*I just felt...it was about damn time. But things don't always go as planned...

Chapter 10

The Team

The three worked steadily into the afternoon, until Ziva noticed that even she, who with Mussad had worked under the most grueling of conditions and yet managed to remain clearheaded, could feel the edges of numbness creeping steadily closer. Closing her folder with a snap that startled both of the other semi-dozing occupants of the conference room. "Come on, we are leaving. We can do no more until we sleep. McGee, go home. Tony, with me."

"Yes ma'am," said Tim, grinning at Tony with a suggestive wink. Tony glared back.

Ziva drove with the careful precision of one who was either buzzed on suds or drugged with exhaustion. Either way, she knew that she was a danger on the road…her response time was for shit. Pulling into her drive, she turned to the big brute slumped in her passenger seat. Engine idling, she took the time to simply enjoy being able to just sit and study the man she'd steadily, but irrevocably, fallen in love with over the past couple of years. This ridiculous, pompous, overbearing, conceited, hilarious, charming, sinfully handsome angel named Anthony Marcus DiNozzio. God, she loved to make him laugh…loved that dimple that popped out, even if the laughter was aimed at her. Sometimes she did things deliberately just to sound stupid so she could see him smile…lord forgive her for that awful, non-feminist goal…

Sighing, she grasped his shoulder and shook it…calling out his name, trying to wake him. "Tony…Tony. Tony, wake up. Tony…"

"Wha…?" he looked so adorably rumpled and crumpled and…grumpy. Easing him out of his seatbelt as she would a testy toddler, Ziva herded him into the house. Explaining that she had to put fresh linens on the guest room bed, she left him swaying in the middle of the living room floor. Coming back fifteen minutes later, he was nowhere to be found.

Calling his name and searching throughout the house, she finally came to the very last place she expected him to be…the door to her room. Pushing it open she beheld the sight she'd been dreading, and secretly hoping for…admit it David, that of Tony lying spread eagle on her bed.

Pushing down her hormones, which were currently doing the cha cha, and ignoring her libido, which was happily encouraging them…she went directly to her partner and tried in vain to awaken him. After a fruitless twenty minutes she made a note to herself…once Anthony DiNozzio was asleep, it would take the detonation of ten weapons of mass destruction to awaken him…maybe. Coming to that conclusion, she mentally shrugged her shoulders…if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. So she stripped down to the bare essentials, pulled off Anthony's shoes and socks; and put them both under the covers. Setting her alarm for four the following afternoon, she turned off the lights and cuddled down against him. In no time, she had joined him in slumber.

Tony awoke feeling warm and rested. A soft female form fit snuggly, back to front, along his length, and his arm rested on a warm taut hip. He resisted opening his eyes…he couldn't bear to see the face of the woman he'd brought home this time. He chose to lie there and pretend…just pretend for awhile that it was Ziva he held cradled lovingly in his arms. His fierce Israeli goddess, his scary warrior partner…the woman he loved. Her hair was tantalizingly close to his face and he inhaled her scent. God, she even smells like Ziva… Unconciously, he pulled her closer and nuzzled her neck, growling low in his throat and thrusting his hips into her derriere.

Ziva arched her back in response and gasped as she awoke to the feel of Tony's hands gently palming her breasts and running the pads of his thumbs over her sensitized nipples. She could feel the energy surging through her with each pass of his lips over her pulse point and each brush of his thumb over her buds. Encouraged by her responsiveness, and fueled by his fantasy, Tony's hand ghosted a path down her quivering abdomen and entered her panties, testing her readiness by brushing her glistening flesh and testing its moistness.

Finding her core soaked, surprised a groan of suppressed longing to explode from him and he went wild. Ripping at the zipper of his trousers in a fury to get his skin in contact with hers, he pulled her panties off in one violent twist of fabric and, after pulling her leg over his straining thigh, was buried to the hilt before she could blink. Speechless with the ferocity of their joining, she found that pleasure was not out of reach, she could feel its sinewy body unfolding, coil by coil with each thrust, each grunt, each heart wrenching groan of ecstasy that escaped from his mouth. He grasped her face and turned her head toward him, kissing her passionately as they raced toward the stars.

Panting, sweaty and tangled in the aftermath, they lay silent. Neither knew what to say… Tony looked up for the first time, and beheld the face of the woman he'd just screwed the lights out of.

"Look, I'm sorr…Ziva?!" He looked horror stricken. She had had a serene smile on her face that was wiped away by his words and…that look. He surprised a look of intense pain before she was able to mask it behind the cool Mussad officer once again.

"What, Tony…you have always wanted to see me naked. Well, now you have bragging rights. You should be thanking me." She pointedly rolled over and pulled the covers up. "You rudely interrupted my sleep, either shut up, or go to the guest room…your choice."

His chest squeezed at the undercurrent of pain in her voice. God, he'd really screwed up…royal. He didn't know if he could ever get her to trust him again. "Ziva…I…uh…"

Her whisper was broken…"Just go…please"

He gathered his clothes, and left closing the door softly on the way out.