Nothing's mine; don't sue me

Her abdomen muscles contracted of their own accord as her body writhed under the gentle but confident touch of the other woman's hand. Gasping, she tried to roll onto her side to give herself a brief respite from the electricity that ran through her with each warm, open mouthed kiss strategically placed along the wake of quivering flesh left by her lover's hand.

"Regina," she half groaned, half pleaded, "please." Somewhere along the way her 'please' had gone from a request for forgiveness to a plea for release. "Please, I need… I need…"

"What do you need, Emma?" Pushing up with both hands to hover over the blondes exposed waist, the other woman gave an almost feral grin. "Your pirate?"

"No," the younger woman huffed, trying to catch her breath. "No," she took in a inhalation of air and let it out quickly.

"Then what?" Regina leaned forward, getting close enough to just barely run the tip of her tongue from the cleft of Emma's jaw to just below her ear. "Tell me," she hissed, her voice growling at the end of the demand before blowing lightly along the blonde's ear.

Emma groaned, her back arching for contact while her eyes threatened to roll back. "Sanctuary."

"What?" Regina pulled back, all pretense of seduction completely blown away at the unexpected answer.

"Sanctuary," Emma replied. Gingerly, she pushed back on the bed to place some distance between them, doing her best to maintain some dignity while being almost completely nude. She glanced down at herself, and her eyes caught the sight of her deep green underwear. She blushed, shifting as she suddenly began to feel extremely exposed.

"I'm not a chapel, Swan." The brunette huffed, retreating to the opposite side of her queen sized bed and crossing her arms, not the least bit self-conscious of her complete nudity. "If the only reason you're here is to get away from Scoob and the gang, then…"

"No!" Emma threw her hand out to touch the other woman's arm but stopped short, letting it drop to her lap. "No," she tried again, clearing her throat a few times, "that's not why I'm here, and sanctuary is probably not the right word."

"Then why are you here? Need I remind you that you're the one who walked into my bathroom in nothing but that," Regina motioned toward the green underwear, "while I was taking a bath? That's how all of this began." She sniffed disgustedly. "God, I let my libido get in the way of my good judgement. Hook is your true love. If you want to have a fling, you should make him take a shower, shave, and pretend he's someone else for the night."

Flipping her hair from her face with one hand, Emma pulled a pillow in front of her with other and hugged it. "He is, but maybe he isn't."

Regina rolled her eyes. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"I don't really know. I just know that whenever I'm with him I think about you, and I don't mean I think about you when I'm with him. I mean," the young woman leaned back against the headboard and looked around as she searched for the right words. "I wonder things like would you enjoy this when we go to the park, or what would this be like if you were there when we're laying on the ground looking at the stars. When we're having meals together, I wonder what it would be like if you were there instead of him, and, you know what's crazy?" She waited until the brunette gave a small shake of her head. "I already know most of those answers because, before he got here, you and I did a lot of that stuff, and I realized a couple of months ago that I liked doing those things with you a hell of a lot more than I enjoyed doing those things with him."

Regina snorted. "So, because you don't like going to the fair with guyliner, you think you two aren't true loves anymore?"

"It's more than that." Emma closed her eyes to focus on her words. She'd had such a clear revelation the day before, but now everything was hazy. She needed to get this right. "True love doesn't mean things are easy. There is sacrifice on both sides, and it's not small sacrificing like giving up possession. It's large sacrificing like," she opened her eyes to meet Regina's, "giving someone the life they've always wished they had at the expense of destroying their own happiness or taking on the worst curse imaginable to allow the other person to live the happy life they've earned. It's," she slowly allowed the pillow to slide away from her chest as she spoke, exposing her physically as much as she felt she was exposing herself figuratively, "being willing to share with that other person the one thing in all the world that makes you happy and not being resentful for sharing it. It's trusting the other person with your life, with complete control of everything you are and knowing it's the right choice."

She gave a sappy smile, trying not to cry as she spoke. "It's more than walking around and saying you love someone until the other person gives in, and it's accepting that the other person may have found happiness without you and being happy for them instead of being bitter it's not you because that's a sacrifice, too... being happy for someone else's happiness."

"Killian, he… he's easy." Shrugging, she pushed the pillow to the side and began to slowly work her way across the bed, making certain to keep eye contact with Regina. "He so badly wants to love and be loved in return, and I've come to realize it's because that's his way of proving he's no longer a villain. Villains are cruel and selfish." She stopped just short of actually touching the other woman. "People don't love villains, so, if someone loves him and he can prove that he loves them, then he's not evil, but the thing is he's only not evil when he's in a relationship with me, and I really hate that. That's too much power and too much responsibility. I'd rather a person grow and change because they want to, not because it's the best way to get to me."

This time, when she reached forward, she did take the older woman's hand in her own. "There are a lot of different true loves. If I've learned anything since being sucked into all of this, it's that, and I think that true love can just happen and some true loves find you, but I think, maybe, there's also true love you choose." She leaned forward, pushing into Regina's personal bubble and holding onto the heavy eye contact between them. "I choose you, if you'll have me."

For a long moment, Emma held her breath and waited as she watched the emotions flutter across Regina's face. She didn't take another breath until the other woman began to speak.

"Tomorrow," Regina said in deep, husky voice, "we'll need to discuss the repercussions of all of this." She gestured around them with her free hand. "We literally went to hell and back to get him back for you."

Already, the blonde was beginning to smile despite herself. "I know. It'll be messy."

"It will be disastrous." Regina slowly moved forward to fill the space between them. "Your mother is going to have a fit, we'll have to talk to Henry, and I have no doubt we will have to prove to the entire town that you're not under some kind of spell."

"We can do that, and let's not talk about my parents right now." Emma breathed in deeply, and the smell of the woman in front of her made her head spin. She wanted to touch, to taste. "So, is that a yes?"

"Well," Regina replied with a hint of amusement in her voice, "it's a 'this thing we're about to do is very ill advised,' so I suppose, in a manner of speaking, it's a yes."

They kissed, and, with a light push and a strong hand to guide her, Emma found herself on her back once again with Regina again hovering over her stomach.

"Tell me Em-ma," Regina said with a smirk, "are you a screamer?"

"Not usually," the blonde gasped out as she closed her eyes against the feel of her underwear being slowly pulled from her body.

Regina chuckled darkly. "Well, you will be tonight."