The first time that they had sex after she got back from Somalia was an unbearably traumatizing occurrence from which Tony had yet to recover. It was the night that she had sent in a resignation from Mossad to her father, when she asked Tony to come over to her new apartment and help her celebrate the event which marked her true intent to become a permanent fixture in all of their lives indefinitely. He was happy to get to spend time with her outside of work, since it had been rare since she had come back to them almost a month ago. He missed the old days, when they would watch movies together after work or have casual sex on the weekends or whenever else there was time, and he was hoping that the invitation to her home would be a step towards getting back to that level of comfort between them. Unbeknownst to him at the time was that Ziva had a much faster paced agenda to get them back to their old ways.

She greeted him at the door barefoot wearing a black silk robe with her hair flying around her face, which surprised him because he had figured she would have been more modest for their first friend date since she returned. Later he would decide that she was trying to overcompensate for the level of discomfort that she would have undoubtedly felt before instigating sex with the man who had saved her life and had admitted to being incapable of living without her, while drugged in Somalia. Admittedly, it was a very effective technique on her part to get him thinking about whether or not she was wearing underwear under her skimpy silk robe instead of the horrors that she had faced at Salem's hand.

She took a direct approach to propositioning him, and waited only a few seconds for him to put down the Chinese food on the kitchen table that he had brought for them to share before saying, as he was still turned away from her, "Tony, I need you to make love to me like you would have before so that I can feel like a whole woman again, not his victim."

He couldn't help but grin as he turned around to face her, but nevertheless he replied seriously. "There is no way that you're ready for that, Ziva."

"You let me worry about myself for once," She replied, as she stepped closer to him, invading the space that separated them, intentionally making her presence known to him, and allowing him to take her physical presence in fully, "I need to feel like everything can go back to normal, and I know that it might be soon, but I've always kept to my own schedule, so why should this be any different?"

He pulled away from the invasion of his personal space, still needing to keep his distance, "Because things are just different now, I'm different now when it comes to you."

"Please, Tony." She begged him, stepping back into his space.

The smell of sandalwood had overpowered him as she had with cat-like agility, physically pursued him with her presence. She had backed him into the kitchen counter, where he could not escape again. She was too much for him to resist, as she always had been. Truthfully he was being offered what he wanted and had longed for since even before she had started dating Rivkin last year and had stayed behind in Israel. He could not refuse her, even if it was against his better judgment to begin a physical relationship with her when so much was still unresolved between them, and she did seem confident that she was ready to take this step with him.

He took one of her curls in his hand and squeezed it between his fingers before making eye contact with her again, "Ok, Ziva. But I want to take this slow and I want you to tell me exactly what to do and if you want to stop all you have to do is say so and we'll stop…"

Her face broke out into a huge smile and she hugged him lovingly, almost like a big brother, which was peculiar considering the circumstances. She took him by the arm and escorted him to her new bedroom, which looked almost the same as her old bedroom before it had exploded. She sat down on the bed and faced him as he stood in front of her, making nervous eye contact with him and then looking away suddenly.

He began to get undressed in front of her, but she stopped him saying, "Let's skip all of the formalities."

He stared at her for a moment somewhat bewildered, it was so unlike the Ziva that he had experienced before to want to skip anything, but he could see that she was nervous and scared, so he obeyed her without question, and just slipped his shoes and pants off, leaving him in his boxers and dress shirt. He sat on the bed beside her, and put a hand on her thigh to which she smiled meekly at him, and she leaned over and pressed her lips to his for a moment as encouragement and then pulled away. He started to kiss her neck, and although she didn't pull away he could feel her muscles tense from the contact and she certainly wasn't making the hungry sounds that she used to make when he used the same move on her.

He couldn't help but stop and ask, "Ziva, are you sure that you want to do this?" He tried to lighten the mood, by jokingly assuring, "I promise that if you're not ready now, I'll still be willing in the future."

"Yes, Tony. I'm just trying to relax. I'll tell you if I want you to stop. Just keep going."

He knew that it would be different, but he had figured that since she was the one who had instigated it that there would be some passion in her left over, but there wasn't any to speak of. He kissed her and she let him, but the woman who once was too much for him in the bedroom, had completely shut down. He didn't understand why she was doing this, and he also couldn't figure out why he didn't just stop and say that he couldn't do it, when it was clearly too soon.

He gently laid her back and made sure that her head was resting comfortably on a pillow. He slowly slid a hand under her robe and brushed her with his index finger to see if she was ready. He could tell that she was completely dry and that she had nearly flinched when he touched her there, but before he could say anything, she had read his mind and spoke in a demure, very un-Ziva like voice, and said nervously, "I went and bought some stuff today, in case this was a problem. It's in the nightstand drawer right beside you."

He grabbed the lube out of the drawer, and instead of putting it on her, put it on himself reaching through his boxer shorts. He knew that he was going to have difficulty getting hard enough to make this whole thing work, as it was kind of important after all for him to be aroused. He gave himself a hand getting there, while she watched him intently without saying anything. He moved towards her, and aligned his body on top of hers, and made intense eye contact with her, trying to figure out if he should really continue with this. However the look that she was giving him was unreadable, anxious and longing all rolled into one, but when she pulled up her robe a little bit in order to give him better access to her, he took that as the sign that it was fine to continue.

He tried to maintain eye contact with her as gently entered, but she broke the eye contact and closed her eyes which he could tell had started watering with tears upon the contact. He was disgusted with himself that it had felt so good for him, while she was obviously in some sort of pain from it.

He instinctively pulled her robe tightly around her body, protecting her from himself, and asked, "Are you okay? Should I stop?"

"No, please keep going."

"Ziva…" He started.

She interjected before he could finish, with faint desperation in her voice, "Tony, please. Please don't stop. I need this"

He thrust again and she gasped painfully, visibly weeping, as her face became distorted, and although she had assured him that she wanted to continue, she cried and tensed though the entire act. Each time he would try to stop, she would beg him to continue, pleading with him that she needed it. It took him forever to finish, as he had to close his eyes and block out everything that he heard coming from her body. His mind focused on her warmth and tightness, and the feeling of the silk as he rubbed up against it, eventually it settled on one of their previous coitus sessions that had been particularly steamy, and after what seemed like an eternity he finally found release and rolled off of her.

He lay beside of her for a while before even registering what he had just done. He hadn't been paying attention to her for a long time, but suddenly his mind snapped into focus, and he realized that he had just treated her the same way that her captors had. The only difference was that she hadn't let him stop when he had wanted to. He looked over to her, actually scared that he had caused her even more damage and saw that she had fallen asleep. She looked peaceful, and he took this opportunity to give her a soft kiss on the forehead, before getting up.

He surveyed the room before he left and decided that he didn't want her to wake up half naked, disheveled, and on top of the covers, remembering how he had ravaged her while she cried the night before. So instead of just leaving her, he gently wrapped her robe tightly around her body, making sure that she wasn't exposed and slipped her under the covers. He pushed her hair out of her face for a second before he left the bedroom to get a last glimpse of her sleeping. Before he left her apartment, he put the Chinese food away so that she could have it when she woke up, made sure that he'd turned all of the lights off, and locked the door behind him. He wasn't normally so attentive to anyone, but the guilt was building up in him, and he decided on his drive home that he would send her flowers tomorrow also.

He had gone on feeling as if he had raped her all over again, until a couple of days later when she came into the office in a remarkably pleasant mood, and leaned over his shoulder putting her mouth up to his ear, reminiscent of the days before Somalia, and asked him to come over again that night. Although he was relieved that she hadn't held it against him, he wouldn't soon forget the pain that he must have caused her and that in return had been reflected back on him.

Ziva had an entirely different take on the events that had transpired, and when she woke up the next morning to find that he wasn't there, she realized that she had probably scared him for life with her actions from the evening. She knew that it had been hard for him to make love to her, while she was in such an emotional state, and truthfully she hadn't intended on crying the entire time, it had just happened. Although she hadn't enjoyed the sex in the physical sense, she had felt so relieved afterwards. Her fear that no one would ever be able to see her as a woman again, but merely as a victim of rape, had been lifted. In a way, Tony had cleansed her, and she didn't feel as dirty anymore, now that the last person who had touched her was him.

Not long after she had woken up, she heard her intercom buzz from downstairs, saying that they had a delivery for her. Once she got the beautiful white daffodils upstairs, she read the card, which said simply, "Zivas for my Ziva."