Ziva felt the man's eyes raking over her body. She cringed. She was only in the grocery store. It was probably only a momentary glance. But it felt like he was touching her, running his hands along her neck, around her sides, across her stomach.
His fingers reached from behind her to pull her hair away from her ear. His fingers lingered and then his lips licked the sweat and dirty from her neck. She twitched away from him, trying to escape.
Now that she had had a few days to recover, she found herself unable to be within a few feet of a man. Except for Gibbs of course. She trusted him.
'Gibbs,' she thought desperately. 'Where are you?' she knew that if anyone could find her it would be him. She trembled as his hands ran up her sides, his lips still in her hair.
Gibbs had told her to talk to Tony. She didn't know what to say. She knew that if she was going to cringe away from someone, it was going to be him. She hadn't been able to trust him before and even if he had saved her, she couldn't reconcile herself. She had been too dazed before to remember the realization she had come to. It made her unable to trust him, herself and how she felt about him. It scared her.
Tony. Why had she thought of him now? All she wanted to do was forgive him. She had thought that this moment where she would forgive him would come as she was about to die. She knew that she wasn't going to die from this, although she would probably prefer it. His hands ran in around her stomach, grazing her breasts. She wanted Tony to know... Know what? As his fingers found the hem of her shirt and began to pull it up, she felt her first tear run down her face. She had screamed here, yelled here, begged to be killed, but she had not yet cried. And she wasn't crying about what he was doing to her, what she knew he was going to do to her. She cried because now she knew. And she would never be able to tell him. 'I love you Tony,' she thought. She hoped he could hear her. )
When she saw him again in the bullpen, the first time since she had gotten off the plane, her fears melted away. He made her feel safe. He had saved her. What ever had happened in the past between them didn't matter because, as they stared into each others eyes and McGee had to run out of the bullpen, they knew they loved each other. Even though the only way they could show it was through being partners and having each other's back. Not even Somalia and Saleem could override Rule 12 for them.