Chapter Text
Ruby, she comes to realise, is a tactile individual.
She touches with reverence, always, whether long fingers are entwining with her own or digging into the flesh of her hips leaving arcs of mottled bruises in their wake. Regina wonders if it’s because of the wolf, wonders what her skin feels like to hands and lips honed to feel so much more.
When soft lips press and linger against the scar above her lip, she puts it down to bad aim. Then a gentle thumb follows, tracking the length of the indent, before warm lips close over the mark once more, and she knows better.
Ruby pulls away from her lips to drag her nose up and across her cheek, hot staccato breaths tickle as she speaks, “What happened?”
Her heart hammers, suddenly heavy in her chest and of course the girl and her maddening superior hearing catch it. Ruby’s hand moves from where it’s tangled with her own and presses against her bare chest.
“An accident as a child.” The thumping beat of her heart doesn’t ease.
She’s lying, they both know it and Regina waits to be confronted, her lie detected.
Instead she’s kissed. Slow and carelessly, perfectly.
Ruby pulls away a fraction, lingering, and Regina feels the quiet “Okay”, uttered against her lips more than she hears it.
Ruby doesn’t press, just shifts to nestle against her collar bone, palm still pressed against a heart that’s finally slowing in pace.
“I love it.”
“You do?”
“Mhmm.”
She wonders if Ruby feels it when her heart swells, warm and happy and loved.