Chapter Three:

She is arching, writhing above me, hands fisting into the sheets. Her hips quiver, torn between holding perfectly still and seeking the warmth of my mouth. I fold my lips around the hard bud of her clit, pulling at it, lashing it with my tongue. But at the same time, my gaze drifts up along her body, past her twitching stomach and the hard pink tips of her breasts to study her face. Her glasses have slipped down the bridge of her nose, and her hair is tossed over the pillows, but she barely moves. Her mouth falls open in a silent scream, but her eyes stay shut.

I drag my tongue lower, to the pulsing ring of muscle at her entrance, and slide it forward to taste her. Alex's flavor is always wonderful, the perfect mix of salt and sweetness, just bold enough to stay in my mouth until I swallow once or twice. But this time even though I have been trying to get her off for a while, there isn't a rush of wetness to greet me. Normally, she coats my fingers until the flood slips down past my wrist, or covers my thighs and lower belly if I'm wearing my cock. Sometimes, she even ruins the sheets.

I ease off the pressure and back away. She whimpers as I press a few more soft kisses to the tip of her exposed clit, trembling a little, but does not beg me for more or try to follow my mouth. She is frozen, lost in her own head, or perhaps caught by indecision.

It has been one week since I discovered the story. One week since she confessed her fantasies to me. One week spent playing pretend, trying to make believe that everything is still normal between us. But it's not, and I don't think it ever will be again.

I glance at the clock. Thirty two minutes have passed since I first kissed up along Alex's thigh, since I draped her other knee over my shoulder and tried to lose myself between her legs. For a moment, I consider stopping. Either Alex is fighting not to fantasize, or she has been this whole time and feels too guilty about it to come. Then again, getting her to come this way has never been easy. Before, I thought of it as a special sort of challenge. Now, it just makes me feel depressed.

"Alex?" I say, hoping that the sound of her name will bring her back from wherever she is. The muscles in her lower abdomen twitch. Her head shifts a little. She spreads her legs wider, revealing pink, glistening, vulnerable lips. I am not sure she even hears me, or if she does, she isn't sure how to respond.

I start to lower my head again, brushing my fingertips along her knee to let her know I'm still there, but one of her hands shoots down and grips my hair. She is gentle, but she is clearly telling me not to continue. "Liv," she breathes, her voice shuddering even worse than her chest as she breathes. "Liv… I - I don't think I can…" She finally opens her eyes, and there are tears shimmering in them behind the lenses of her glasses.

I realize what she means immediately. For a moment, I am disappointed, but her pain and frustration is so obvious that I know I can't show any of my own feelings. It would be too much for her right now. Instead, I slide back up the mattress to lie beside her, looping one arm around her waist and pulling her tight against me.

She flips onto her side, snuggling into a spooning position, and when her body curls into mine, I can feel her start to sob. I stroke soothing lines up and down her arm, trying to focus on making her feel better without words. It is easier to deal with her feelings right now than my own. They are still a confused, painful mess, and I cannot even begin to sort through them. "It's okay," I murmur, kissing just behind her ear. The soft place she loves. "It's okay. You don't have to come every time…"

"It hurts," she whimpers, burying her face in the pillow. A few strands of her hair get caught in my mouth, and I brush them aside as unobtrusively as possible. "Liv…"

"I know it does," I say. It doesn't happen often, especially not anymore, but Alex absolutely hates it when she can't come. It drives her insane. She says there is an aching, unpleasant fullness between her legs afterward that she can never get rid of, and trying harder to get off only makes it worse. My stomach sinks. Now, I am starting to understand why. She has not confirmed it, but I already know.

Those are the moments when she needs her fantasy. When she needs to be 'raped'.

I want to pull away, to roll off the mattress and run for the bathroom, to close myself off while I struggle to regain at least some control of my thoughts. But Alex is still shaking in my arms. I can't pull away and leave her alone now. "It's okay," I say again, not sure what other words of comfort to offer her. I keep stroking her arm, and then reach up to play with the soft strands of her hair. She is so beautiful that it hurts to look at her sometimes.

I wonder why someone so beautiful, inside and out, can be aroused by something so ugly.

Alex sighs, then shifts on the mattress, making it groan a little and wrinkling the covers beneath us even further as she turns to face me. I let my hand cup the side of her cheek. So far, she has not let the tears in her eyes fall yet. "No, Liv," she whispers, blinking slowly at me behind the frames of her glasses. "It's not okay. I should have been able to. I don't know why I…"

"Don't lie," I tell her, running my thumb over the soft swell of her cheekbone. "Not to me, Alex."

Alex's lips press together, and her pulse jumps at the side of her throat. She stares at me for a long moment. "I hope you don't think this is about you," she says. "I hope you don't think this is because you're doing something wrong, or not doing enough." Her eyes flicker away. "Sometimes, I'm just… broken. My mind goes places I wish it wouldn't, and then when I try to fight it, my body won't do what I want it to do."

A question tugs at me, one I can't stop myself from asking. It has been growing in the back of my mind all week, festering there like some kind of wound that won't heal. "Alex-" I have to stop and swallow before I can continue. "When your mind goes there..." I can't bring myself to be any more specific. "What are you thinking about?"

A line appears in the middle of Alex's forehead, and she narrows her eyes at me. "I don't think we should talk about that right now, Olivia."

She's right. I don't want to know. I'm not ready to hear the details yet. Maybe I'll never be ready. But there is one thing I need to know, or I think I'll go insane. "Okay. But… who are you thinking about?"

This time, her eyes widen. I watch a flash of panic cross her face, but now that I've asked the question, there's no taking it back.

"Liv," she says, the pitch of her voice rising, almost pleading with me. "Don't make me answer that. Please." But I keep staring at her, pressing her without words. I have to hear her say it, even though I think I already know the answer. Finally, she breaks. "Sometimes, the person isn't real," she says. "She's just some shadowy figure, not fully formed in my head."

"But sometimes?"

She lowers her eyes guiltily. "Sometimes, I think about you. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

No. It's not what I wanted to hear, but it is what I expected. However, listening to her admit it isn't the crushing blow I thought it would be. Instead, I just feel a slow, sinking pit open up at the bottom of my stomach. "Why?" I ask. "Why do you think about me?" The second half of the question remains unspoken. Is it because of my father? Because something about me reminds her of how a rapist should act?

Then, Alex surprises me. "Would you believe it's because I love you?"

"Because you love me?" I say, feeling the words out. They don't make sense to me.

"I work with you, Olivia. I know how awful rape is. How damaging it can be. If I want to explore such a dangerous fantasy, even if it's only in my own head, it… it feels safer to think about someone I trust. Someone I know would never hurt me that way."

At first, I can't respond. She has taken what I was afraid of and completely turned it around. My first reaction is denial. She can't be telling the truth. Something dangerous and violent about me must have attracted her. It's in my blood, after all. She just doesn't want to hurt me.

But then I breathe slowly and think about it some more. I look into Alex's eyes, and I don't see a lie there. "Liv," she says, and this time, she is the one to reach out and cup my cheek. "I had these fantasies for years before I met you. I have no idea why, and I'll probably never know. They have nothing to do with you, and they weren't something you caused."

"I know," I say. "I just…"

"Olivia, I'm not attracted to you because I think you're going to rape me. Do you have any idea how hurtful that is? Not just to me, but to yourself?" She's right. I know she's right. But still, part of me has trouble believing it. Alex runs her fingers through my hair, massaging my scalp. As tense as I am, the familiar, intimate gesture starts to calm me down. "I'm attracted to you because you're kind. Because you're gentle. Because I know I can trust you." She pauses and fluffs my hair a little with her hand. "The butch haircut you've got right now and the tight abdominal muscles don't hurt, either."

I can't help it. I let out a short laugh. I have absolutely no idea how she's gone from needing my comfort to comforting me, but Alex has always been strong. Stronger than I am right now. Maybe talking through this with me has helped her feel a little less guilty. I hope so.

My eyes drift over towards the clock behind her head, and I see that it's a little past midnight. Both of us have to be at work early tomorrow. Not together, of course. Elliot knows about us, and Cragen probably suspects, but the two of us have to stay closeted because of our jobs. It's inconvenient, but we both love our careers too much to change things right now. Besides, Alex is a vast improvement over the revolving door of ADAs we had before. Only Carmichael bothered to stick around until she came along.

"Thanks, Alex," I say as I turn over, hoping she'll take the invitation and cuddle up against my back. She does, tucking her thighs beneath the curve of my backside, and we fall into a comfortable spooning position, completely opposite of the way we were before. Despite Alex's crack about my haircut, I still like to be the little spoon sometimes.

Alex kisses the back of my neck, and a warm, comfortable feeling starts to seep through me, making my arms and legs feel heavy. My day hasn't been too active, mostly paperwork, but I'm emotionally exhausted. "I love you, Olivia," she whispers against my skin, nuzzling into the back of my shoulder for a moment.

"I love you, too," I whisper back. And for right now, at least, I believe that love will be enough to make things between us good again.

. . .

AN: To answer some questions that were brought up in the reviews...

1) In this story, Alex wasn't abused at all as a kid. She had a relatively normal childhood. She's just kinky.

2) I picked age 12 because that's when puberty hit for me, and like I said in Chapter 2, it hit with a vengeance. It was a very confusing time for me, because I started having very intense feelings for girls in a religious household, I started having dreams and sexual fantasies about rape and power, and I had NO idea why I thought blowjobs were so hot, but men were so icky. Like Olivia said, my (very few) friends were mostly concerned with kid-stuff, and my sexuality came barreling out of nowhere, almost fully formed even at age 12. It took me several more years to deal with the complicated feelings that came with it. Also, although Alex's experiences are very loosely based on mine, it's certainly not a straight retelling of my life. It's entirely fictional, and Alex is still... well, Alex.

3) I chose first person for this tale because I really want to dig into Olivia's feelings, and the themes of the story required a lot of inner monologues. I've used first person extensively before, mostly in original fiction, but I've dabbled with it in L&O land as well, if you look at some of my older stories.