A/N: I meant to have this chapter up earlier today, but as usual, life happened. Sorry for the crazy posting schedule so far. I'll get it figured out sooner or later. But I really appreciate the comments for chapter 1! They were super encouraging, and I'm looking forward to sharing the rest of this haunting, harrowing, long-ass story with y'all. There's really not a whole lot to add for this chapter—not to say it's not an important one, just that it's pretty self-explanatory and doesn't have any trigger warnings. So, happy reading. For now. ;P

And I'll sleep in the sea, and I'll wait there beneath
The mud and forgotten dreams and disease
And what is the secret I'll drain from your soul
And sweet is the sugar I'll drink from your skull

- Swans

Chapter 2. Mother's Milk

. . .

"Ouch!" Olivia cringed and instinctively shrank from the sharp pain in her nipple, but the mouth latched onto it did not readily let go. Hissing through her teeth, she skimmed a finger between her daughter's gums to break suction and held the baby away from her breast, to gaze down as sternly as one could at a three-and-a-half-month-old. Which wasn't very. "Samantha Grace. No biting Mommy."

Samantha cast a placid look up at Olivia, gurgling as if she hadn't just tried to gnaw through a rather important and extremely tender body part with her strong little gums. The breast milk frothed at the corners of her mouth as she offered a fleeting smile that made it almost impossible to be too put out.

Noah had been a serious baby who grew into a serious child, the official worrier of Olivia's brood (a trait that, in turn, worried Olivia—had she passed it on to him? Would he grow up to be fretful and anxious?); Matilda had been the happiest, most easygoing infant on the planet, and now at almost four years old, continued to be her mommies' little ray of sunshine; and though Olivia had missed out on much of Jesse's babyhood, she knew from Amanda's vivid accounts—both then and now—that their middle child had been a pistol from the start.

But Samantha Grace Rollins-Benson was their wild card. A deep thinker, who already looked at her mothers as if she were slightly exasperated by their insistence on helping her. She often entertained herself in the crib or the swing, appearing perturbed whenever she was interrupted. And though she gave affection freely, it had to be on her own terms. Smiles were bestowed with even more discretion.

"She's as stubborn as you are," had become Olivia and Amanda's tagline for their baby girl, usually recited in unison and accompanied by a skirmish of jinxes, pinches, and pokes.

Stubborn and a biter, apparently. Like everything else she did early—from rolling over to reaching for toys—it seemed she was already teething, a development Olivia had refused to believe until the Night of a Thousand Tears, when she spent hours rocking a squalling Samantha, who would accept no less than Mommy and a wet washcloth for chewing. Now, Olivia knew how the washcloth must have felt.

"Maybe we should have named her Vampira," said Amanda, sauntering into the bedroom from the door jamb on which she'd been leaning. "Or Buffy."

Olivia hadn't realized she had an audience for her induction as a chew toy, though it wasn't out of the ordinary for one of them to watch the other breastfeeding their daughter. The supplemental nursing system, which consisted of a bottle-like container to hold Amanda's expressed milk and a plastic tube as thin and pliable as a spaghetti noodle, had been the perfect Christmas present from Amanda. (On the tag that dangled from the box, the detective had scrawled Olivia's name, of which the O and the V formed a pair of crudely drawn and highly asymmetrical breasts.)

With the tube taped to her breast, the pinpoint hole aligned at her nipple, and the bottle resting on her chest, delivering the milk like fluid through an IV, Olivia was able to simulate nursing her child. "Aww darlin', don't cry," Amanda had said, after explaining what the SNS was for, and that she wanted Olivia to share in breastfeeding duty, an important part of bonding between mother and baby. "You know I can't handle it with these pregnant lady hormones."

But she had cried—they both did—cried and marveled that she would get to experience breastfeeding after all, a ship she'd thought had long since sailed for her; that she could have such a connection with one of her children, providing nourishment for them (from her own body, for all intents and purposes) in a way she hadn't been able to with the others; that she belonged to someone who cared enough to give her such a thoughtful, heartfelt, extraordinary gift.

Then, when Samantha arrived, Olivia had found she got almost as much enjoyment out of watching Amanda nurse the baby as doing it herself. It was a bit of a family affair at times, with either mother camped out at the other's side, an arm around the waist to help cradle their daughter, a head gently resting on a shoulder as they wondered at what they had made, a finger lazily twirling a lock of hair as they listened to the sweet little sucks and grunts from their Sammie.

The love Olivia felt in those moments, absolute and bigger than anything she'd ever dreamed could exist, left her breathless.

"I thought Buffy slayed the vampires. Slew?" Olivia looked up from guiding her nipple cautiously back to Samantha's striving, baby-bird mouth, and caught Amanda snapping a picture with her cell phone. "And I better not see that on Facebook, or vampires won't be the only ones getting their ass kicked."

"Relax, it's for my private collection." Amanda winked slyly, sidling up to the old-fashioned wooden rocker where Olivia sat, and bending down to peck her on top of the head. "You kiss our kids with that mouth, cher?"

Ever since their trip to Amanda's hometown last June, when she'd only been a few weeks pregnant and not even showing, a bit of the Cajun influence from her maternal grandmother's side of the family had steadily crept back into the detective's vocabulary. Olivia couldn't say she minded. Each inflection came with a certain amount of cockiness or sass, and always a flirtatious gesture of some sort—like the wink, the kiss. It was ridiculously cute and undeniably sexy.

"Yup. Their mama, too," said Olivia, tipping her head backwards against the carved crest rail, lips upturned and lightly puckered. She didn't have to wait long, and she sighed into the tender kiss she received, her skin atingle as Amanda's fingers coasted the length of her neck, her breast atingle with the sensation of her daughter nursing.

Some of the literature claimed she might naturally begin producing milk on her own, body responding to the suckling infant. While that hadn't happened, Olivia did sense an occasional stirring—a vague prickle and a heaviness in her breasts that she knew wasn't imagined. She loved that feeling. Somehow it made her more present in her body than she had been for years, or possibly ever.

After a childhood spent withdrawing from negative emotion, learning to separate from herself when reality was too painful (dissociating, Lindstrom would correct her), and after an adulthood spent learning to compartmentalize so well she sometimes couldn't access her emotions at all, she'd worried a vital part of herself had been lost along the way. Whatever made her human; whatever made her body her own.

But then there was Samantha. Amanda. Noah, Jesse, Tilly. Her family and her mantra. Those were the names she repeated to herself these days, not the names of her would-be rapists. They grounded Olivia, brought her back to herself no matter how lost she might be. They were the air in her lungs, the heart beating in her chest. The reminder that she had a soul.

Amanda. Noah. Jesse. Tilly. Sam.

"I'll delete it if you want me to," Amanda murmured, perching on the armrest of the rocking chair, though it couldn't have been a very comfortable seat, and displaying the screen of her iPhone. The photo she'd just taken was illuminated there, showing Olivia with breast at the ready, the flesh around the areola held back by her fingertips, nipple shadowed in the half-light. "Y'all are just so pretty I couldn't resist."

It was a lovely photo, captured at exactly the right moment. Olivia wasn't fond of having her picture taken anymore; she had tolerated it as a younger woman, aware that she was what most people deemed "attractive," and she participated in current group photos and family photos, for posterity's sake—mostly her children's. (She had only a handful of pictures of herself with her own mother.) But she preferred to be behind the camera these days, especially since finding out Calvin Arliss had been secretly photographing her for years. Just like her rapist father Hollister, collecting newspaper articles about his bastard daughter, to what end she didn't know; would never know. And didn't want to.

She had texted Amanda a revealing selfie or two a while back, just to get the blonde's attention. And boy, did it ever work. Posed during Amanda's morning shower, the shots were little more than some off-the-shoulder and deep cleavage action, with a smoldering look over the rim of her glasses, but when Olivia sent them off from behind her captain's desk, the detective had nearly spewed a mouthful of lunchtime coffee across Kat's desk and her own. Happy Friday, Det. Dimples, read the accompanying text. And a happy Friday it had been indeed, when they were finally back home and in bed.

Then there was Amanda's suggestion that they record a—ahem—home video of themselves, for the heck of it. She'd tried to play it off as a joke, but the hopefulness in her voice had been unmistakable. Olivia was considering it. She'd never filmed a sex tape before: not when she was young and foolish enough to participate in such a production (granted the cameras back then were huge and obtrusive, but still); not when she was a detective third-grade in SVU and slogging through the vile things people recorded themselves doing to others, especially children; not when the digital age hit, bringing with it a whole new means of violating someone's privacy and destroying their reputation.

She didn't have to worry about any of that with Amanda. And it might be kind of sexy and exciting to film themselves—Amanda, at least. Soon, maybe. While her breasts were still delectably full and ripe from the milk they produced, turning her into a hefty C-cup, the blue veins flowing beneath her lovely pale skin like hillside rivers in the snow. While she still had that soft little pouch of skin on her belly, left over from giving their baby girl a safe place to grow. The detective despised that "flab," as she called it, but Olivia found her hands inexplicably drawn there whenever they made love.

Yes, very soon.

"Keep it," Olivia said, guiding Amanda's thumb away from the trash can icon below the picture. She might not like looking at herself, but she loved the way Amanda saw her, and the picture reflected that: she was gazing down at their daughter, face framed by her side-swept hair, eyes filled with love, heart on her sleeve. Beautiful because of the beauty surrounding her. "For your eyes only. And someday maybe this little piranha's, if she stops biting Mommy's boobies. Isn't that right, Sammie?"

"Yeah, kid, leave that to me." Amanda leaned in to confide the naughty statement to the baby, jutting a thumb at herself like a boxing coach in an old black and white movie, claiming her fighter was undefeated. Only thing missing was the stogy. She stole a sideways glance at Olivia, the corner of her mouth twitching with a suppressed grin, waiting.

"Amanda Jo." Olivia clucked her tongue, pretending to be scandalized. To Samantha, whose eyes were rolling drowsily in their sockets now, one pudgy hand lightly kneading the breast to which she was attached, Olivia said in a soft, storytime voice, "Your mama is an incorrigible pervert, little love. Yes, she is. Yes, she is."

Snickering, Amanda joined in the baby talk ("Well, your mommy shouldn't have such a great rack then, should she, peanut? No, she shouldn't, no ma'am"), their nonsense banter lulling Samantha further, her chin working with gradually slowing gulps. But the moment Olivia started to ease her breast away, Samantha's eyes went doe-wide and her mouth resumed its greedy suction.

"Good Lord, she's really going to town," Amanda commented. Before she could follow up with anything more suggestive, their attention went to the doorway, where their second youngest padded in on Olaf slippers that matched her Frozen jammies. Matilda was toting her plush Elsa doll under one arm, her lookalike Anna under the other, and yawning so grandly, she could have been belting the big note from "Let It Go." Disney+ had become a staple in the Rollins-Benson household.

"I'm sleepy, Mommy," Matilda announced, wandering into the bedroom and over to the rocking chair, the Arendelle sisters' exceptionally long legs trailing the carpet on either side of her. She'd outgrown the toe-walking that had concerned Olivia last year, a habit the pediatrician assured her had most likely been the little girl's attempt to imitate Noah's constant dancing. Now, Miss Tilly was enrolled in dance classes of her own, and already leaps and bounds ahead of her peers, thanks to her big brother and private coach.

But, at a month shy of just four years old, Matilda was still very much a baby. And still very much a Mommy's girl. She extended her arms, Elsa and Anna peeping out from under her tiny armpits like she had them in the world's cutest headlock. "Hold me." And remembering her manners a moment later: "Please."

Except she forgot the L. Pease. Olivia's heart melted a little bit and she cupped her palm to the child's fair, freckled cheek. As far as she was concerned, the only downside to four children was not having enough arms to hold them all. And despite efforts to foster some independence in her gentlest, most sweet-spirited child, Olivia relished every minute that Matilda clung to her.

She would walk through fire for any of her children; lay down her life for them, if need be. But they each had their distinct personalities, their special virtues, and there was something healing in the way Tilly chose her. Olivia had felt it the moment she held her daughter for the first time, and every time since.

Nothing could completely undo the feelings of rejection Serena Benson had instilled in Olivia from birth—from conception, most likely ("Women never used to talk to their bellies the way these silly young mothers do today," Serena had confided once, rolling her eyes at a pregnant woman stroking and singing to her baby bump while seated on a park bench)—but Matilda's love and affection, her sweet kisses and endless cuddles, came close. So close.

"Can you be Mommy's big girl and wait just a few more minutes for me to hold you, lovebug?" Olivia tucked Matilda's curls uselessly behind her small ears, smiling as the coppery ringlets sprang right back up again. Such a bold and unruly head of hair for such a compliant little person.

"'Cause Amantha's hungry?" Matilda inquired, rising on tiptoe for a better look at her baby sister, Olaf's pointy carrot noses smooshing into the carpet. She hadn't quite gotten the knack of the infant's full name yet, often combining it with Amanda's name to form the near-misses Amantha and Samanda.

Olivia thought the mispronunciations were adorable, but to save on confusion she nodded and said, "Yes, bug, Sammie's eating. I think her belly's almost full, but . . . " She lowered her voice to a whisper and peeked up at Amanda, who was fluffing the little girl's curls seconds after Olivia smoothed them. "I bet Mama will hold you, if you ask her."

"Hold me?" Matilda turned a pair of imploring blue eyes up at Amanda. Ha! Mama was finally getting a taste of her own medicine; she used that sad puppy look to get her way all the time.

But the detective had a stronger constitution than Olivia, at least when there were dolls involved. Suspiciously, she eyed the monarchs tucked under Matilda's arms, as if they were suspects in a despicable crime. She must have decided their cloth bodies, constructed more like stuffed animals than the baby dolls that struck fear in her pediophobe heart, were relatively harmless, because a moment later she patted her knees and said, "Sure, sugar booger, come on up."

In the process of being lifted, Matilda lost her grip on the dolls and they slumped to the floor, blessedly facedown, their permanent smiles and sightless embroidered eyes hidden from view. Amanda made no attempt to pick them up, instead settling back on the arm of the rocking chair with Tilly snuggled against her. The little girl gazed curiously from her sister to Olivia's breast for a long time, then patted Amanda's chest through her faded Metallica Ride the Lightning t-shirt.

Olivia didn't care for the macabre image of the man being electrocuted on the back, but she couldn't complain when Amanda slipped off her pajama bottoms after the kids were in bed and strutted around the apartment in just the t-shirt—her long hair concealed the guy's skeletal face, anyway—and panties that seldom covered both cheeks. Ride the lightning, indeed.

"Why do sissy get food there?" Matilda asked, with the earnestness of her older brother and the inquisitiveness of her big sister. But whereas the older children regarded feedings with wary glances and, at one point, outright disgust ("What is she doing to your boobies!" Jesse had shrieked, the first time Amanda nursed in front of her), Tilly was still fascinated.

The decision to let the older children observe—or not observe, if they preferred—their new sister's mealtimes had been a topic of serious discussion for weeks, before and after Samantha's arrival. Amanda had no reservations, maintaining that it was a healthy, natural part of motherhood, and one they would want to perform promptly once Samantha got the hang of it.

While Olivia mostly agreed, and hadn't shied from using the SNS around her daughters, it had taken longer to feel comfortable baring a breast in front of her son. She was discreet, and Noah had grown bored of the whole process after the third or fourth time, bless his heart, but she'd been on the lookout for any changes in his behavior. Thankfully he was the same introspective, quiet, dance-obsessed little guy as before. Olivia hated that she still worried about his background sometimes—it was so easy to forget, until he asked questions like, "Did I do that when I was a baby?" and it all came flooding back to her. She hadn't known how to respond; whether Ellie had ever breastfed or not was anybody's guess, and Alexa Pearson couldn't even afford a crib, let alone an SNS or the supplements needed to induce natural lactation. Not to mention the handful of failed foster homes.

"No, sweetheart," she'd finally answered, heart heavy. "You drank from bottles. Like Tilly did when she first came home, remember? I made her formula and warmed it under the faucet. That's what you drank, too."

"Okay. Good," had been the decisive response. "I don't think I would like it the way Sammie drinks it. No offense, Mom."

She'd had to laugh at that.

Meanwhile, Jesse refused to believe she had ever suckled, period. "Hush up, Mama," was her automatic response whenever Amanda teased her about it, poking lightly at her squirmy six-year-old body. The child was so boneless she was practically reptilian.

"You want me to take this one?" Amanda asked of Matilda's question, eyebrow raised amusedly at Olivia. They had both fielded the preschooler's many pop quizzes about nursing, usually with whichever mother wasn't performing the task acting as spokeswoman, but apparently the answers weren't satisfactory to a three-year-old.

"I got it." Olivia cast a fond smile up at Amanda and patted Samantha's bottom rhythmically. The baby was a blink or two away from full sleep, but her hand remained cupped possessively at Olivia's breast. Just like Mama. "Sammie eats this way because mommies' bodies make milk for their babies, bug. And this is where the milk comes from."

"Like cows?" Jesse had asked, when given the same explanation.

Matilda was slightly more decorous than her elder sister. She nodded carefully, as if processing some dubious information. One day, she would make an excellent journalist. Or, even better, a judge. "Like crying," she said, repeating the less bovine comparison Amanda had made to Jesse—when the detective finished laughing, that is—after the cow comment.

"Yes, sweet girl, like crying." Olivia grazed the pad of her thumb down Matilda's cheek, and then the other side, tracing imaginary tear tracks and pushing out her bottom lip in a silly pout. "The way your eyes can make tears when you're sad. Mama's breasts can make milk when Sammie's hungry."

Head tipped back on Amanda's shoulder, Matilda looked up at her mama wonderingly and patted the band t-shirt again, matching the soft beat of Olivia's hand on Samantha's diapered bottom. "Is it owie?"

"Nope. Not owie." Amanda folded both lips over her teeth and chomped them lightly against Matilda's shoulder, making the little girl giggle and scrunch the shoulder to her ear. "Feels just like that, Tilly-billy."

Well. Maybe once your nipples were no longer so sore and cracked they actually bled, Olivia thought. That had been an experience, and had put quite a damper on foreplay for a week or so, there near the beginning. "If this is the beauty of motherhood, I am deeply unimpressed," she'd groaned, as Amanda snickered and applied droplets of breast milk to her raw skin, and when that remedy didn't work—lanolin ointment. God's gift to nursing mothers. (Having the surrounding flesh kissed and caressed by Amanda's warm, sympathetic lips helped, too.)

"Can I have some?" Matilda asked next, taking both mothers by surprise. She'd made a similar query early on, but seemed to have forgotten it in the weeks since. Ever helpful, she reached out to pat Olivia's covered breast this time, clarifying her meaning, in case confusion was the reason behind the long silence. "From there."

"Umm . . . " Olivia glanced down at the nearly empty bottle on her chest, fretting her lower lip for a moment. The books all said it was normal for a child Matilda's age to make such a request; that it was equally fine to assent. But Olivia wasn't entirely convinced. She didn't want to be the reason her daughter regressed or ended up in therapy before she reached high school.

"Tell you what, Tilly Vanilli," Amanda piped in, resting a hand on Olivia's shoulder for a reassuring squeeze. I got this. "Next time Mama's feeding Sam, I'll let you give it a try too, okay? You might not like the taste, though. It's awful sweet, huh Mommy?"

That, Olivia could absolutely attest to—the sweetness. It had been an accident, at least the first time. Amanda's hormones were up and down in the weeks immediately following Samantha's birth, the increased prolactin and oxytocin her body produced making her, by turns, disinterested in sex ("How 'bout tonight I just watch, babe?") and insatiably horny ("Woman, get your ass in this bed right quick"). But it was that first postpartum orgasm that really got their attention. Amanda had looked just as startled as Olivia when her nipples started to leak, the cream-colored fluid dribbling down the sides of her breasts, towards her armpits. "Aw, shit," she'd muttered, grabbing a throw blanket to dab herself dry. "Sorry."

Then, in a totally inspired and uncharacteristically spontaneous moment, Olivia had requested, "Let me," and—permission granted—leaned in to lap up the milk with her tongue. She didn't make a habit of consuming Amanda's milk (that was for their baby girl), and the detective had taken to pumping before sex to reduce spillage, but the eroticism in that first taste, the unexpected mellow sweetness, like innocence with a drop of vanilla, had awakened in Olivia a passion like she'd never known. She craved Amanda now, more than ever before. And once in a while, if that lovely, soothing nectar happened to find its way past her lips, then so be it.

"Mm-hmm." Cheeks aflame, Olivia ushered herself back into the present, where Matilda was agreeing amiably to the arrangement, as the little sweetheart agreed to almost everything, and Amanda was grinning knowingly at Olivia's red face. Shush, Olivia mouthed, and stuck her tongue out at the blonde, whose response was to grin even harder.

After a year of marriage and close to two years living together, they had developed their own private language of sorts—mostly hand signals and facial expressions—for discussing sensitive topics in front of the children. A few revolved around work (the Shaka sign near one ear either meant an important phone call, usually with the chief, or being summoned back to the precinct; murders were described by the weapon of choice: finger guns, air-stabbing, invisible nooses around crooked necks, and so on), but the majority were sexual in nature. Scissors cutting through imaginary paper. A quick, lizardlike swipe of the tongue. Index and middle fingers beckoning suggestively, sometimes incorporating a third digit, if the messenger was feeling frisky.

Tonight, Amanda introduced a new one: an upraised eyebrow and a fist brought down on its side, like a gavel, against her leg. She repeated the motion a few times, while Olivia stared, nose and brow crinkled in confusion, and finally guessed, "Hammer?"

"I was going for pounding or banging, but that works," Amanda said, conceding with an easy shrug. She flashed another devilish wink and a smile. Postpartum couldn't keep Amanda Jo Rollins-Benson or her libido down for long, no sir.

"At least you didn't say f-i-s-t-i-n-g."

"Ooh, Captain." Amanda puckered her lips, elongating the word. Ooohh. "Dirty."

Before Olivia could think up a decent comeback, Jesse marched into the room, took one look at the breast Olivia had removed from Samantha's slack mouth to dab with a burp cloth, and threw her hands up in exasperation. "Oh Lord," she said loudly, shielding her eyes and peering through a crack in her small fingers. "Is it gone yet?"

Olivia clucked her tongue, but peeled off the medical tape and unwound the SNS from her neck and shoulders, setting it aside on the nightstand. She tucked her breast back into the loose camisole she was wearing, and announced wryly, "You can look, Jesse Eileen. My hideous deformity will no longer offend thine eye."

"Huh?" Jesse lowered her hand guardedly, face scrunched up in an expression that, according to Amanda, the little girl had inherited from Olivia.

"Think about it. All that eye-fucking we used to do?" the detective had said, when Olivia pointed out that it was unlikely any of their children would inherit her physical traits. "And you were there for her birth. I'm just sayin', you could be the father, we don't know . . . "

It had been impossible not to giggle at the notion, especially when Amanda went on to add that she'd been present for Olivia's introduction to Noah—the first to lay eyes on him in fact, while Olivia was the first to free him from the womblike dresser drawer, to hold him and mother him—therefore, she, Amanda, was clearly the baby daddy.

Clearly.

That left Matilda, their little fairy child, who was just as likely to have sprung from the flowers and sunshine she exuded as from any human birth parents, and baby Samantha, whom Olivia truly had impregnated Amanda with—she was the one to insert the syringe and release the donor sperm that fertilized Amanda's egg.

Maybe she really would pass some things on to her kids, after all. Considering the hodgepodge of DNA in their family, Olivia's chances seemed as good as anyone else's.

"Never mind," she told Jesse, waving her eldest daughter over to the rocker, where she could marvel at her baby sister up close. Luckily, Samantha had received a warm welcome from all her siblings, with only some minor glimpses of jealousy since her debut three and a half months ago.

Noah had expressed disappointment that he hadn't gotten a brother this time, but he brightened when Olivia listed all the fun things he could teach Samantha that he'd been too young to teach his other sisters—namely dance. Miss Jess, sassy little britches that she was, had also been the hardest to sell on adding a new member to the household ("I think we have enough already," she'd said, dead serious, when her mothers announced the pregnancy), but now she was Samantha's biggest champion and the only person capable of making the baby laugh. They went into hysterics together for no other reason than a silly noise or a surprise sneeze. And Matilda thought baby Sam was hers, plain and simple. If allowed, she would have carted the little one around like her Frozen dolls.

But the wonder of a quiet, sleeping infant wasn't lost on the older children, no matter how well Samantha had acclimated. When baby didn't sleep, no one in the Rollins-Benson family slept.

"Whatcha need, pumpkin?" Olivia asked softly, gathering the little girl into the crook of her left arm, alongside the rocking chair. It was her weaker side, the one that throbbed from shoulder to wrist on rainy days, and the one she habitually rotated to dispel stiffness (didn't work), but it never felt defective when she held her children.

Jesse swiped at the cobweb of blond hair that always seemed to knit itself across her forehead, and gazed up with an expression so serious Olivia knew she was about to get bushwhacked. In what way she couldn't say, but the forty-five pounds of first-grader next to her, clad in Noah's outgrown Spider-Man pajamas, was gearing up for something big. "I have an important question, Mommy," Jesse said, her somber tone making it difficult for Olivia to keep a straight face. "Hear me out, okay?"

"Okay . . . " Olivia tucked in her bottom lip, suppressing a giggle. She didn't know many six-year-olds who used phrases like "hear me out," but then, she didn't know many six-year-olds being raised by an Olivia Benson and an Amanda Rollins, either.

"I think you should let me 'n Tilly 'n Noah sleep with you and Mama tonight. In your bed." Jesse exhaled heavily, as if a huge weight had just lifted from her small, polyester-adorned frame. Sometimes she resembled Amanda so identically, whether in personality, facial features, build, or pattern of speech, it was uncanny. Look out, world. "We can help y'all take care of Sammie if she wakes up."

"Is that so?" Olivia snuck an amused glance at Amanda, whose face was nestled in Matilda's curls under the pretense of giving kisses, but whose shoulders were noticeably quaking with stifled laughter. Turning her attention back to Jesse, Olivia cleared her throat and leaned in for a secretive exchange. "You know what's funny?" she stage-whispered, her forehead almost pressed against the little girl's. "I don't think I heard a question anywhere in there."

Without missing a beat, Jesse ducked down to look Olivia square in the eye, placing a hand on both of her shoulders and whispering, "Please, Mommy?"

It all became very clear what was happening then, especially when Olivia spotted her son peeking around the doorframe from the lit hallway, straining to overhear. She and her wife were being played like a couple of well-rosined violins, their two older children guiding the bows. The little stinkers had sent Matilda in first, to soften them up before working the real angle: securing a family sleepover in Mommy and Mama's bed.

The worst part wasn't discovering that her kids were evil geniuses, or that they thought she and Amanda were gullible saps; it was realizing that their plan was working. Despite her better judgment and all the parenting tips that discouraged co-sleeping, Olivia felt a strong urge to say yes. She suddenly and desperately wanted her babies close, even if it meant not getting a good night's sleep herself, even if it set back the little bit of progress they'd made at keeping all the kids in their own beds for full nights at a time.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with that weird cartoon I told y'all not to watch earlier, would it?" Amanda asked, in a wry voice that suggested she knew that was exactly what this was about.

"Ma-a-a-ybe," Jesse drawled, assuming such an innocent pose, a halo practically dinged into existence above her, as golden as her hair.

"Jesse Eileen . . . "

While the little girl attempted to verbally tap dance her way out of trouble with Mama, Olivia tried to make sense of the sudden, overwhelming need to have her children and Amanda near. She always cherished their time together, sometimes barely unable to contain her eagerness to leave work and be home with them again.

Returning to the job after Samantha's birth had been particularly poignant and painful; Olivia wanted to be there for every moment of her daughter's rapidly changing development. Each day brought with it something new and awe-inspiring, everything from the infant trying to vocalize (so far "agoo" and raspberry noises were her entire lexicon) to discovering her hands and feet. She hadn't gotten those early months with Noah or Jesse, and duty had frequently called her away from baby Tilly. So much lost time she would never get back.

But this was different, even beyond that. She had expected some anxiety, with the anniversary coming up—it was unavoidable, really, although the past two years had been easier, with the distraction of a new relationship with Amanda, then a new marriage. Nothing would compare to that first year, when she almost couldn't leave the apartment, and the ten year anniversary would inevitably seem significant. Tomorrow was only nine years. Nine years since Lewis had stepped quietly from the shadows and changed her whole world. Why did it feel like she should be looking over her shoulder, holding onto her family just a little tighter? Why did it feel like she was running out of time?

Realizing she had let her thoughts run away with her—falling into that catastrophic thinking Lindstrom warned her about—she dismissed the knot in her stomach and motioned Noah into the bedroom, smiling encouragingly when he hung back at first. It was probably a boy thing, that hesitation to join in with a gaggle of girls, but Olivia worried about his tendency to watch from the sidelines. She knew what it was to be an outsider in her own home, with her own mother. Her son was never going to feel that way, as long as she had breath in her lungs.

"Come here, little man," she said, making room for him to sit on her knee. He obliged happily, almost skipping forward the last few steps, and assuaging most of her concern with a wide grin, all dimples and disheveled curls. Then, just as quickly as her fear had reared its ugly head, it disappeared altogether when Noah looked down at his baby sister with complete adoration.

"What do you think, Mama?" Olivia asked, sliding her gaze in Amanda's direction with added emphasis, indicating which parent the children should be focusing their coercive tactics on. "Do we have room for three more?"

Crestfallen, Amanda gave a defeated little huff at the sight of three sets of blue eyes—and Olivia's—turned hopefully up at her. She bopped her fist against her thigh again, the signal growing weaker with each repetition. The poor thing really wanted to get laid tonight. "But . . . "

"Yeah, Mama, can we?"

"Can we, Ma?"

"Pease."

As long as she was already fighting dirty, Olivia decided she might as well contribute a pouty lip to the kids' efforts. That did it. Amanda groaned, relenting almost at once with a grouchy, drawn out, "Fine." But she was smiling when their children celebrated with a hushed cheer—Noah and Jesse exchanged a silent high-five—and scampered over to the bed, the older two hoisting Matilda by upraised arms onto the tall queen mattress.

"I'm gonna have blue balls now, I hope you know," Amanda murmured, easing their sleeping daughter out of Olivia's arms to be deposited in the bedside bassinet. Plans were to move Jesse into Noah's room soon (promises of a bunk bed required) and set up the full crib for Samantha in Matilda's room, but neither of them had the heart to make the transition just yet.

Subsequently, sex had become a catch-as-catch-can occurrence, often taking place in random corners of the apartment, and at the oddest hours of the day. The breast milk incident, for example, had been a nooner, while the kids were at the park with Lucy, and Samantha napped in her swing. Gigi, the long-suffering bystander to her owners' sexual antics, had kept watch over the baby while her mothers wrestled on the couch.

Blue balls seemed like a very real possibility, if they didn't get some privacy—some unrushed, unrestrained orgasms—soon. Maybe a weekend away, just the two of them . . . . It didn't even need to be someplace fancy or expensive. Just somewhere they could ravish each other for two or three days straight, without keeping one eye on the door, an ear tuned to the slightest sound. Amanda's birthday had already come and gone a month ago, their one-year anniversary a month before that, but they didn't need an occasion for weekend getaway sex. Olivia liked surprising her wife for no particular reason, anyway. The delight in Amanda's eyes was reason enough.

"Sorry, love," Olivia whispered in the detective's ear, as they strolled to the bed, an arm around each other's waists and Sammie secure in the crook of her mama's elbow. "I just . . . want everybody close tonight. I'll give your sad little balls my undivided attention another time."

"You better." Amanda followed the good-natured warning with a playful pinch to Olivia's rear, her lightweight pajama bottoms not offering much in the way of resistance. But instead of teasing Olivia with more pinches when she squirmed from the touch, Amanda pulled her in and quietly asked, "You feeling okay, darlin'?"

"Mm-hmm."

And as Olivia piled onto the bed, swallowed up by an octopodlike collection of arms and legs—including Amanda's, once the baby was safely in her bassinet—she said with absolute sincerity and contentment, "I'm feeling just fine."

. . .