DISCLAIMER: Most characters are not mine, but I'm using them for entertainment and not for profit. The story is my own.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The “Drinks” series of short pieces: limited to fewer than three full pages, written primarily as fragments of conversations, each featuring at least one drink. The stories are completely unrelated, unless otherwise stated and don’t fit in any particular timeline. They also may be unrelated to canon. I just try to keep the characterization true. I hope I’ve succeeded in that.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Drinks Series:
Sangria
By Allie
"White sangria?" Alexandra Cabot looked dubious.
"Mediocre white wine is often better than mediocre red wine and we both know that nobody actually puts good wine into sangria."
"Ok…" Alex was still clearly doubtful.
"Have I steered you wrong so far?" Olivia raised one eyebrow and waited.
"No. The food has been delicious, the atmosphere makes it hard to believe I'm not on the Iberian Peninsula and the service is fantastic."
"You're welcome. Now you can tell your Manhattanite friends that you had dinner in Newark, New Jersey – they'll think it's a risqué and exotic thing to have done."
Alex ignored her. "Why is it called the Ironbound district?"
"Railway lines run along two boundaries." Olivia smiled as their waiter appeared with a frosted pitcher. "Mmm, here's our sangria."
Alex sipped her drink and her blue eyes widened. "Oh my god that is so good."
Olivia smirked. "Tile fish, white sangria, Portuguese barbecue and the arrest of Ian Coleman on six counts of rape, with the full support of the local police. Here's to a great Friday night."
"Cheers." As their glasses touched, Alex noticed that Olivia was distracted. "What is it?"
"She's wearing a collar," Olivia observed, looking surreptitiously at the couple two tables away from them. The woman was wearing a studded dog collar that was visible at the open neckline of her black blouse.
A corner of Alex's mouth twitched. "Shocked, detective?"
"With my job?"
"Is that how you see it? As work-related?"
"Sex, or her submissive role?"
"Either."
Olivia shrugged. "I just meant that there is nothing sexual that can shock me any more, because I've seen every possible way that every permutation of sexuality can be abused – or otherwise go horribly wrong."
"Yet something bothers you. Is it the public aspect of her sexuality?"
Olivia smiled. "I feel as though I'm a defense witness, but no, it's not that, because if he'd been wearing the collar instead of her, it wouldn't bug me. I guess I'm not comfortable with the power imbalance when the woman is the bottom."
"And you believe the bottom has no power in the game?"
"She is being led around by the throat. And that collar looks tight." Olivia shrugged. "Role-playing aside, maybe I just don't understand the whole pain-as-sexual thing."
Olivia's head snapped up as Alex asked quietly, "Do you want to?"
The detective was surprised to feel her blood warm as she looked into the intelligent blue eyes of the woman who sat across from her. Alex Cabot was gorgeous and Olivia had been battling her attraction to the ADA from the first time they'd worked closely together. Apart from the risk of career suicide that would accompany any sexual relationship between them, Olivia had always felt as though there was something dangerous about Alex, something that could threaten her equilibrium. "Yes," she replied honestly.
Alex leaned closer and said, "Intellectually, you first have to accept the allure of surrendering control over your own pleasure and you have to accept that you might not fully understand what form that pleasure might take. It might take the form of something which you hadn't, until the moment it happened, associated with sexual pleasure."
Her heart beating strongly in her chest, Olivia swallowed hard. "Accepted."
Alex observed her closely and then nodded, as though satisfied with Olivia's response. "Now think and answer honestly. Have you ever been in a sexual situation that was so intense you asked for more, even though more of what you were asking for was too much and might just hurt? It can be anything from asking to be fucked harder when you were already sore, holding a position that was uncomfortable or painful because you were concentrating instead on your approaching orgasm, or finding that someone biting you wasn't distracting at all, but somehow just part of the overall feeling of pleasure, even though on its own, you'd describe the sensation as pain."
"Yes." Olivia's voice was hoarse, but she was amazed that she could speak at all, since her mouth was dry and that was more than she could say about her panties. Alex's voice was low and intimate, but casual, as though she were giving a summation to a jury that she'd already won over. But the images she was evoking were immediate and vivid, only the blonde ADA seemed to have replaced all Olivia's original partners in the scenes she was recalling.
"Then you've already grasped the fundamentals of kink," Alex told her with a wicked smile.
"You just described good sex, not kink," Olivia argued.
"Liv, not everybody thinks that intensity which borders on pain is 'good sex'. You do, so you're at the line. You just need the right partner to take you over it."
Olivia looked doubtfully at the woman in the collar, who was waiting for her dining companion to finish his dessert before having hers. "I don't know, Alex…"
"Ok, let's try this. Can you think of me in a sexual way? Because I need to use an example."
Olivia could only nod.
"And would you trust me to keep you safe?"
"Implicitly," Olivia replied as memories of Alex's tenderness towards victims and overall kindness in the context of their friendship, sprang into her mind.
"Then imagine that you're handcuffed to my bed and you're partially clothed – maybe panties or silk shorts and a bra, but with the cups pulled down so that you feel physically vulnerable. But you won't feel afraid, because I'm there and you trust me. And you won't feel embarrassed because you know that it turns me on to see you that way… So you're voluntarily vulnerable because it arouses me and it turns you on to know how aroused you've made me." She tipped her head to the side. "Still with me?"
"Yes, but the scene you're describing can still lead to nothing more than good sex."
"Yes," Alex said with a smug smile, "I think it would."
The two women stared at each other, silently acknowledging that the situation had progressed far beyond any objective explanation. The desire that simmered between them was almost palpable. "Stop distracting me," Olivia growled. "I still don't understand the pain thing."
"Ok," Alex nodded slowly. "I'll have a leather whip… It looks like a cat-o-nine-tails, but the ends are soft, supple so that I can brush it across your body in a caress, or slap it against your body so that it stings. You can't move and it's my choice. Sometimes it will stroke and sometimes it will sting. Sometimes it will make contact with your belly or thighs or arms and sometimes your breasts and your nipples." Olivia felt her body tensing at the images.
"Did you ever notice," Alex asked, "that when you first start foreplay, your nipples feel the slightest touch. But it eventually takes more, a firmer touch to give you the same depth of pleasure?" She waited for Olivia's agreement and then she continued, still speaking in an even voice, "It will work the same way with my whip. As I gently lash you, your entire body will become sensitized, but then you'll find yourself craving the less gentle touch. You'll want me to target your nipples and you'll try to move so that the harder strokes land on your pubis. The problem will be that in order for you to feel the pressure through your panties or your shorts, in order to feel the pleasure of even the slightest pressure against your clit, the lashes on your bare thighs, stomach and breasts will have to be hard enough to be painful."
"Won't I eventually be overcome by the pain and turn away from it, even though there's pleasure?"
"It will be my job to make sure that doesn't happen. You have to trust me to find your threshold." Alex's smile was confident. "That's why the power balance isn't what it seems to be at all. You surrender and for as long as the game is played you're under my control, but you're also no longer responsible for your pleasure: I am."
"What if I can't… climax that way?"
"We'll find other ways to break through the pleasure-pain barrier for you. Get you to that point where you beg to be hurt more because that's the direction in which you know release lies. Back to the concept of harder, deeper, more… even though it hurts, because it just feels so damn good."
"What about your pleasure through all this? I mean, what's in it for you?"
"I was just getting to that…"
Olivia reached out to take a sip of her drink and noticed a fine trembling in her hand. "Alex?"
"Yes?"
"Can we continue this conversation at your apartment?"
Alex's smile was slow and predatory. "Do you like leather?"
The End