Part Two

He closed his eyes, gripped the counter hard, and swore his body was not going to respond again to the memory he could feel surfacing. It was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So stupid, in fact, that if he ever told anyone what it was that had him so hot and bothered they'd laugh themselves to death.

Because really, the sensation of his partner's hair brushing against his face was hardly the sort of thing a man usually fantasized about.

It was all her fault. All her fault that he couldn't sleep. All her fault that he couldn't get her out of his head. All her fault that the idea of touching her consumed every moment of his life. All her fault that he'd fallen out of love with his wife just as he'd gotten her back. Ok, so maybe it wasn't her fault that he didn't love Kathy, but it was her fault that he'd realized he didn't love Kathy, and that was just as bad.

He immediately felt guilty. It wasn't Olivia's fault that he couldn't control his libido. It was all his own. He was sure few men were staring fifty in the face only ever having known the touch of one woman. And those that were, he was completely convinced, loved that one woman with everything they had in them.

He'd always been a good husband, as good as he could be with his job. He'd always been a good father, with the same qualifier. He'd always tried his best with what he had and he thought he'd done pretty damn good considering his detached mother and abusive father. He figured his kids at least had a shot at being good parents, which to him meant that he'd done his job.

So now that he was on the wrong side of life with a stressful job that exhausted him and kids who didn't appreciate him and a wife he didn't love, he couldn't deny himself the comfort of fantasy. He knew that was all it would ever be, because even though he knew he was a good man with decent looks and a hard body, Olivia Benson was painfully out of his league.

He let out the breath he was holding and let the memory, the pathetic, disgraceful excuse for a fantasy, come back. They'd been at work, searching for leads on a case, when he'd found something on a website that he thought might help. He'd called to her, nodding his head toward his screen in an invitation. She walked around the desks to see, leaning down to get a better look. In the unrelenting analysis he later did of the moment, he decided that she wasn't any closer than she ever would have been, that perhaps she simply forgot how long her hair had grown. He also knew he was mostly to blame because he'd leaned in unconsciously to steal a breath of her perfume. As she read the page, the hair that had been caught on her shoulder lost its battle with gravity, slowly slipping forward until it fell completely. Right across his cheek.

He hadn't even thought about it. Instinct reached up, tucking her hair back behind her ear so that he could stop the tickling sensation. Shock froze his hand there, pressing lightly against her hair. Her hair was so soft, as soft as a baby's. It was all he could do not to pull his fingers through it and marvel at it. Apparently not all women had straw-like hair. Some women had thick, silky hair that begged to be caressed. The notion was so unexpected that he couldn't move for a moment. For a long enough moment that Olivia turned to look at him. She smiled softly and apologized, shifting to her right so as not to bother him with her hair while she continued to read. And that was just what she did, turned right back to work and paid no attention to her partner's world crashing down around him.

Olivia's hair was soft. That was all it took for him to realize that he didn't love Kathy. That was all it took for dreams of Olivia to invade his mind. That was all it took for him to realize that her skin was probably as soft as her hair. That was all it took for him to admit, if only to himself, that he desperately wanted to touch the rest of her and find out

And that was all it took for him to realize the most likely reason that he didn't love his wife anymore was because he was in love with his partner.