A/N: So, I rewatched the S11 episode "Shadow" the other day for the first time in a while, and that "On your knees" scene with Liv in those boots hooee-son. It does things to me. Jussayin. I got thinking about Elliot's jealousy in the ep, and how he probably had no idea who the Marquis de Sade was – and that's how this fic was conceived. I also really loved the idea of flipping the script and giving Olivia all the power. I hope you enjoy this – please review if you do! Pairing is EO.

PLEASE NOTE: I want to be very clear that I am not a supporter of the Marquis de Sade, nor the violence he promoted against women and children. That is NOT what is being depicted in this fic in any way shape or form, nor am I writing Liv's character as a Marquis fan. I don't kink-shame healthy BDSM, as long as it is practiced safely, lovingly, and with the full, age-appropriate consent of all parties involved.

Rating: MA

Trigger Warnings: BDSM, Kinky sex

Spoilers: Shadow

What These Boots Were Made For

He was staring at her again. Olivia didn't have to look up to know it; she could feel it in his stillness across their desks, in the way the air around their area of the bullpen was heavy with his curiosity. At first it had been amusing - even kind of cute, but quickly it had become exasperating. Ever since she had returned from Nigel Prestwick's office and refused to tell Elliot how she had gotten him to turn on Anne Gillette, he hadn't been able to drop it.

"Elliot," she murmured, "let it go."

"I just - " He tapped his pen impatiently on his paperwork. "You usually don't keep things from me, is all." He pushed a stapler aimlessly across his desk. "You know, I wouldn't have to keep asking if you had let me come with you."

She rolled her eyes inconspicuously. Of course he would have jumped to the conclusion it had something to do with Ashok Ramsey's involvement. Elliot was not exactly subtle about his territory whenever other males were hanging around their cases. "You're making it into a big deal, El. It's not. Can we move on?"

He exhaled noisily, but didn't push it again.

It wasn't long before he resumed staring.

Olivia got up to refill her coffee with a sigh.

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Elliot was first into the office the next morning. He tossed his jacket to the back of his chair and rolled his sleeves to his elbows, still not completely awake. He was already back to his seat with his first cup of coffee when he noticed there was a book on his side of the desk. From over the rim of his coffee mug, the title looked like, The Marquis de Sade: A Very Short Introduction.

He set down his mug and picked it up, looking it over curiously.

"Donatien Alphonse Francois," he muttered, reading from the back cover. Until the day prior, he wasn't sure he had ever heard the name. Dropping into his seat, he flipped open the book and began to skim it in earnest.

Elliot's ears were already burning with confusion and embarrassment by the time he heard Liv come into the squad room. He didn't meet her eyes right away, worried what she might read in them.

"Oh good, you found the book I left for you," she said brightly, but El could sense her smirking from across their desks.

"Um. Yeah." He tossed the book to his desktop, trying to seem casual.

Liv smiled even wider as she crossed to the coffee station. "I take it you never took any Philosophy courses when you were at Queens."

"No, I, uh . . ." he crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat. "I spent my time there mostly drinking,." Elliot finally looked up, and immediately regretted it.

What the fuck? he thought. She was uncharacteristically clothed in a dress – one of those dresses that the squad never saw her in, unless she was undercover or had left a date to come to work. And what a dress, at that: it followed the lines of her curves like it had been tailored for her. It was a burgundy color, falling just above her knees.

Elliott's throat ran dry as his gaze travelled past the hemline, to the pair of black, low-heeled boots that were zipped up to her knees. His mind raced, wondering what he could have missed. Was he still asleep? Had he dozed off in traffic and was fantasizing himself right into the afterlife on his drive to work?

"Well, drinking, I'm sure the Marquis could appreciate," Liv smiled, sipping her coffee.

El forced himself to look at anything else in the room other than his partner, willing himself not to blush. Was it Ramsey? he wondered. Had she spent the night with him? Was she dressing up in the hopes of flirting with him? Jealousy churned sourly in his stomach. He knew he had to say something before his silence grew too awkward to blame on the early hour.

"Well, thanks for getting me caught up," he said, gesturing vaguely toward the book. "Your hobbies off the clock are, uh . . . extravagant."

Olivia laughed in earnest at that. "Or, it pays to have a mother who was a professor. I audited a lot of courses when I was younger."

"When you weren't falling in love with older guys, you mean?" The smile she gave him over her mug of coffee was coy, and his heart pounded.

She shuffled papers around her desk. "Just so you know, Ramsey is coming by today so we can make sure Prestwick is solid and not going to back down on pressing charges."

Oh good, he thought, sneaking another glance at her dress. "Ok."

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Ashok Ramsey strolled into the precinct just after lunch. Elliot had filled his morning with bathroom breaks, coffee refills, short walks and anything else he could find to keep him from the desk, the dress and Olivia's boots.

"Detective Stabler," Ramsey nodded cordially as he approached the pair. "Prestwick already here?"

"In interrogation," Liv confirmed. She turned in her chair, and Elliot couldn't help but watch the tall, dark man drink in her outfit.

Stabler grabbed his short introduction book and shoved it quickly into his top desk drawer, before the well-educated man could catch him out, having needed to be schooled. Feeling somewhat out of place, Elliot followed behind the two of them as they headed to where Prestwick was being held.

Liv stopped short of the door to the room and held up a hand. "Guys, I've got this," she told them with a tip of her head. "Watch and learn"

Ashok chuckled and turned, meeting Elliot's expression. He held the man's gaze for a moment, and El felt his Alpha tendencies start to rev, like a half-warm engine. They moved to the observation window without speaking.

"Hello, Nigel." Olivia shut the door on her greeting. "It's good to see you again."

Elliot had never heard her use that tone – it was crisp, commanding authority, and yet lilted with a playfulness. The elderly, bespectacled man sat, wound into himself on the hard interrogation room chair, eyeing Olivia with fear and a kind of needy shame.

"I've been looking forward to seeing you today," she continued, pulling out the second chair. She sat, crossing her lithe, booted legs one over the other. The leather rubbed, squeaking lowly. Prestwick's eyes widened and he licked his lips.

Outside the window, Elliot fisted his hands into his pockets.

"Mr. Ramsey and I just wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page. We can't afford any setbacks with Anne." She leaned forward in her chair. "I need to know that you'll do what you promised. I wouldn't want you to have to be - " Liv paused and licked her lips, "punished. Not when you were so well-behaved yesterday."

Prestwick looked like he was struggling not to salivate.

Standing up again, Olivia stamped a foot hard enough to send the sound - clock - reverberating from her heel off the interrogation room walls. "Answer me!" she snapped.

"Yes, Mistress!" Prestwick choked out.

She smiled like a cat with a face full of cream, and Elliot felt it deep in his belly.

"I didn't believe it, until I saw it yesterday," Ramsey whispered, shaking his head. "What an odd little man."

"Good," Liv praised, her voice soft again, soothing. She made a spectacle of fiddling with the zipper at the top of her boot, where Nigel's eyes were riveted.

Holy shit, Elliot thought.

All three men swallowed involuntarily.

She finished up quickly then, and left Nigel alone, sweating inside the four brick walls. "That's how it's done," she smiled as she shut the door behind her, rejoining them.

"The Marquis would be proud," Ramsey smirked.

Elliot cleared his throat. He wanted a drink, or maybe a cigarette. Possibly both. But his day was so far from over.

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Elliot Stabler was a very Catholic man. He was no stranger to sex, as his five kids showed – but his twenty-six years of marriage to his first love could attest that his sexual repertoire was not what he would exactly describe as colorful. Every now and then, even the squad wasn't above ribbing him for his vanilla sex habits – well, what little they knew of them.

Perhaps, before his first daughter was born, he would have protested that sex with Kathy had been more liberal, but four kids, a separation, and a surprise mid-life pregnancy went a long way toward evaporating excitement. Not to mention time alone with his wife.

Time alone with Olivia, on the other hand, had never been in short supply. Eleven years together on the job added up to a second lifetime – one that they had successfully kept almost entirely separate from Kathy, if Elliot was being honest. That didn't mean that each side of the fence didn't have its own set of rules. All of them unspoken.

Thou shalt not covet El's time with his wife.

El shalt not kick the ass of every one of Olivia's suitors.

So many suitors. Not that he could blame them – hypocrite that he was. He had chased off a fair number of creeps over their years together; he saw it as a silent clause in their partnership, although he wasn't convinced Olivia was always completely on board with the idea.

Olivia Benson was a fucking stone cold fox. Elliot acknowledged it - knew a person would have to be dead or not into sex to not see it, but part of keeping the pleasurable tension in their partnership meant drawing little boxes around the things that were too charged for them to touch. Subjects that existed on the fringes, but never came into focus. Unless they couldn't help it.

Because when they did . . . when they jumped into focus, things usually went bad in a hurry. Like with Victor Gitano. Like Liv's taking off to Oregon. Jealousy. Dependency. Above all else: attraction, these things were earmarked as impermissible. At the top of that list was sex – no small feat, considering their careers.

Or, maybe somehow easier thanks to SVU. In order to survive the unit, walls to protect healthy sexuality were a must, no matter who your partner was. From the outside looking in, Elliot seemed to be the only one succeeding there. Fin had hardly dated in all the years after his divorce, Cragen almost never went home, Munch survived on coffee and self-deprecation. Sex crimes was not the happily-ever-after unit by any stretch of the imagination.

What was impermissible out loud, however, had a way of consuming them in their silences. Elliot had no illusions that his partner was inexperienced, or that she somehow secretly held herself back on his behalf. But, in the many illicit thoughts he had indulged in over their years – even the ones that he trembled at the thought of dredging up in the confessional – El had hardly imagined Liv as a leather-wearing, whip-toting BDSM fan.

More importantly, as a man who had spoken the phrase "normal sex" out loud in his career, he was dumbfounded by the fact he couldn't stop thinking about it.

It intrigued him. More than that, it turned him on.

"El, did you hear a word I just said?" Olivia asked him, putting an end to the deep dive he'd taken.

"Wish I could say I had," he admitted, rubbing his neck with one hand.

Liv rolled her eyes at him, then turned her head to slide papers into a drawer. His gaze flickered to her cleavage, then back up. "I said, did you want to grab a drink with me before we call it a day?"

Drink? he thought, With her in that dress? After the day he'd suffered through? No. Absolutely not. The family man inside of him buzzed to life like a giant neon sign, blinking: Negative. Bad idea. Do not engage. Do not pass go.

His mouth betrayed him: "Sure." A slow blink. Jesus Christ.

"Ok, I'm just going to grab my stuff. You've got keys to the sedan,?"

He nodded faintly, watching as she got up to head for the locker room. His skin was ablaze with electric anxiety and he swiped at his mouth with a thumb and forefinger, his mind racing.

Make something up. Say Kathy called, tell her you're too tired! It's not like it would be the first time you ever bailed on her, his inner voice offered.

Elliot winced a little in guilt as he heard her footsteps returning. He got to his feet quickly then, shuffling papers into a pile on his desk haphazardly. In his head, he'd already backed out three different ways.

"Ready?" she asked, a smile tucked into her voice.

He got his jacket, felt for the jingle of keys in the pocket, was aware of his grin in response to her. There's still time to beg off in the car, the voice offered.

Elliot held the door for Liv to exit ahead of him. He knew that by the time they were in the car, that voice would already be gone.

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Under the subdued light of their usual cop bar, Elliot always felt he could watch Liv more brazenly. The way she moved her hands when she spoke, the swallow of her drink over full lips, and that night in particular, the dress. The way it hugged her silhouette, the crossing and re-crossing of her legs in the boots. He couldn't decide if he was being tortured or rewarded.

"What do you think, El? Would you have preferred to have grown up rich, like Gillette?"

El's eyes followed the tip of Liv's finger as it circled around the rim of her wine glass. "Not at all," he answered without hesitation. "It's like Lord Acton said: 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely.' People can be happy . . . comfortable, without needing the power to buy anything or anyone on a whim."

"If it would have gotten me out from under my mother's wrath, I don't think I would have turned my nose up at it," she confessed, looking into her wine thoughtfully. Then she looked straight at him, raising an eyebrow. "You can quote Lord Acton on a whim, but you had never even heard of the Marquis de Sade?"

El chuckled. "I might've taken a history course or two, during my Queen's hangovers." He was still cradling his first beer, the neck of the bottle heated under his palm by the desire vibrating just under his surface. Every rub of her leather boots went straight to his groin.

For her part, Liv finished her second glass of wine and smirked at her partner. "Next one's on you, Stabler."

"You need to slow down," was what he told her, slipping into the familiar role of over-protector.

She narrowed her eyes at him, pursed her lips. "Elliot." He felt all the blood in his body drain toward the floor as he realized it was that voice. That tone was back, the one she used with Nigel. Commanding. "Buy me a drink," she told him crisply. The light caught her dark eyes and reflected the taunt in them, giving him an opening to defy her.

Then he was at the bar, signalling the bartender. He pushed a screwdriver across the tabletop of their booth and met her eyes.

"Good," she praised.

Elliot shivered. He dropped back into his seat and resumed a stranglehold on his beer – not unlike his stranglehold on his hyper-masculinity – wondering what it all meant. He had never asked anything of Kathy in the bedroom that was beyond their usual norm – nor had he wanted to and denied himself. A little lingerie on special occasions . . . before he had gotten his assignment in SVU, there had even been split-crotch panties once or twice.

Whips and chains? Leather, boots and who knew what else? Not by a country mile.

Olivia uncrossed her legs and stretched them out, popped an ice cube from her glass in her mouth as one of her legs brushed against his calf. Elliot wasn't even sure that if she told him to set himself on fire right now that he would be able to say no.

"What did you think of the book?" she asked casually, crunching the ice cube noisily. "Any questions I might be able to answer?"

He stared at the label on his beer bottle intently, then met her gaze. "Only one. Is that really your thing?"

"What's that?" Liv stifled a small laugh, trying to make out his expression.

"Pain," he said brusquely. "You know. Whips and chains?"

She blinked, recovering quicker than he had expected. "I suppose . . . " she said slowly, swirling the golden contents of her glass, "that it depends on my partner." Her use of that particular word in the context jarred him. "But nothing extreme."

He thought of the book, and the look on Nigel Prestwick's face. Of the pictures that Ramsey had shown to him with a sort of selfish glee before leaving the precinct that afternoon. Not extreme? he wondered, unconvinced.

"Really," was his only comment.

Liv laughed more genuinely then, throwing her head back slightly, her hair shaking out over the tops of her shoulders. "Come on, El. Not everything the least bit adventurous has to be dungeon shackles and bloodletting."

Well, thank God for that, he thought.

"But then again," she mused, "I've never been a Catholic." Her look was smug and Elliot wondered if it was another dare. "They probably don't approve. Donatien certainly never approved of them, either."

If she had been a guy, it would have been the point where he bragged that his sex life was fine, and then traded jabs back and forth about married couples.

Instead, he got to his feet. "I'm going for another beer."

Liv stopped him with a light touch to his forearm. "Y'know, El - it's about control, not violence. It's okay to put down your power once in a while."

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They had decided to call it a night, once Elliot's second beer was gone and Olivia had consumed a second screwdriver. He had parked the sedan in a back parking lot, and she sent him out the back exit of the bar to wait for her while she ducked into the ladies'.

The cool breeze in the alley was a welcome respite from his night's endless burning. He leaned back against the brick wall and closed his eyes, a deep shaky breath escaping him. His leather jacket, even unzipped, seemed to harbour an extra 30 degrees' heat. The back door swung open and the heavy clock-clock-clock of Olivia's heeled boots filled the buildings corridor.

"Fallin' asleep on me, Stabler?" she smirked.

He opened his eyes. The sight of her narrowed his pupils and made his abs lock up tight. Her light jacket over the dress was buttoned-down and cinched at the waist. It met the hem of the dress, giving the illusion that the jacket and the boots were all she was wearing.

Before he could lift his head from the brick, Liv stepped up, stopping just inches from the V stance of his legs. He took a breath to speak, but she spoke first:

"Don't move."

He even stopped breathing.

Closing the token distance between them, she never took her eyes from his. His senses were sharp enough to cut, and everything was in focus: the sound of her jacket, the buzz of the neon EXIT sign on the wall above the back door to the bar, the feel of his own shirt fabric against his stomach, the lingering taste of beer.

Olivia was standing so close to him, his next stuttered inhale was all it took for their bodies to brush. "Elliot." That tone, again. I dare you, I dare you. His name like a purr coming from her mouth. "Open your pants."

The alley was suddenly an alternate world – a place where they had never carved out any boxes for taboo topics. There was no line between his two selves, no infidelity or fidelity, no alarm bells going off. It was just the long, dark alley, the command of Liv's voice and the obliterating heat of his want for her.

Elliot's breaths were measured and slow. He kept his eyes locked to hers as he brought his hands together in front of him and opened the button to his pants. The sound of a lowering zipper had never been louder, he thought, in any point in the history of mankind.

Olivia glanced ever-so-briefly at his groin, where the white of his boxer-briefs now showed. Back to his gaze, she ran her tongue across her upper lip. "Take out your cock."

He wasn't worried about getting caught, because he knew he was going to die before that became an issue. There was no way he could feel as much as he did and not destroy himself trying to contain it. Pushing his shirt up slightly, El slid a hand into his underwear and obeyed. The night's breeze tickled over his skin, tacky with a sheen of perspiration. Then he was standing in an alley, holding his throbbing erection in one hand, with Olivia Benson standing practically on top of him.

She looked down again, more intently this time, at the thick, cut length of him; she appraised the urgency of his hardness, the drop of precum glistening at the tip. His chest was heaving just slightly as he tried to wrest some control. Liv brought her mouth to the side of his face, dropping her voice to a throaty whisper. "Stroke yourself for me."

As he started, she took his other hand and raised it to the wall next to him, pinning it by his wrist with her hand. Her other hand skidded up his lower stomach, up the center line of his chest, bunching the material of his shirt as she went. It stopped at the base of his throat, where she spread her fingers slightly and let her nails bite into his skin, hard enough that he could feel his pulse hammering her fingertips.

Elliot tried to moan, but it came out choked and surprised, the hand on his cock never slowing.

"That's good," she whispered, and Elliot's eyes rolled skyward.

Long minutes passed, filling the alleyway with the muffled sound of him thrusting into his palm. Then he felt her fingers ease slowly from his throat and he gasped in a deep breath as he watched her lower in front of him.

This is it, this is how it ends, he thought.

He counted the loud beats of his heart as Olivia's hand slid under the base of his cock, circling and squeezing him in a vise grip. She held him like that, trapping his impending orgasm at bay, then tilted forward and slid her warm tongue in a long, slow line up his entire length like a popsicle on a hot day.

"Now say 'please,'" she directed.

El was afraid he'd open his mouth and nothing would come out, like some enchanted Mer-man. He cleared his throat quietly. "Pl – lease," he murmured.

"Hmm?" She squeezed him harder.

"Please. Please," he groaned. Never letting up on her grip, she drew him into her mouth with a satisfied grin. Elliot fought to keep his hips still, trembling against the brick wall with gritted teeth.

When he finally thought his partner would put him out of his misery, she was on her feet again. This time not even a piece of paper could have slid the space between them. She pushed him into the brick wall, both of his hands in hers. He could feel the bottom edge of her jacket against his cock, the material slippery, and he thought he could feel a fleeting touch of her bare inner thigh.

"Ask me!" she bit out. His eyes flew open, catching her gaze. "Ask me permission, Elliot."

"Can I . . . " he panted, caught his breath, "please, can I come?"

"Yes."

Liv urged her pelvis against him and the sensation mercifully pushed him toward the edge. She put her arms around his neck, her head dropping to the crook of his shoulder. "God, I'm so wettt," she moaned.

Elliot came so hard that the rush of his blood was a cacophony in his ears. He cried out, pulling her waist into him with both hands as his cock twitched between their bodies. They let the wall take up their weight, letting their pulses slow.

Then, another mumble into the feverish skin of his neck:

"Now take me home."

TO BE CONTINUED