntsman didn't know what was safe to say so he kept his silence.
"The truly impressive thing," she held up a finger padding closer to him, her sheer gown rippling, "is that you did it all of your own volition."
The Huntsman did open his mouth then and stalled. She smiled…and it was a smile. Not a smirk or a cruel grin, but a smile.
"I gave no order to protect me. Did not hasten you to kill them. You simply acted in my defence of your own free will." She stepped closer to him, studying his face. "Fascinating."
"You would have ordered it of me anyway. Had I waited…it might not have gone so favourably for me."
"Hmm, would I?" She tilted her head and prowled around him, studying him from every angle. "I do like a bit of murder in the morning. Are you certain I would not have simply roasted them all alive and save you the leg work?"
"I…" The Huntsman looked down at the blades in his hands, stained red with the lifeblood of so many.
"Worry not, dear Huntsman, for I would have ordered it of you." She smiled and reached out tracing her finger over his flank, running the tip of her nail parallel to a drip of blood. "Though the mess is something I had not anticipated…"
"Apologies."
"No need." She lifted her head from inspecting the sharp bone of his hip and the cobbled muscles of his stomach. She looked up at him from under hooded lashes. "Come."
She spun away from him suddenly and strode away across the pristine floor that the Huntsman ruined with his bloodied footprints.
With a single wave of her hand, the Queen summoned the doors to the humungous bathroom open before she reached them and he could already hear thunderous water filling the sunken tub in the middle of the room.
Tub was inaccurate, it was more a pool. Nearly ten paces across and rapidly filling with milky steaming water. Candles melted into the edges of the pool flared to life with sparks and sputters from their tallow.
The Huntsman stood uncertainly, eying her as she moved to one of the cabinets stationed about the room and began to rummage. He stiffened when she extracted several vials and bottles, holding them up to the light and humming in her throat. She pursed her lips and then turned to the water, upending one after the other into the steaming froth of the filling pool. She carefully added just a drop from the third bottle and then stowed them all carefully away again.
A flick of her fingers and the Queen commanded the water to cease filling the tub. Water still poured into it but at a steady trickle that drained away just as quickly. The mix of hot water white from mineral springs clouded together with the cooler water from an underground spring beneath the castle. He could see the current gently moving from one side of the pool to the other in a twisting helix of dark and pale waters. The pool seemed alive, breathing, water lapping at the rippled wax of the ring of candles that surrounded it.
The Queen turned to him expectantly.
"Well?"
"I…in there?"
"Yes." She smiled, and it was a genuine smile again. "You've earned it."
The Huntsman eyed the water. She insisted that he bathe regularly, she was very particular about the kind of filth he was steeped in at any given time but dirt was never one of them. He usually bathed in a river in the forest. To better keep his scent blended with that of the land about him.
"Come." The Queen stepped into the pool herself when he seemed to hesitate again. She held out her hand to him and –warily- he padded forward and took it in his own.
She didn't flinch at the blood that smeared over her perfect skin because of its stain on him. She led him deeper into the pool instead.
Her silk gown billowed and rippled in the water, trailing over the surface after her, clinging to his flank when he waded into the waist deep pool alongside her.
The water was hot but not painfully so. At least, not where it didn't find every bruise and nick that he had taken in the fight. The water smelled faintly of mint or something similar and the wounds he had won burned cold in reaction to whatever she had added to it.
"Now, let me look at you." The Queen halted him in the middle of the pool and turned to regard him thoughtfully. She studied the cloud of pink that trailed from him and then her eyes tracked hungrily up over the hard lines of his body to his chest.
She frowned at the dripping crimson that covered him and then fisted her hand in her gown. She dragged it up out of the water, gripped it in both hands and then shredded a hank away from the skirts.
The Huntsman blinked at that, nearly flinching at the sharp sound of sodden fabric ripping. That gown had been worth its weight in gold and she had shredded it like it was less than paper.
Dunking the fistful of white silk into the water, she lifted it with both hands, stepping closer to him, stretched up onto her toes and wrung it out over his head.
The Huntsman closed his eyes at the hot water with the mint cool tang to it sluice down over his face and splatter over his chest. It ran into his eyes and he automatically jerked, shaking his head like a wet wolf might to clear it from his vision.
She made a small sound of surprise and his eyes flashed open, braced for the punishment.
"Still excitable I see." The Queen's voice –far from being angry- was amused and somewhat wry. She lifted her hand and smeared the pink water he had splattered her with from her cheek. "Be still."
The Huntsman locked his body into statue immovability and watched her with wary eyes when she soaked the cloth she had made of her skirts again and wrung it out over his head once more. He closed his eyes and forced himself to be blinded to her actions.
Again and again, she rinsed him with water from the ruined dress then –gently- wiped the soft and sopping material over his face. Dabbing lightly at a split on his cheekbone, carefully swiping over the delicate skin around his eyes and scrubbing deliciously through the stubble shadowing his jaw.
"You can open your eyes now." She wasn't looking at him, having started on his chest. Dipping, rinsing, cleaning, she swiped the blood away. Examined each one of his wounds carefully. The gentle current of the pool washing the blood and sweat away leaving clean skin and water in its wake.
She prowled around him, standing at his back and continued her ritual there too. She hummed when she came across the deep slash over his shoulders. Her fingers traced the edge and he stiffened but she did not scrape at it with her fingernails nor gouge deeper into it with the cloth.
Once she was satisfied that he was clean, she prowled around to see his face again. She looked up at him, her black eyes unreadable and he waited with a coiled tension. What was she going to do?
He blinked and twitched in surprise when she suddenly sank completely beneath the surface of the water. He stared watching her long hair cloud about herself under the water and then she stood just as quickly, shaking her hair back to slap wetly against her back.
She held her jaw oddly and he realised she looked as if she had something in her mouth. She reached up without speaking, gripped his head between her hands and tugged him down closer to her height. She went up on her toes and pressed her lips to his cheek. The cut on his cheek.
He flinched but she held him tightly when her lips parted against his skin and she revealed her mouth to be filled with magic. It seeped into the wound in a tingling fierce sensation that was…odd. Odd but not painful.
She directed his head with her hands, tilting his face so her lips could close over his. She sucked his lower lip, his split lip, between her own and traced her tongue over the cut. He could feel the water in her mouth, magic waters, seeping into the cut.
So she went on.
Each and every one of his wounds was…kissed better.
She had to take from the pool several more times in order to see to every cut, scrape and bruise, but she didn't appear to mind doing it.
Finally she ran her hands over him, front and back, humming in satisfaction when he did not flinch from pain nor could she find a single rupturing of his heated skin. By bruise nor tear.
The Huntsman watched the Queen prowl around him in the water, her dress dragging heavily behind her, studying him from all angles. He was intensely glad that the water rose to his waist as her dress was now completely transparent and his cock was at full attention.
Every jolt of freezing hot magic had lanced him, lighting him up from the inside, and her lips on his skin had seemed to have a direct line to his cock. He'd been painfully hard since she'd first sucked on his lip and he had no idea how she'd react when she found out because it sure as hell didn't seem to be abating in the slightest.
"All better?" She tilted her head, watching him with those unreadable eyes that glinted gold in the candlelight.
"Yes." His voice was hoarse. "Thank you, majesty."
"Not at all. I do like to take care of you." Her hand traced down over his flank and he shivered at the thrill of sensation that went through him.
Something flickered in her eyes and she snatched her hand away. She turned to go and he stepped towards her without meaning to. Freezing when she turned to regard the motion.
Her head tilted the other way and she blinked, puzzled by something.
The Huntsman froze and hoped she didn't take offence or all her effort would have been for nothing when she punished him.
"Truly?" The Queen arched a brow and something of a smirk kicked her mouth.
She turned to face him completely, inhaling deeply and resting her hand on the curve of her hip.
His eyes betrayed him and dropped to study the move with fearsome appreciation.
The dress clung to every inch of her. Stuck to her like a second skin. Her nipples were hard and dark through the fabric and he felt a growl rumble deep in his throat. She chuckled and the bounce it set through her had him tilting towards her again before he could stop himself. He bared his teeth with the effort.
She was Evil. He reminded himself. Evil and horrid and cruel. She was more of a monster than even he was. She was mad. She was…she was…
She was beautiful. She was strong. She could take him at his worst. She never flinched from him.
His tongue traced over his teeth and her eyes hungrily tracked the movement. She smiled, another real smile, and her chin tilted up.
"Go on." Her voice was quiet. Soft. "Take what you will."
His hand manacled about her throat without hesitation and –far from fight him, from letting her eyes go wide with fear- she let him haul her close. Up and off her toes and into his hold. His mouth smashed down over hers and his tongue thrust into her mouth unapologetically. He snarled, low and rumbling, and clutched her closer.
The Queen –miles from the marble hard female that ruled the entire realm- whimpered into his mouth and melted against him. She gave way to his every desire, bowing back for him when he loomed over her, craning her neck to give him the unrestricted access he craved for ravaging her mouth.
His hands trailed down her neck, nails scraping her skin, catching on the straps of her gown like claws. With a savage yank and a growl, he tore it. Savaging the silk with a gleeful relish. He ripped it away from her, in jolts and tugs, baring more of her slick skin to his touch with every handful of ruined silk.
She twisted helpfully, wriggling free of the cloying material until she was naked in his arms and it was all miles of naked skin on skin contact. They were both wet from the bath, slipping and sliding against one another.
Their kisses were hungry, sucking and biting. He ravaged her mouth, burying one hand into the heavy mass of her hair and angling her mouth under his so that the angle pleased him best.
And she let him.
She let him have his way with her. She didn't flinch or cower or wince when so much blood had painted him just minutes before. She didn't care that he'd killed half a dozen men with his bare hands. She didn't care about the wolfish nature of him that came howling so readily to the surface with the least provocation.
She loved it.
The queen moaned into his mouth when he slid his hands around the slimming of her waist. Years of wearing corsets had given her middle a waspish cinch to it and years more of riding horses had given her the sleek muscles of a woman with stamina.
Stamina he planned to put to good use.
The Huntsman boosted her up out of the water, those toned legs sliding readily around his hips. She speared her fingers into his hair, clinging to him as they kissed. She made little moaning needy sounds for him that made his cock jump and twitch in anticipation.
He held her effortlessly, she was actually very small, and angled her over his straining cock. He lowered her into the water, his cock pushing against her cunt, the magic waters sloshing and sucking between them.
She tore her mouth from his, panting at the ceiling. She clutched his face between her hands, her long black painted nails scoring through the stubble on his jaw. He nipped and sucked at her fingers when they strayed close enough to his mouth.
"What is your name?"
The Huntsman blinked, looking up at her. She looked back at him, her head tilted to the side, her hair suddenly short.
"Graham, what is your real name?" She frowned at him. "Graham?"
The Huntsman shook his head as if to clear the pounding of his heart from his ears.
"What?"
The Sheriff's Station…
"What is your name?" Regina watched him carefully as if waiting for him to start baying at the moon.
Graham shook his head sharply to dispel the memory that had washed over him so readily. He had glanced at his desk, remembered the other times she had been in his office with him and…why had he thought of that particular tryst back home?
Graham looked back at Regina rather than try and answer the question.
Regina was propped up in the chair in the corner of his office. It usually held up a pile of teetering paperwork that he never quite got around to filing but he had shifted that in favour of parking her in it out of the way. He'd then gone about his day as if she wasn't there, knowing that being ignored would be the worst torture to weigh on her.
"You know my name." Graham sat back in his own seat and studied her.
Regina sat back in the chair, files taken from her office that morning spread on her lap, and tried to look like she wasn't in pain. She was still being stubborn about her medication. Then again, he was being stubborn about it too.
This was a distraction for her.
"No, I know the name I gave you, I know the name that others gave you, but not the name you gave yourself." Regina shifted, trying to ease the discomfort in her chest and stilling when he uncoiled to his feet.
She watched him with big dark eyes as he approached her and then scowled when she realised what he was about. She glared at the pills proffered her and the uncapped bottle of water.
"I don't…"
"Take them and I'll tell you."
"Tell me and I'll take them."
He smirked and didn't move. She would break first. The pain was beginning to make her sweat. She had gone pale and her skin was clammy.
Though he supposed his patience might expire before her pain threshold reached its limit.
"Regina," he put a subtle emphasis on her name but it made her stiffen as if he'd bellowed at her, "take your pills."
She sucked in a deep breath, paling further at the pain that it had to cause her, and then mulishly accepted the tablets from his palm. She knocked them back and gulped down water to rid herself of the taste of them and then looked back up at him.
"Well?"
"Howl." Graham turned from her and went back to his desk, flipping open the next file. He began to scan through it and ignored the heavy weight of her glare in the side of his head.
"That's it?"
Graham shrugged a shoulder.
"Raised by wolves and called Howl…can't say that your family was a font of great imagination, can we?"
Graham shot her a glare and she smirked.
"I mean, aren't all wolves called Howl?" Regina waved her hand. "They do know only three or four words after all; 'grr', 'bark' and 'howl'. So, is that sort of like being called 'And'?"
Graham slowly closed the file and turned his full attention to her. He sat and just watched her for the longest time, listening to the feelings leaking from her heart and into his.
She was…lonely. Bored, irritated, surly and mean too. Those all went without saying, but she was lonely. He was so close and so far all at the same time and she'd had him on such a short leash for so long that it must be quite the thing for him to suddenly have the ability to go walkabout under his own recognisance.
Regina was often alone, she usually preferred it, he knew that, but there is a difference between being alone and being lonely.
Graham pushed back from his desk again, the wheels of his thirty year old chair creaking and squeaking, and then he scooted himself over to sit right in front of her. He sat so close that he had to part his knees to bracket hers.
"You're being rude." He informed her as if she didn't know. His hand lifted, stroking imaginary lint from the hem of her skirt. The underskirts rustled and he felt certain parts of him perk up at the memories such sounds evoked. He did not miss the way her pulse quickened or her breath hitched. At least he wasn't the only one affected.
"Pots and kettles." She sniffed at him, trying to be distant despite the way his fingers toyed with the soft skin of her knee. Her feet were tucked up under her, it would be painful to her to unfold so he could have unrestricted access to all the stroking he desired…she very nearly put herself through it. Very nearly. "You've been ignoring me all morning."
"I've been working, as have you, had you simply asked for a conversation, I'd have granted you one."
Her jaw clenched at those words. They'd have spoken if he'd allowed it. She very nearly growled like the predator she was under the skin.
"Would you prefer the request by mail or shall I fill the forms out in triplicate right here and now?"
"No need to get so riled, pet. It's not like any conversation we'd have would end civilly anyway."
She opened her mouth to deliver a blistering retort but the hurt dealt by his words caught her before she could. She clicked her teeth together and then looked away from him. Sadness bloomed in her. Guilt. Anguish. Something so deep and rip roaring that he couldn't even name.
Torture.
"Very well." Regina turned her attention back to her paperwork. "I apologise for interrupting."
"Regina?" Graham frowned.
"Go back to your work, Sheriff, I've kept you from it long enough."
"Regina." Graham's voice deepened, a growl creeping into it. She was keeping something from him and he needed to know what. "Tell me."
Regina's jaw clenched and she huffed out a breath through her nose. She leaned further back in the chair and rubbed absently at her chest, over her heart. She looked discomfited and he could feel the echo of the weighty sensation in her.
"You're in pain." He straightened, turning in his chair and intending to reach for the phone and call the hospital.
Her hand on his wrist stopped him.
Graham turned to look at her and Regina snatched her hand away as if burned.
"I'm fine. Don't call anyone."
"Then why the long face?"
"I…" Regina looked down at her papers again and needlessly organised them. "I just…I don't know what you want from me."
"I don't really want anything from you right now." Graham leaned in towards her again, propping his elbows on his knees. "Except for you to tell me what's bothering you."
"What is this? You said it was going to be revenge and –so far- you've been obdurately kind. Is it a false sense of security that you're trying to instil? Are you trying to keep me guessing? Do you even know what you're doing?" She waved her hand but that was as effusive as she was going to get if she didn't want to throw up due to the pain of tugging her stitches. "What's your endgame? Can I at least know that?"
Graham watched her for a long and unblinking moment, his fingers lacing together thoughtfully.
"I want to control you." He murmured, studying her face.
She looked completely calm and collected. They could have been discussing tax returns for all the enthusiasm her expression conveyed…but he could feel the bolt of sheer terror that went clean through her at those words.
"Not your every move." He found himself trying to soothe her for some reason. Probably so she would be easier to handle, he told himself. "Nothing like that. I just want you to stop this vendetta against everyone. I want to break the curse and I believe that you're my best bet of doing it. You're not exactly champing at the bit to do it yourself so gaining leverage over you is the only way to make it happen."
Regina looked down and fidgeted with the edge of one of the manila folders in her lap. He listened hard to what she was feeling and very nearly winced at the depths her despair ran to with his words.
"I'm not going to hurt you."
She snorted something like a laugh but still didn't look up at him. She'd never been afraid to meet his gaze before. Never. Not with anyone in fact. It was a mixture of satisfaction and shame that swirled through him when he realised he had cowed her into it.
"Was it…is it just Howl?" Regina tilted her head, still intensely focussed on the folder. "Did your pack have a name or…?"
"Strange Howl." Graham decided after a moment. It had been a long time since he'd been called that and never in the language of men. It had been growled at him in so many different ways by so many different wolves but no human had ever known that name.
Why the hell was he telling her?
"Strange Howl?" She finally –finally- looked up at him.
Graham shrugged and tilted his head. Thinking on how to explain.
"Wolves don't gain their names until they're grown. Until they've become what they are to be…I was named Strange Howl because my voice changed when I hit puberty and because I learned to speak…human." Graham's mouth twisted in something like a smile.
Regina reclined back into the chair and rubbed absently at her chest thought the expression on her face was contemplative.
"I wonder what my name would have been?" She spoke mostly to herself and then seemed to realise what she had said and what it had left her open to. Her eyes darted to his, wide and wary, waiting for the insult.
"I don't know." Graham shrugged. Not rising to the bait. "It takes a pack to name a wolf. There are no wolves in Storybrooke to ask. No regular wolves anyway. Night Guide is gone…maybe he could have told you."
"I…" Regina bit her tongue and then looked away from him.
She rubbed harder at her chest, deliberately pressing on the stitches until they stung. He reached out and yanked her hand away. She turned to him with a snarl pressing up behind her teeth and he silenced it with a single flashing look.
"If you pull them, you're going back." He softened when she looked away from him again.
She was trapped, stuck in this room, this town, this awful situation, with him and escaping his eye contact was the only freedom she now had. He let her have it. For now.
He knew well the agony of imprisonment when all you desired was freedom. She had been his jailor, she had held him captive for so long…but at least she knew how it felt. She had been trapped long before he'd ever known the crush of a cage. Even if he hadn't been able to see it and the cage itself had often been her arms about him in a bed.
This would all be so much easier if she was enough of a stranger to him so that he could hate her.
"Tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"What you were going to say."
She was mulishly silent for long moments and then shook her head sharply.
"No point." Her hand turned in his and it was only then he realised he was still holding onto it.
"I think I should decide that."
Her jaw clenched and he felt the buck in her at that. The flash of anger, rage, at being reminded that he owned her.
"Tell me, Regina."
Her fingers curled into his palm, dragging her nails over his skin in a subtle reminder that she could and had torn into him if she wanted to.
"Night Guide is your wolf? The one with the red eye?"
"He was."
Regina still refused to meet his gaze and the words were dragged from her against her better judgement.
"He's not dead." She looked down at their hands, held together by his deceptively gentle grip. She knew if he were to squeeze, he could pulverise every single bone in her hand. It was a terrifying mystery to her as to why he had not. Why wouldn't he if given the chance?
She had hurt him. Every day, every night, for decades she had hurt him. Why wasn't he tearing her to shreds? Why had he saved her life? Why really?
"You told me…"
"Yes, I know, that I'd made a dress of him. A dress I had you remove with your teeth. I lied. He still lives. Rather, I didn't kill him in the Enchanted Forest." Regina stared into nothing for long moments.
"I saw him." Graham frowned and thought it over. Had he really?
"Here?" Regina straightened a little, a frown pulling at her. "Recently?"
"When I was beginning to realise something was wrong with me, that my heart wasn't where it should be, I saw him. He led me to your vault."
Regina sat back in her chair with a thump and stared at nothing for a long moment.
"Interesting." She finally settled on.
"Fascinating." Graham deadpanned. "Help me find him."
Her eyes skated to his.
"You must have done something to keep us apart. He wouldn't leave me to suffer you unless he had to. So undo that piece of magic. Help me find my brother."
She was frowning at him.
"What?"
"I…didn't do anything." Regina slowly shook her head. "I didn't send him away from you in the first place, I assumed that you had banished him so that I wouldn't kill him. Fortunate considering that I would have if I could."
"No. He disappeared and then you told me that you'd killed him. Made that dress out of him."
"Yes, but I wasn't the one to make him disappear."
"You're lying." Graham scowled at her even though he knew she wasn't.
"What reason have I to lie about this?"
"You don't want me to find him. You don't want him to help me break the curse."
"Graham, how can a wolf break this curse?"
"He can see through it in the least." Graham leaned closer to her, his teeth bared. "Sense when it's weak in someone, like it was in me."
"All animals can see through the curse." Regina huffed out a sigh. "Go to the animal shelter and pick one, it will help you just as much. That is to say, not at all. Animals can't break curses. They don't understand them. To hate is a human thing."
"Well, that's true." Graham murmured and subsided a little. She was telling the truth but the information was perhaps not as useless as she thought it was. "Do you…you can understand animals, can't you?"
Regina watched him for a long moment and he knew then that he was right.
"You can. You can speak their languages."
Regina looked away from him.
"So…were I to pick an animal from the shelter, you could teach me how to talk to it."
"Why on earth would I do that?"
"This curse is going to break, Regina. One way or another. Curses are made to be broken. You can either live through it with me as an ally or as another enemy."
Regina's jaw clenched and she looked away from him once more.
"Think about it; if we go back to the Enchanted Forest when this all comes crashing down and you're weakened by whatever has to happen to break this curse, don't you want someone on your side to protect your boy?"
Regina inhaled deeply and closed her eyes when it stung. She let out the breath on a slow sigh.
"My name held as much fear as yours did. People would think thrice before risking my wrath to hurt Henry and no one could hide him in the forest better than I."
Regina still refused to speak and shifted uncomfortably in her chair instead. Graham waited her out. She was weakening, he could tell.
Henry was her greatest weakness. She'd break when it came to the boy. Every time. Proof enough that she had changed, he thought.
She could and had killed anyone that she had thought was a threat to her. Her own mother even. Not that Graham could muster much sympathy for the hateful bitch, he'd have killed her himself had his queen but given him the freedom to do so, but it spoke to a ruthless pragmatism in Regina that seemed to have faded. Not disappeared –she had been prepared to kill Graham just last week for betraying her, for hurting her- but it was definitely dying out. She hadn't been able to kill him, after all.
"What use would you be?" She finally murmured. "You said yourself that you won't kill for me anymore. I'm supposed to believe that Henry would be safe with a guard that won't permanently take care of threats to him?"
"I said I wouldn't murder for you." Graham nodded. "I did not say that I could no longer kill. If someone comes for Henry…I'll make a gift of their skin to you."
Regina's eyes flashed to his and he saw the glint of something wicked and dangerous smoulder deep in her black eyes. She blinked at it was gone. She shifted uncomfortably and tried in vain to find some way to sit that didn't make her ache.
"Your word." She decided after a moment. "Swear to me that you would protect him with your life. Swear to me that you'd defend him as fiercely as you would your own kin. Swear to me that you would die for him because I'll settle for nothing less."
"Regina," Graham waited until he had her complete attention, "I swear to you that I shall protect Henry with all of my power. If my life must be lain down so he can survive, it shall be done. He shall be as a son to me. None shall harm him whilst I roam this –or any other- world. On my blood and my bones, on my heart, I swear this to you."
She watched him with raptor intensity and blinked slowly. She finally nodded and sat back in her chair with a slight grimace of discomfort.
"Don't pick a bird." Regina finally relented. "Birds have forever been Snow's servants."
"Good." Graham straightened, clapping his hands down on his knees to snap the pall of tension that had settled over them with their serious words. "Now, come here, you're in pain."
Regina squeaked when he spanned her slim waist with his hands, lifting and turning her so she could sit on his lap.
"Graham!"
"Hush." He told her firmly and wheeled them back behind his desk with a kick of his foot.
He wound his arm around her waist to keep her in place and settled his hand deliberately over her wound. His palm covered the bandaging over her sternum, his fingers brushing the underside of one of her breasts and his thumb nestled between both of them. With a gentle tug, he pulled her back against his chest and she hissed out a breath.
Of relief he was sure. She now no longer had to hold herself up and the furnace like heat that he threw off could now seep through her dress to soothe the aching of her chest.
"Let me go."
"No."
"Graham…"
"What? The last time you wore this dress I remember you being quite insistent about me being as close as possible." He flipped open another file and lifted his pen. It was a good thing he was ambidextrous, his usual writing hand was currently occupied with keeping a queen in her new seat.
"That was different." She growled.
"I agree. There's no danger of us being seen here." Graham sat forward so as to better see the file he was supposed to be completing. Something about parking tickets. He rested his chin on her shoulder and listened to her breath catch. "I told you that I remembered everything now."
"Every…thing?"
"Oh yes." Graham chuckled and scribbled some annotations into the relevant spaces in the paperwork.
He did hope she didn't look too closely. It was absolute bollocks. He was really more focussed with the way she shifted on his lap and the heat he could see rising in her cheeks. It always amazed him that he could make her flush. She was so carnal, so hungry, that he should have thought she was well past blushing but he could make her do it.
"I remember the fireworks, the lasagne sandwich you lured me in with, the hipflask of cider that was kept in a distinctly more intimate location than your hip and –of course- the way you had me take you right there on the bandstand where anyone could have seen us had they just looked. This damn skirt," Graham dropped his pen in favour of gripping her skirts and scrunching them in his fist with an audible sound, "rustling the whole time."
"Oh." Regina gripped the edge of the desk, her knuckles going white.
"I confess that I always thought they were knots, as in 'and crosses', but I can see how O's might be more fitting."
"What?"
"Your little rating system." Graham reached out and shunted the ink blotter on his desk aside to reveal the little carving there in the desk; 2.3.88 OOOC. "Only three and a half? If I recall correctly, that little escapade made you scream so loud someone thought I was killing you."
"That was the one in the cells, actually." Regina closed her eyes when she realised she'd fallen into his trap and acknowledged his game. She ground her teeth. Damn it.
"Oh, aye, that's right. When I hung you by your wrists and that comely blue scarf of yours from the bars then took you so hard against them you looked like someone had tried to griddle you." His lips brushed her ear as he rumbled the words into it. She shivered.
"Beast." She growled at him, trying not to squirm.
"That's not what you said at the time. It was really something much more like 'again, make me come again, Graham'. You'd just finished screaming that when Hopper walked in."
"That was some fast talking on your part." Regina smirked. Having everyone stupefied by a curse had its advantages.
She still had no idea what Graham had said to Hopper to get rid of him, but he had managed to convince the cricket that everything was fine –even if the Mayor was hanging naked from the bars of one of the cells.
"I was scared as hell, thinking we were about to get caught. Not all of us were in on the joke, after all. I didn't know that Hopper was going to forget by the next day." Graham's teeth raked her neck and she shivered again.
"You certainly didn't seem scared when you took me down from the bars, bent me over that filthy little cot and fucked me until I blacked out." Two could play at the torment game and it wasn't entirely involuntary that Regina let her legs part so she straddled his thigh. The muscles of his leg tight with tension and like corded steel bunching under the material of his pants.
He growled in her ear and his hold tightened around her. She gasped jostled from her perch on his leg and tilting suddenly. Her hand flew out to steady herself and landed squarely between his legs and over the iron bar of his cock. Her body turned, ignoring the pain of stretching stitches, her head tilted to his and they both flinched when a bright flash of light seared their retinas.
"What the…?!" Graham blinked rapidly, tugging Regina flush against his chest again, half turning the chair as if to shield her from whatever threatened her. "Sidney." He snarled.
"Sheriff Humbert." Sidney stood in the doorway of the office, his camera still half raised. He smirked in that shit-eating manner of journalists. The gleam of a front page scoop in his eyes. "Madam Mayor, glad to see you recovering."
"Get out." Graham's voice was flat, no trace of a smile on his lips.
"I mean no harm." Sidney let his camera hang from its strap around his neck. "I'm here as a civic service. People are worried about their mayor. I'm merely trying to show that she's alive, well and…in good hands."
"Sidney," Regina recovered herself and pasted a smile on her face, her voice was low and intimate, the best one for getting what she wanted where Sidney was concerned, "there's really no need…"
"For pet journalists to be sniffing around." Graham rumbled.
He reached to his belt and unclipped the holster of his gun, clapping the Magnum .357 onto the table with a heavy clunk. His thumb 'accidentally' flipping the safety off. If his finger happened to accidentally squeeze the trigger –even whilst the gun was still in its holster- it was likely that the resulting hole in certain cameras would carry right on through to the journalist behind them and probably the wall beyond.
"Graham!" Regina seethed, she was handling this. She always handled Sidney. He was a pain in the ass, a sycophant of the highest order, but he had his uses.
"And the Sheriff is one to be casting aspersions about being on the Mayor Office's leash?" Sidney's jaw clenched, anger flushing his cheeks.
Graham surged to his feet so quickly that Regina would have been sent flying had she not been pinned in place by Graham's arm about her waist.
That was more than enough for Sidney who blanched and made a break for the door.
Graham gave a low growl but subsided down into his chair again, pulling Regina with him so she sat on his lap once more. He rubbed absently at her front, soothing her wound even as he scowled after the journalist.
She was not so easily soothed.
"What the hell was that?!"
"A frank and earnest exchange of ideas." Graham rumbled, still frowning at the doors swinging closed in the wake of Sidney's departure.
"An exchange that shall be printed in tomorrow's newspaper verbatim because you wouldn't let me handle it."
"Handle him you mean." Graham didn't look away from his watch of the doors and Regina resisted the urge to slap him.
"Yes, handle him. It's part of my job. Do you have any idea what I'm going to have to do to get him to 'lose' that photograph?"
Regina rocked back from him when his gaze suddenly thudded into hers. He looked at her in a particularly heavy manner. His head tilted to the side and his voice was deceptively mild.
"Do tell." The heel of his hand slid lower over the front of her body, pressing firmly below her navel. "What does the good little servant think he can get from you with his pictures?"
"Nothing that you got, certainly." Her breath caught and she tried to ignore it. "It involves pandering to him. A tiring activity I can do without. Congratulations, in protecting my delicate sensibilities you've made my life more difficult."
"I wasn't protecting you." Graham's fingers tapped against her stomach, the heat of his hand burning at her through the material of her dress. "I was marking territory."
Regina's mouth opened to issue some kind of blistering retort he was sure, but he wasn't interested.
"Save it. You made sure everyone knew I belonged to you, now I'm returning the favour."
"You have no idea the can of worms you've just opened! The hoops I'll have to jump through at the town council meetings now. Every single meeting I've got for the foreseeable future just became about you and I."
"Good."
"Good?!"
"I think it's time you admitted to everyone whose name it is you scream at night."
"You just said that everyone already knows!" Regina hissed at him.
"And now they're going to hear you admit it." Graham grinned, lazily looking her up and down. Her chest heaved so prettily when she was angry.
"This world has rules about that kind of thing being public knowledge. I could be voted out of office, you could be fired."
"Good." Graham's smirk didn't falter.
"In what way is that 'good'?!" Regina growled.
"Why should I care about this job? I never wanted it in the first place. What do I care about your job? The curse is going to break and –pretty soon- Storybrooke will be nothing but a hazy memory. Your entire world is falling down, pet, I'm going to be the only thing left standing from it." Graham stood again, lifting her up to sit on the desk. He loomed over her, his hands planted on either side of her thighs, caging her in his arms. There was nowhere to go when he dipped his head and nuzzled against her neck. He greedily inhaled her scent. "You'd best hold on and think of reasons for me to keep you around after I'm done with you."
"If the curse breaks and we're back in the Enchanted Forest, I'll have magic again. I'll be far from defenceless." Her breath hitched a little but she sounded strong for the most part. She thought.
"Against me, defenceless is exactly what you'll be." Graham's teeth grazed her neck again and Regina huffed out a breath. This was ridiculous, this hold he had on her.
"And what makes you think that?" Regina clung to her anger, slippery though it was under the assault of his lips ghosting over her skin.
"Simple, you said it yourself; love is weakness."
"I do NOT love…"
"I told you." Graham turned his head and bit down sharply on her neck, just for a second, but his teeth closed over the major blood vessels in her throat and robbed her of their circulation for just a moment. Her world hazed for a moment and her pulse thundered in her ears. Heat pooled low in her belly.
She was in trouble, so much trouble, and his next words only crystallised that certainty.
"I remember everything." He nipped her chin with his teeth again in that almost affectionate little bite. "You told me you loved me, that night. In your way, you said, you love me. From these very lips, those words spilled, the same lips that have told a thousand lies but that…even you wouldn't lie about that."
"I might."
He laughed at her.
"Aye, you might," he nipped at her lying lips as well and she very nearly whimpered, "but you didn't."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I know you, pet, know you better than anyone alive. You used to kill that which made you weak. Used to murder those that you knew could use your love against you."
"How do you know I still wouldn't?" She growled at him, mustering anger from somewhere.
"Because of Henry."
All the air left her on a whoosh.
"You love him and he loves you and you'd die before you hurt him…and me. You died before you'd hurt me again. You died to free me."
"What?" Her eyes were wide, her chest heaving. No, she couldn't have. She hadn't. No.
"Your heart stopped, pet. That night. I got it going again, but it stopped. You died. For a handful of seconds. You died for me."
"That's…it means nothing." Regina gulped hard.
No. Not that. Anything but that. God, she couldn't even remember the whole passage from the book. What the hell book had it been? Had she brought it with her?
Why would she have done? It's not like she'd ever thought she'd have need for knowledge of that kind of magic.
"No, pet, it means everything." Graham leaned in even closer and whispered the last in her ear.
"It means I really do own you."