Inbox -- Genessia

[fondofapples]

Regina Mills
Queen Mayor Mother
Sorceress
Fond of Plants

"You've reached the inbox of Regina Mills. Leave a message. If it's urgent, it's probably too late."

(text, voice, video, action, ooc planning if necessary for Genessia only)

Comments

[hellorhighwater]

The moment the words left his mouth and Neil saw her expression fracture, Neil regretted opening his mouth. He didn't care that he might have killed the mood, he cared that some of that light left her eyes, that resigned little shake of her head...

Before it fell to tuck against his chest.

Neil's arms immediately slid around her, one smoothing over her bare back while the other slid fingers through her hair, stroked the soft wisps at her temple, traced idle patterns on her shoulderblade--spirals and figure eights and the occasional rune of protection with no touch of magic...just the desire, the will to keep her safe from all of the heartache she'd ever suffered.

There was that tension in the air--something heavy, hot, a dam about to burst--but it never did. She let him hold her, fingers mapping his chest, breath warm and soft with every exhale across his skin. When she finally did speak, her voice was quiet and steady, sure enough to make his heart stop with something heavier than hope, warmer than the promise she wouldn't let herself make.

Ember hear me--protect this woman if I can't, save her from me if I fall to your father's fury.

Staring up at the ceiling, he offered up the prayer in silence. It added more weight, stoked that warmth--soothed his soul with the belief that his prayer had been heard.

"Sounds like you just made one you can keep." he observed, tipping his head a little to look down at her with a promise of a smile. "I'd say that's as good a place as any to start, wouldn't you?"

[fondofapples]

What was he thinking while she fell quiet, took her time to come back to this place, here and now, with him? He hadn't left her, she didn't think, not from the way his fingers wrote patterns and what felt like runes across her back, not from how alert he'd been to her speaking and how promptly he responded.

Slowly recovering herself, she rubbed her cheek against his chest, and then folded her arms and rested her chin atop them. She offering him a quixotic half-smile as she let one of her legs fall to the outside of his in a minimalistic caress. "Taking this slow would be a lot easier if you weren't so kind on top of being sex on legs. One of the other, I could handle. Both is problem."

They were just words. Stupid words. But she had no practice at this kind of intimacy, or finding her way back to where they were without feeling like an insatiable, traitorous slut or worse. This was the first time any of it had ever mattered.

[hellorhighwater]

There she was--back on her version of stable ground. He'd noticed that much, how she'd sometimes flirt if he got too close, too deep, hit a nerve--especially in the right way. He had no idea what he was doing any other time--he'd never been with a woman he didn't pay for, a woman he wanted to keep, and who wanted him in return.

So he went with what had worked before and let himself laugh a little, his hand sliding from her hair to let his fingers trail over her cheek, thumb caressing the curve of her lower lip.

"Me? Have you met yourself?" he chuckled. "Body to kill for, heart as big as the sky--classiest person I've ever met...I literally have no idea what to do with a woman this good, I just know that I'm gonna keep tryin' until I figure it out."

His smile warmed with something he couldn't let himself name, something that made his chest tight and his heart race, the way it did before he was about to win a fight or finish a kill.

"And I'm not gonna stop. Not for a goddamn thing."

I've been yours since the word 'YOU' / what's a first time?

[fondofapples]

If it wouldn't lead her right back down the rabbit hole, Regina might have asked him why and how he was so sure she was what he wanted. But it would, so instead, she let herself sink back into the other pleasures of being with him.

Her head tilted into the gentle trace of his fingers against her cheek, pulled inexorably by that unnameable combination of sweetness, serenity, and sensuality, that felt like turning her face to the sun or inhaling with her arms wrapped around a horse's neck, or even hugging Henry on those days when he wasn't too old or too upset to lean in and hug her back. Something about that particular caress conveyed the safety to let down her guard and just feel for a little while. A waking space between sleep and dream, summoned in a heartbeat.

It didn't matter that Neil's thumb had found her mouth, begun to suggest an entirely different set of feelings. But even as the urge grew to taste his skin, roll her tongue around the tip of his thumb or maybe nip at it, that sweet summer warmth only grew stronger, offering a quiet bliss that could as easily be sleep as sex.

She tipped forward over her folded forearms to kiss him again, drawing that soft, certain contentment into herself and pouring it into the press of her lips to his, the slow glide of her tongue against his, the quiet exchange of breath and the eventual unfolding of one arm to stroke through the tousled mess of his hair.

There were a lot of things she might have said in that moment when her gaze finally meshed with his again. Playful responses to playful compliments. Rejoinders about her being anything but 'good', some more playful than others. But in the moment, the only thing she wanted to respond to was his promise that he wasn't going to stop (and it was a promise, that was just how he was).

So she chased another kiss, quick and sweet, and spoke her heart's desire of the moment in just two words: "Please don't." Don't stop. Don't leave me. Please stay.