A/N: Okay, guys, I think this is the penultimate chapter. I might split the final CH so there's a brief epilogue, but I haven't decided yet. Have to see how it plays out when I'm proofreading. Just a heads-up that the story is winding down (well... sorta... }:) Thank you for the chapter 5 reviews. Def helps with motivation. And I wanted to send a birthday shoutout to my friend Jen. Happy birthday, Jen! Thank you for supporting the Devilishverse & my writing since day one. This one's for you, my friend! :D

6. Tunnel of Love

. . .

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Daphne advised, managing to work a sly note into her otherwise froggy voice. She had screamed herself silly at the concert and was dealing with the consequences now, though she probably thought it was worth it. This was Daphne Tyler they were talking about. If it involved hooting, hollering and any sort of loud, rowdy merriment, she had the time of her life.

Not that Amanda had any right to judge. She'd partaken in some rowdy merriment of her own this evening, and it hadn't just been confined to the main concert hall. No, there was a velvet settee in a powder room in Madison Square Garden that would never be the same. She still wasn't quite sure what had happened in that little offshoot to the ladies room. She knew the general description, of course—her wife had screwed her in a public place, then washed up and strolled on back to their seats (actually, they half-ran most of the way, hand in hand), easy as you please—but exactly how she'd gotten Olivia to participate was a mystery. One minute Amanda was trying to seduce her; the next, she was rocking in Olivia's lap, begging for more, harder.

Some kind of radical shift had occurred in the time it took for that quickie. Amanda couldn't tell if it was permanent or not, but she didn't want to jinx it by overthinking what it meant or creating expectations for next time, either. Supposing it was just a one-off and Olivia had no intentions of a reenactment anytime in the near future, Amanda wouldn't press her luck.

Nevertheless, she was intrigued by the newfound freedom she and her wife had stumbled upon. She doubted they would ever make sex in public a regular practice—even she wasn't that kinky, believe it or not—but it felt like progress for Olivia to trust her enough to participate in something so risqué and slightly illegal. It felt wild and reckless in a way Amanda hadn't been able to recapture since her gambling days. She had the best drug on the market all to herself, and its street name was Olivia Benson. Liv for short.

Daphne ducked down, though at five-one she didn't have far to go, and blew a kiss into the backseat of the cab. The affectionate farewell was distributed to both passengers, but the clerk shot a meaningful look at Amanda, as if that Don't do anything I wouldn't do was specifically for her. She'd been casting those coy little glances since Olivia and Amanda returned from the powder room, pink and mussed and out of breath, just in time to shout-sing the last few verses of "Hungry Heart."

Up next had been "I'm on Fire," as though Springsteen himself had sensed Amanda's still-blazing loins from all the way up on stage. "Only you can cool my desire, oh oh oh, I'm on fire," she'd sung to Olivia, not caring if Daphne, their new friends Bart and Peg in the row behind them, or the asshole with the beers—hell, the whole arena even—could see just how crazy in love she was with her wife. How hot Amanda was for her.

Almost three hours later the flames raged on, she noted happily. The good thing about having an overactive libido was not needing to warm back up every single time. That made it easier to focus on getting Olivia into the mood as well, since she took some drawing out. But that was the fun part.

Well, that and the orgasms.

"Text me when you get in safe." Daphne waggled her fingers in toodle-oo. "That is, if you have any hands free," she added, and closed the car door on her impish little grin, the rascal.

"We reee-ally need to get that woman laid soon," Amanda declared once Daphne made it into her building and the cab started for home. She faced forward again to see Olivia smirking in the mercurial light of nighttime New York City. Amanda reached for her hand in the darkness, interlocking their fingers on her lap. Randomly she caught herself thinking about Taylor Swift. There was a lyric in one of her songs—"False God," maybe? It went:

I'm New York City
I still do it for you, babe

Yeah. That was Liv. Amanda's city girl. And boy, did she ever still do it for her.

"Oh?"

At first Amanda assumed the question was asked of her thoughts, and it seemed perfectly natural that Olivia had read them and wanted her to elaborate. Then she realized it was more than likely a response to her comment about Daphne. Made out loud.

"Yeah," she drawled, strumming Olivia's extended fingers, woven through hers, against her other palm as if she were playing the guitar with them. Something slow and pretty, like "Brilliant Disguise," her favorite of the songs in Bruce's set that evening. Well, I've tried so hard, baby, but I just can't see what a woman like you is doing with me. On the verge of turning pensive, she shrugged off the haunting melody. Tonight had been too good to spoil it with deep thoughts. "Yeah, I mean, if she had her own love life to stew over, maybe she'd stay outta ours?"

Olivia made a cute contemplative face that involved scrunching up her features like Tilly did when she tried to wink. She was so kissable right then, Amanda almost pounced. The concert energy hadn't worn off for either of them. "Doubtful. When has she ever not been interested in our love life? Half the time I expect to find her hiding under our covers when I get into bed with you."

It was such a vivid image, and Olivia mimed pulling back the bedclothes to reveal a blissfully smiling Daphne, probably curled up like a fat, happy possum at the bottom of a trash can—Amanda burst into laughter that drew a glance in the rearview from their cabbie. "True. 'Member how pissed Kat was that Daph never shut up about us?" She gave Olivia's thigh a playful poke with her index finger. "You, in particular. Face it, babe, you're like catnip to the lesbians."

"Got a problem with that?" Olivia asked in a deliberately husky tone. Her ability to go from adorable to sexy in less than a few seconds was uncanny. And highly arousing.

"Nope. Just as long as they remember to step off my woman," Amanda said, striking a macho pose, ankle propped on the opposite knee, an arm slung across the back of the seat. She could manspread with the best of them, and it put her even closer to Olivia, which was always the goal, when you got right down to it.

"Your woman, huh?"

Aware she risked sparking a debate on the toxicity of possessiveness in a relationship, Amanda went ahead and nodded anyway. She doubted Olivia was in the mood to lecture; not while she traced those idle patterns around the frayed denim at Amanda's knee and wore that sultry smile, shadowy in the moonlight. If anything, the question had sounded encouraging. And the captain always said incorrigible was Amanda's middle name. "That's right, little darlin'. Mine, all mine. And I ain't sharin' with Daphne nor no one else, neither. You got a problem with that?"

With the tip of her tongue pinned behind her top teeth, Olivia shook her head slowly. It made for an alluring effect, as did so many of the mannerisms from that sweet and sassy mouth. She could turn almost anything sexual with a pair of lips like that. (And that tongue!) "Huh-uh. Not a bit. The grammar leaves something to be desired, but the sentiment is mutual. I like being all yours."

As Amanda leaned in for a kiss, no longer able to resist those sumptuous, sensuous lips she couldn't take her eyes off of, the only thing she heard was "desire" and "all yours." They didn't have any specific rules against making out in the backseat of a cab, but Olivia's reticence toward overt PDAs meant it was new territory, as uncharted as sex in a public restroom. Amanda felt a little bit like she was in high school again, fumbling around in the backseat of a friend's old beater, fogging up the windows with teenage lust, hot and overeager. But so damn exciting.

Meeting with no protest from her wife—or her wife's tongue, soft as pink silk—Amanda threw herself into the kiss so entirely that the cabbie had to knock on the partition to call her off. "What?" she asked, tearing her lips away from Olivia's just enough to growl the question. She was about to dive back in, until Olivia sat up in the corner where Amanda had her pinned.

"Babe, what're you—"

"I think we're home," Olivia interrupted, mussed and dazed as she looked around, her chest rising and falling rapidly. She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth like she'd just taken a big bite of something succulent and messy. Pointing over Amanda's shoulder she indicated something outside the window behind her, then turned Amanda's face in that direction when she didn't do so herself. "Isn't that our building?"

Amanda squinted. What the hell? Had they really made out all the way from Daphne's apartment in The Village to their apartment on the West Side? It appeared that they had indeed, and twenty-five minutes had passed in the blink of an eye—or, in this case, the flicker of a tongue. She was a tad disappointed, but not very: being home meant they could move on to other activities, things even she didn't have the nerve to try in a public forum. Besides that, she hadn't packed the proper accouterments.

"You make the sex in there," said the driver in thickly accented English, obviously needing no translation for what they had planned for the rest of the evening. And obviously not wanting it to unfold in his backseat. He watched them closely in the rearview, as if expecting them to go at it again. Had he access to a garden hose just then, he probably would have used it on them. "Pay and go."

A wide range of emotions struggled for dominance on Olivia's pretty face, from embarrassment to indignation to that wry New York sass she had down to an art. In the end, her humor won out and she bunched up her shoulders with suppressed laughter that resulted in a snort and a hissing sound like a leaky bike tire. She clapped a hand to her mouth, failing to conceal her amusement twice over as she went on snorting and hissing—but softly.

Rarely did the captain show her giddy side, even when substances were involved—on the contrary, most of them either mellowed her out or put her to sleep—making it a delightful little treat to see her so happy and carefree while stone sober. Amanda briefly considered pink-clouding, but dismissed it once she looked into Olivia's eyes, sparkling despite the darkness. She preferred to believe it was another breakthrough for them; that Olivia felt free enough with Amanda to be silly in a way she never could in the past. Maybe the growth spurts in their relationship didn't have to all be painful.

Maybe there was room for happiness too.

"Uh-uh, you're the birthday girl, remember?" Amanda said when Olivia began rummaging for her wallet outside the cab. She dug into the pocket of her jeans for the debit card which happened to be connected to their joint account, the one that had nearly gotten Amanda killed December before last. Now it served as a bit of a talisman, not only for the shooting inside the bank, but for the faith Olivia had in her, the trust that she wouldn't misuse their combined earnings.

Even tonight, when money was (supposedly) no object, she had been careful not to overspend and relied solely on her own wages, saved up for this very occasion. It turned out she was pretty good with cash when she wasn't gambling it away like a damn jackass.

"Well, technically so are you," said Olivia, waving a ten around for Amanda to tip the impatient driver. She huffed when it was rejected, and thrust it out more forcefully, until there was no choice but to accept or face a disgruntled captain. "And it's a lot closer to your birthday than mine now, which means you have to do what I say. And I say pay the man, then get your cute little tush upstairs and finish what you started, lady."

"That's totally not how this works, but okay." Amanda pretended to be exasperated by her difficult, bossy wife, meanwhile grinning like a fool the entire time. With any luck Olivia would see fit to reprise that difficult and bossy role in the bedroom, shortly. 'Course, it was an awful lot of fun drawing it out of her too. The way things were going tonight, who knew what else Amanda might unleash if she set her mind to it.

Expecting annoyance and more curt remarks from the cabbie, Amanda was surprised to see him smiling at her in the rearview while she waited on the chip reader to approve her card. Apparently he had no problem with a bit of hanky panky, as long as it didn't play out in the back of his taxi. "You," he said, pointing at her in the mirror, "lucky woman, yes? Beautiful trouble." Here he pointed out the passenger window at Olivia; she waited on the curb, extra fetching with her hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her leather jacket, cocky smile in place.

God, it was a good night.

"Brother, you have no idea," Amanda replied, sliding his tip under the change slot. She rapped the side of her fist on the partition behind him in good-natured farewell, then executed a slick hop step, a la Gene Kelly, onto the curb to join Olivia. Her beautiful trouble. Somehow Ahmed had chosen the perfect description, limited vocabulary or not.

"What was all that about?" Olivia eyed Amanda and the departing taxi with a hint of suspicion, obviously aware she'd been the topic of conversation. Never missed a trick, that Captain Benson.

"Nothing for you to worry your pretty lil head over." Amanda clapped her lightly on the rear, compelling her forward. No force, just a guiding hand that fit nicely against the curve on which it landed. Could she help it if they were a match made in heaven? "Come on, m'darlin," she said warmly, urging her wife toward the double doors of their building, "let's go make the sex."

. . .