DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and its characters are the property of NBC and Dick Wolf.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Something that wouldn't leave my head during NaNo. Similar to 'Own Me', but not a direct sequel or prequel.
SPOILERS: Takes place in an AU-ish season 2-5. In my world, they live happily ever after.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To raedmagdon[at]yahoo.com
Mistake
By Rae D. Magdon
The first time it happened was a mistake.
I still don't know how she did it. Most of the time, I'm a rational person. But I'm helpless against that angelic expression she gets on her pretty face. Not everyone knows that Alex Cabot can look angelic. It's not a look she wears often. But when her hands, soft and graceful and white like a bird's wings, urge my thighs apart and she dips her head, eyes lowered, her bottom lip full with just a sheen of wetness along its curve, I swear she really does look that way. It makes no sense. Purity in sex or something – if you can even call it sex when you only have half of the equation.
An unsolvable math problem. That's Alex Cabot.
I have no idea why she started it. Maybe she woke up one day and decided, "this week, I'm going to seduce Olivia Benson, just to see if I can get away with one more impossible task." So she went and did it.
It was quick and brutal, cutting me off at the knees, but also cold and calculating. Her usual style. The woman knows how to carry herself. She knows she's sex in expensive shoes. So somehow I ended up on the couch in her office, coming against her tongue over and over again until I couldn't even remember my own name. I remembered hers, though. I was screaming it. I decided that I had dreamed it all. There was no way that it, that she, had really happened to me. Just not possible.
We didn't speak to each other for days.
Finally, Elliot told me to grow a pair and go see Cabot for trial prep. He watched me sneaking around her like a nervous cat, but had no clue why. Oh, if only. I tried to get out of it, but he called my bullshit and I had to go. I went to her office, we stared each other down, and then she was unzipping my pants and shoving me back against a wall. So it happened again.
And again.
I started to realize something. Alex Cabot was like a junkie that needed her fix. She enjoyed this. If she had left it at the one time, maybe I would have edited the memories in my brain. It's remarkable how far the mind will go to make sense of things. I figured I was crazy. Imagining things. Not enough sleep. Brain cancer. Incredibly early menopause, complete with freaky hormone changes. All of that was easier to believe than the notion that Alex Cabot enjoyed servicing a confused female detective.
But she kept doing it. Several times a week. So either I was all kinds of loony tunes, or everything that happened was real.
We didn't talk about our feelings. We didn't even talk about STDs. I guess she assumed that I was smart enough to get tested regularly, being a sex crimes detective, and I guess I assumed the same about her. Not that I was seeing anyone. Hadn't been for a long time. Most of my relationships, sexual or otherwise, ended in disaster. Part of me hoped she wasn't, either, but I had no right to judge. No claim on her. I tried not to let that bother me.
When she was between my legs, she went into some other universe. Even though I was the one receiving physical gratification, she was the one begging –
pleading, really – for more. Not with her words, she was subtler than that, but with her eyes. Her mouth. If I pulled her away, she looked up at me with a plaintive expression on her face, like a little kid that dropped their ice cream on the sidewalk. I had a hell of a time getting her to stop. I wasn't sure whether she had seduced me and twisted me around her pretty little finger, whether I had intoxicated her to the point where she lost all self-control, or whether we had ensnared each other, because both of us seemed pretty helpless to stop our destructive little ritual.
Until...
It was two o'clock in the morning and I was wired. Head whipping around, pacing back and forth like some kind of caged animal. It had been a bad case. There was the guilt, and the regret, and the sorrow that burned in my throat like a strong drink. I felt heavy, weighted down, but energized at the same time, fighting against the ugly feelings were crushing me on the inside.
Elliot knew better than to try and cross me when I was in this kind of mood. For once, he backed off, leaving me to burn through my rage on my own. He had been gone since midnight, back home to his wife where he should have been in the first place. Good. That was good. I didn't want his pity.
I shoved my fingers through my hair – roughly, mostly because I wanted to do something with my hands besides throw a chair. Usually, the ugly ones just made me depressed, not furious. But if you work with violence, sometimes it creeps up on you. The anger starts to simmer, the pressure builds up until you want to scream at the sky.
But there wasn't a sky over my head. Just humming, flickering fluorescent lighting that I had mostly switched off. I was the only one left at the precinct.
And then she came in.
When I heard the click of her heels, it made me angry. She had no right to be here. This was our turf, not hers. She was an intruder, not just to the abandoned bullpen, but also to my private rage. I felt threatened.
"Why are you here?" I said before I really saw her. I knew who it was. I couldn't smell her – yet; her perfume was never overpowering, only just enough to be noticeable when she leaned close – but I could sense her.
"Because you need someone." Alex leaned in the entryway, arm propped against the doorframe. She was still wearing her power suit and heels, unwrinkled of course, and her makeup still seemed fresh, but her eyes looked just as tired and strained as mine.
Something in her expression changed. "You. You need to relax. Let go." She stepped around the desk and took the arm of my chair, forcing it to turn, legs scraping across the floor. I was so surprised that I lifted my weight enough to let her even though I had no idea what she was doing. I stared at her in complete shock as she knelt before me, gripping my wrists to hold them down.
"Alex, what the hell are you doing?" I had stopped questioning the way she consumed me, drank her fill of me until I had nothing left to give her, but usually, it was behind locked doors. There was no one here, but still.
She leaned in, resting her cheek against my thigh, and stared up at me, stroking my knee through the fabric of my pants. Then she started undoing them.
I gasped. "Alex, you can't..." Dimly, some part of my brain realized that this was totally inappropriate, but I did nothing to stop her.
Before I could say anything else, her fingers hooked in the waistband of my slacks and pulled them down. I tried to move away, but she glared at me disapprovingly and adjusted her grip. No you don't, she said with her raised eyebrows, daring me to stop her. Holding my wrists firmly, she leaned down and, without a moment's hesitation, gave me a long, firm lick directly through the fabric of my panties. Now, just being near a woman as gorgeous as Alex Cabot was usually enough to make my body react, even before we started this little game of ours. But with her head between my legs and – fuck – those glasses, and those pretty eyes and perfect lips and soft pink tongue running over me... I couldn't help it. My thighs parted for her, head tipping back, wetness pooling between my legs, lips parted and swollen for her – both sets, whichever she decided to pay attention to. I almost wanted her to kiss me on the mouth, just because she had never done that before... and maybe for reasons I was not ready to admit.
I blossomed open under her tongue, which curled in just the right spot. Her warm breath washed over me.
"Alex, please." I wasn't sure whether I was begging her to stop or to keep going.
I gasped and lost all of my words when her clever tongue found me, lashing through the material, sending my body reeling with deep shudders. Taking advantage of my distraction, she pulled my panties out of the way and buried her tongue inside me, full-stop.
And, God – I could feel... everything. The sweet, silky velvet of her mouth, the soft cry that vibrated against me before stroking harder, deeper, with the flat of her tongue. "It's okay," she pulled away just long enough to whisper. So unfair. She didn't even give me a chance to respond before letting her tongue flutter, knowing exactly how good it felt – how good she felt. My protests were lost in a choked sob.
I chanced a look down at her. It was a mistake. She was so beautiful, I could have cried.
Her tongue slowed down, covering me with gentle, luxurious swipes. I shuddered again, reaching one of my hands down to caress her cheek. I exhaled raggedly, my arousal throbbing within me as her tongue pressed harder, swirling lightly and then dipping just inside of me, pausing to savor the moment, my taste, something she liked. My body melted. All thoughts of resistance were long gone. I was reduced to shaking breaths and little gasps of pleasure.
Alex would do this forever, if I let her – but she read the signals my body was giving. The angst, the hopelessness, the despair, all of it was fizzling out, replaced by a rising wave of desire and need. When it broke over me, I would be completely devastated. She left my opening and moved higher, swirling her tongue over me, slowly at first before taking the little bead into her mouth and lashing the tip faster and faster. I couldn't keep my hips on the chair.
She knew exactly how to touch me. If she was feeling playful, she could drag it out and make me suffer for what felt like days. But if she wanted me to come, I was gone in a matter of seconds. She had total control.
And so when she introduced two fingers, taking me with a quick upward jab, adding a curl at the end of her thrust that made stars explode from the back of my head, I fell. And not just into ecstasy.
Maybe my orgasm somehow tipped the swirling cloud of emotions I held for her over into love.
Maybe I had been in love with her all along.
Maybe we were soul-mates, destined to find each other.
Maybe we were just two imperfect people in a fucked up world, trying to find something that mattered.
I clung to her shoulders, probably hard enough to leave bruises from the tightness of my grip, but decided not to let go. Which was fine, because Alex wasn't stopping. I love you, you know, I thought, which made me feel a little open, a little raw, but I was used to it. The feelings, anyway, if not the words. They didn't upset me until I heard the echo of them in my ears and realized that they had escaped.
For a moment, both of us froze, her fingers still buried inside me and her lips still wrapped around me. I expected Alex to get up. Run away. Say something. Anything. But she trembled. Sighed. Then, she resumed her task with a fervor I was not expecting.
Another explosion of stars and wild colors. Oh, Alex. Sweetie. Something had just gone horribly right.
Before she completely destroyed me, I forced her head away, trying to stand up and nearly falling on top of her. Alex squeaked in surprise, throwing out her hands to keep me from collapsing, and between her support and the desk, I managed to stay mostly upright.
"Olivia! Are you crazy?" she snapped, glaring at me, but the filmy haze of lust had not cleared from her blue eyes and she tried to lean back in for another swipe of her tongue even though I was standing.
"I'm crazy in love with you," I told her. Sometimes, really rotten days can turn around in a heartbeat. Anger becoming love becoming courage. I had not imagined Alex's reaction to my words. I knew she had heard them. And they had tugged at the strings of her heart.
I dropped to my knees beside her, tracing her bottom lip with my thumb. She pressed a kiss to the pad of my finger, but then moved my hand aside and leaned in for – my throat closed off nervously and my head swam crazily as her face came closer and closer –
Our first kiss tasted like Alex and me together and it was perfect and I never wanted it to end.
"You." Kiss. "Are amazing." Kiss. "And." Kiss. "I love you." Kiss kiss.
We were still kissing when my hand crept under her skirt, feeling her for the first time as my fingertips grazed the wet fabric of her underwear. I had expected to feel something, but I could not hold back a surprised gasp. Okay, Alex enjoyed making me – um – enjoy myself.
"Sometimes," she confessed shyly, "I have to kick you out so I can... take care of..."
Crowded thoughts swirled around in my head after that little revelation. Well, that explained a lot of painful afternoons spent wondering why she had been going down on me one minute and shoving me out of her office with paperwork the next.
"Other times, I just–" Her breath caught, voice breaking as I pushed the soaked material aside to explore her folds for the first time.
"Without me even touching you?"
"Mmm. You underestimate how sexy it makes me feel when you come in my mouth."
"Inside?"
"Yes."
But first, I had to hear the words. I knew already, but needed more. Reassurance that I wasn't alone in this. "Love me?"
"Always."
She was tight. Clinging heat. So perfect. The most wonderful...
In between images of Alex, the two of us kneeling together, kissing again, I saw flashes of something else. Some were memories. Memories of how she walked, how she looked at me, things she had said, the way she touched me. Some were glimpses of a future I wanted to have. I wanted the dog and the brownstone and all the things I never thought I would be able to have. And I wanted them with Alex.
Realizing that I did not want to miss another moment of my first time making love with Alex – our first reciprocal time, anyway – I pressed pause on those thoughts, relieved to find that my body had been pleasing her while my brain was checked out. Apparently, it knew what to do even though I had never done this before. My thumb grazed across her hard, slick bundle and she hissed at the direct pressure.
Thin but strong fingers tangled in my hair, her mouth crushing against mine as her pelvis jerked wildly, coating my hand in wetness past the wrist. I had never felt anything so perfect before in my life. This time, it was her knees that almost gave out. I looped my free arm under her shoulders and held her up until she caught her breath, which was still coming in quick, shallow pants.
Eventually, we gave up on kneeling and just tilted back onto the floor, bare patches of skin sticking to each other where our clothes had been half-removed and my hand still between her legs. We stared at the ceiling, then each other. "I'm so fired," Alex said.
That was the last thing I expected her to say, and the remark stung slightly. I had just touched her for the first time, and she was worried about her job? "I think it's a little late for that," I said flatly. It had been too late weeks ago. If anyone had found out about the strange version of tongue lashing that I had received from our sometimes-cruel ADA...
She laughed, and the sound was joyful, a contrast to my sudden uncertainty. "Well, maybe not fired. A transfer at least."
"A transfer? Why?"
Hard kiss, tongues sliding. "If you think I'm giving you up after that, Olivia Benson, you must be crazy." Soft kiss against the corner of my mouth. I was silent for a long moment. I felt the line of Alex's body stiffen over mine. "What are you thinking about?"
"I shouldn't say," I mumbled, blushing to the roots of my hair. I hoped it was too dark for her to notice, but the lights were still on. Busted.
"Olivia, you can tell me anything." I suddenly realized how much Alex had risked by pursuing me and just how serious she was. The comments about her job took on an entirely new life. She had not even considered asking me to quit. She knew I lived the job. She had offered to transfer, which I knew would break her heart. It wasn't just a dry witticism. It was a hell of a commitment. I knew how much she enjoyed being our ADA. Maybe we could keep her for a little while longer – I would have to read up on policy and talk to a few people.
So I jumped in with both feet.
"I was thinking," I said slowly, feeling out the words with my mouth, "about West 47th street." When it was out, I felt relieved and knew it had not been a mistake.
Alex gasped. I felt rather than heard a nervous swallow. Slick inner walls even quivered around my fingers, which were still embedded in liquid heat. "I like Cartier and Harry Winston," she revealed, still cautious.
I reassured her with a kiss. Thought about getting up off the uncomfortable floor. Decided we could risk another minute. Maybe the first time wasn't a mistake after all.
The End