Author's Note: The very beginning may skirt the line a bit between ratings T and M. Cover your eyes and skip a paragraph if you're not of the M persuasion.

This isn't what she came here for.

When she'd walked up to Robin in the woods tonight, she hadn't meant for it to end with her shirt unbuttoned to the waist, her bra pushed askew by his seeking hands. She hadn't meant for him to be rolling her nipples between strong fingers, hadn't meant to have his leg wedged firmly between hers, his erection pressed to her hip, his mouth hot against her own.

She'd come here because her mother had managed to once again make her feel used, inhuman, like a pawn in an endless game of chess. Except all the pieces were real, broken bodies and ruined hearts piling up beside the board with every murderous manipulation Cora had set into motion. And so many at Regina's own hands.

She'd come here because she'd been told not once but twice in recent hours that she needs to kick out whatever road blocks are keeping her from living her life and finding her happiness and she knows - she was led by pixie dust and prophecy all those years ago - that the man with the lion tattoo is the key to picking up the shambles life - no, not life. Cora - has left her heart in.

She'd come because he didn't think she was Evil-with-a-capital-E, despite her reputation for mayhem and misery. Because he could stand in the face of her rebuffing and refusal, and still insist she wanted to talk about her problems. And because he was right.

She'd come here to talk to him. To tell him how cheated she felt, to tell him that her own mother had played a hell of a long game, orchestrating years of twisted punishments as payment for the raw hand she felt she'd been dealt. How she'd married the man her mother - her mother - had been engaged to and lost, without a word to her about the weight of their past. She'd come here to find out what he'd say to ease her mind. She'd come here just to hear his voice, the cadence and the lilt of it.

But then she'd stood there in front of him, all those acrid words on her tongue and suddenly she hadn't wanted to talk. She'd just wanted to drown. To forget every awful thing she'd learned that night, and every awful thing she'd ever done, and for just a few minutes be free.

So she'd kissed him. Pressed her mouth to his without so much as a preamble and hoped against hope that he was as interested in her as he seemed. And then he'd kissed her back, and all she could think of was the taste of his mouth, the scratch of his beard against her chin, the way his hands had tangled into her hair.

As she yanks at the fastenings of his pants and shoves them down his hips, his own hands working just as eagerly to free her, she thinks to herself:

It's not what she came here for, but it sure as hell isn't bad.