A/N: Little warning for some more adult content towards the end of this chapter, but it's not nearly as explicit as scenes I've written before. It shouldn't offend too many, I don't think. Apologies in advance if it does.

After an hour in the spa, Tony and Ziva returned to their cabin with the intention of getting McGee on the line. They had slightly more information courtesy of Sterling and Jolene to share, and while sharing everything via email provided a layer of convenience to the investigation, Tony didn't want the team at home to get the impression that all they were doing was eating, swimming and socializing. Even if that was kind of the truth. Especially since it was kind of the truth. Although Ziva definitely wasn't on board with it.

"Promise me," she began as soon as the door to their cabin was closed, "that you will never again make me sit in communal water with strangers."

Tony smiled at her back as she headed for the safe to get the laptop out again. "What do you call a swimming pool?" he pointed out.

"Chlorinated," she replied. "And there is a lot more room in a swimming pool."

"Ah, so it was the close quarters you objected to," he said, and then bobbed his head from side to side. "It did kind of have an 80s swinger's party vibe to it. But you could do worse than Sterling. That guy was ripped for his age."

Ziva turned to stare at him, laptop in hand, as if she couldn't work out whether he was serious. "I prefer older men," she stated. "Slightly older men. Not…retirees."

Slightly older was good enough for the decade-older Tony. He took a seat on the couch and Ziva sat beside him and sorted out the laptop.

"You have not promised me yet," she said as she booted up.

"Hmm?"

Ziva glanced at him. "I asked you to promise me that you will never make me get in a spa again with strangers."

"I can think of ten other things off the top of my head that you've had to do in this line of work that are way grosser than that," Tony pointed out. "But you're taking issue with the spa?"

"I would rather spend time in Syria," Ziva stated.

Tony believed her. "Okay. I promise that when the choice comes up in the future, I'll take the spa and you can take Syria."

"Deal," she said. She brought up Skype and dialed McGee, and then gasped to herself and quickly got up.

"Where are you going?" he called as she ran to the bedroom.

"I will be right back," she called.

"You need to go pee?" he teased.

"Tony?"

Tony's eyes fell to the laptop screen at the sound of his name. McGee's face had popped up in the video screen, and he looked confused and kind of grossed out. "Oh, hi," Tony said. "How's it going?"

"Fine," McGee said. "How's it going with you?"

"We've made a lot of progress," Tony said, and then looked up at Ziva returning to the couch. She'd covered up her bikini with an ankle-length dress, and while Tony was personally disappointed by the development, he understood it. "Oh, you wanted to put clothes on."

"I thought I would try it out," Ziva returned, and then sat down next to him again. "Hello, McGee."

McGee looked vaguely irritated. "Enjoying yourselves?" he asked.

"Yes," Tony replied, just to mess with him, while Ziva replied, "I had to get into a spa with strangers."

Tony rolled his eyes and sighed. "You're going to have to let go of that, Ziva."

"No, I do not think I do."

"Hey!" Gibbs barked, a moment before he poked his head (halfway) into frame. "Shut up and give me a sit-rep."

Tony opened his mouth to point out the conflict in his statement, but Ziva put her hand on his knee to stop him before he did.

"In addition to the information we sent through this morning," she said, "we have just had a conversation with another couple of repeat cruisers, Sterling and Jolene Derrie. We mentioned to them that we had made friends with the Paulsons and Roses, and they warned us against crossing them."

"Yeah, they said that on their last cruise a man was attacked, and he thought John Paulson was responsible," Tony said.

"The timing of this cruise coincides with the one Ken Klein went on," Ziva told them.

Borin shoved her head into frame from the other side. "Our naked man?" she said.

Tony and Ziva both jumped slightly at her sudden appearance.

"That's him," Tony said, and he wondered how many other people were lurking behind the camera in the bullpen. "They didn't see the attack, so it's hearsay. But it adds to the evidence suggesting that the Paulsons are living outside the law somehow."

McGee moved his head around so that he could be seen between Gibbs and Borin. "You said there was a crew member that you think could be helping them?"

"Herschelle, yes," Ziva said with a nod. "I do not know his surname, but—"

"Phillips," McGee said. "I tracked him down. "He's been working on the Caribbean Carnivalé for the last two and a half years."

"Criminal record?" Tony asked hopefully, even if he knew it was unlikely. Cruise lines probably didn't like to take on crew without a clean record.

McGee shrugged. "Not in the United States. Beyond that, I can't tell you."

"You think he's giving Sacha Paulson a little sumpthin' sumpthin'?" Borin asked, and waggled her eyebrows.

Tony looked at Ziva. She was the sumpthin' sumpthin' expert in this case.

"Sacha suggested that it was an eyes only affair, but I sensed an inappropriate closeness," Ziva stated. "He was standing behind her chair and leaning right over her shoulder. Invading her personal space, yes? And there were a few private little smiles. They seemed very close." She went on, seemingly oblivious to the rolling of Gibbs' eyes and the smirks that McGee and Borin shared. "Oh, and we saw them just now on the deck with John Paulson. Sacha and Herschelle were further apart but laughing together. John did not look pleased."

"So you think John might think there is something going on between them," Gibbs guessed.

"And he is putting up with it because Herschelle serves a purpose."

"A monetary one," Tony said. "I played ball with these guys this morning, and I got the impression that John in particular is keenly aware that his marriage is falling apart, and he wants to fix it."

"Yes, but Sacha is talking about running away to Fiji," Ziva added. She and Tony shared a knowing look.

"How does any of this gossip prove or disprove that they were involved in Will Crawford's death?" Gibbs wanted to know.

"It doesn't yet," Tony said. "But it tells us that there are cracks that can work at until that information spills out."

"There was a lot of talk about the business between Sacha and Julie," Ziva offered.

"The business?" Borin repeated. "Like…the Mob?"

"Didn't you infiltrate the Mob once, Tony?" McGee asked.

"Yes," Tony said, feeling a little pride in his past. "But she doesn't mean the Mob." He looked at Ziva to check. "Right?"

"Right," Ziva said. "I mean, they are just referring to some activity they are involved in as a business. And I am sure they are not talking about John's toy business. I get a strong feeling that the women want out, but do not feel that they can leave."

Gibbs sighed, stood up and walked away. His voice carried back to them. "Let me know when you have something,"

"No problem, boss," Tony said. He watched McGee and Borin's eyes follow the same path as they tracked Gibbs' exit from the room. When he was gone, Borin gently shoved McGee's shoulder with her hand, and he shifted over to make space for her beside him. Borin got to her knees and crossed her forearms in front of her on McGee's desk.

"Hey, tell us about these Peace Corps hippies," Borin said.

Ziva shrugged. "Met in Africa, got corporate jobs, moved to Samaná and perhaps became drug dealers."

"Doesn't make sense," Borin said.

"Have you looked into them yet, McGee?" Tony asked.

McGee huffed to himself. "Yeah, I did a Goggle search on Nadine plus Rodney drug dealers Samaná."

Tony and Ziva shared a look.

"You find anything?" Tony asked, poking him.

McGee scowled, and Tony grinned. By George, the boy had something.

"Not about them specifically," he said, and Borin turned her head sharply to look at him with surprise. "But a lot about drug dealers in Samaná. There was a report that some have been using the dense cover of the jungle there to grow coca plants."

Tony cocked his head to the side. "What's that, now?" he asked just as Ziva and Borin more or less asked the same thing.

McGee nodded with acknowledgement. "Yeah."

"Dense jungle," Ziva repeated. "The kind of place that a pair of conservationists might spend a lot of time."

"Certainly wouldn't raise suspicious eyebrows," Tony said.

"We need to find these two," Borin said, and looked at McGee. "You need a hand? I can probably get one of my guys on it."

"Uh, no. I got it," McGee said, clearly fearing the wrath of Gibbs if he said yes. "But thanks."

"We will push for more information here," Ziva said.

Borin nodded. "Meanwhile, I'll go back to the previous cases on board the Caribbean Carnivalé and see if Herschelle Phillips is mentioned in any of the files."

"Has your other case petered out?" Ziva asked her.

Borin shook her head. "Nope. But I'm waiting for ballistics results to come in so I thought I'd check in here." She paused to size Tony up. "Did you really infiltrate the Mob, DiNozzo?" she asked.

Tony sat up straighter. "In Baltimore," he said, ignoring McGee's sigh. "Sent a boss to jail."

Borin narrowed her eyes and looked at McGee. "Is that true?"

"Yes," McGee groaned. "Please don't get him talking about it."

"You're just jealous," Tony told him.

Ziva held up her hand between Tony and the screen. "Okay. We can talk about that another time. McGee? We will check in again tomorrow, but not until the afternoon. We are docking in Haiti in the morning and we are going to try to spend more time with our new friends."

McGee looked dubious. "Do they really like you?"

Tony glared at him. "Hey. Tom and Zara are incredibly charming and likeable," he insisted.

McGee popped an eyebrow. "Really? So why can't Tony and Ziva be like that?"

Tony opened his mouth, but Ziva beat him to his retort.

"Shut up, McGee," she said sharply, and then abruptly cut off the video feed. Tony grinned to himself. As far as he was concerned, Ziva was perfectly charming.

…

At 2130, Tony and Ziva left the Japanese restaurant they'd had dinner at and went in search of dessert. They wandered with other guests down the grand promenade down the center of the ship that was flanked by retail stores and cafés, and ended up in a dessert parlor that miraculously only had two children in it. One of the kids, a boy who looked about eight or nine, had an enormous ice cream sundae in front of him that was almost the size of his head. The other, a girl who was a few years older, had some kind of cake piled high with pink and blue cotton candy. The sight of both were enough to make Tony slightly nauseous, and when Ziva placed her order for a second sorbet in as many days, he decided that the fresh, light dessert was the better option and made it two. They took a seat near the back of the small parlor and settled in to wait out a little while longer before they would head up to the nightclub. Tony wasn't really in the mood for dancing—although he hadn't had the privilege to spin Ziva around the floor before—but they knew their friends would be. At least, that was what Sacha had told Ziva earlier in the day.

"I have a question," Ziva said, lowering her voice so that they wouldn't be heard. He doubted that the half dozen groups in the parlor with them would have overheard them anyway. Pop music was playing though speakers in the ceiling, and they were surrounded by chatter and laughter.

"What's that, honey?" he asked, and threw her a cutesy smile.

Ziva shot him one back, but she managed to make it look at little dangerous. "Do you miss this?"

"Miss what?"

Ziva glanced around them and then spoke carefully. "Being Tom," she said. "Or whoever you were in Baltimore."

He caught on. Undercover.

"When we spoke about it earlier, I saw a spark in you."

"You did?"

She nodded and cocked her head to the side. "Do you miss it?"

"What's to miss?" he asked. "We're doing the same thing now."

Ziva shook her head. "No, not the same thing," she said. "This is not as exciting."

This time, he cocked his head at her. "No? I guess that depends on your definition of exciting." Personally, Tony was more than happy to hang out in close, scantily-clad quarters with her for work purposes. Or any purposes.

Ziva smirked, but she continued to try to explain herself. "I imagine the stakes were higher in Baltimore. You had to do a lot more thinking on your feet. Improvise. You like that sort of thing. And I imagine it was a big-ticket item that would have gotten you a lot of attention. You are clearly proud of it, and I'm sure you have reason to be."

Tony raised his chin and narrowed his eyes and regarded her with mild suspicion. That was all true, but what was she getting at, exactly? "Yeah," he drew out.

"Are you bored?" she asked, point blank.

Tony blinked. "I…no," he stuttered, and frowned. "Why? Are you bored?" It occurred to him that she might be. Life at NCIS was undoubtedly more safe, secure…and boring…than like in the Mossad.

"No," she replied. "I enjoy what we do."

Tony leaned forward. "But you're not enjoying yourself here, are you?" He couldn't help grinning as he said it.

She looked as if she was searching for the diplomatic answer, but then sighed and dropped her head. "I…no," she admitted. "But it has only been two days. And I have spent most of that time drinking virgin cocktails and chatting with the girls."

"So it's like a regular weekend for you," he quipped.

She smirked. "Yes. If I am able to find a cross stitch class, this trip will be an exact replica."

He grinned. "Despite having a zip line, wave pool, theatre and ice skating rink, I don't think this ship has a gun range," he said, pointing to an activity she was likely to enjoy.

"That is probably for the best," she muttered, and then smiled at the waiter bringing over their orders. "Thank you," she said to him, and he disappeared again.

Tony picked up his spoon and eyed his dessert, deciding where to start. "Aside from our other goals for this trip, I think another one should be to not gain any weight. Or no more than five pounds."

"Do you want me to start yelling at you every time you eat something, like some of the other spouses on this boat?" Ziva offered.

"Oh, thanks, honey," he said, fairly certain she wasn't serious. "But that's not necessary."

Ziva shrugged it off. "Do you think you could do a trip like this on your own time?" she asked, moving the conversation back again.

"It's only been two days," he echoed. "Hard to tell. I'm not opposed to drinking by a pool in the sun, though." He eyed her. "Particularly if I'm with hot women in bikinis."

"Women, plural?" she asked. "How many do you need to make it worthwhile?"

He assumed the question was a trap. But she asked it in such a deadpan way that he knew she was just playing along. "Not sure," he said, then acted like he was thinking it over. "What are their measurements?"

Ziva snorted into her sorbet, and he decided that since she was in a good mood he could get away with being a little honest with her.

"I am enjoying it more with you than I would have with Borin," he told her. "Not that Borin's not fun. But you're, well, you."

She lifted her eyes from her dessert to assess his sincerity. When she found it fully intact, she gave him a warm smile that made his stomach flip. "We are a well-oiled machine, yes?"

That wasn't the point he'd been trying to make. But he thought she probably knew that. And she wasn't wrong. "Yeah. But I meant personally."

"So did I."

"Oh." He smiled. "So, you want to play shuffleboard with me?"

Ziva arched an eyebrow. "I have not heard it called that before."

His smile got bigger. "You haven't seen the way I do it."

Ziva pulled herself back and looked at him with suspicion. "Shuffling? I am not sure I want to anymore."

"Anymore? Suggesting that there was a time you wanted to?" He waggled his eyebrows, and he expected her to chicken out and change the subject. But she met him head on, as if she thought he was stupid for thinking otherwise.

"Do women who do not want to usually kiss you the way I did the other day?" she asked.

Tony had known Ziva for about eight years. In that time, he'd discovered that she considered turning the tables on him to be her second job. So he didn't know why he was so surprised that she had done just that with her comment, but he was. He opened his mouth, closed it again when he realized he didn't have anything to shoot back at her with, and then broke into a smile. "I guess not," he finally said, and then leaned forward as he regained his mental footing. "Let's unpack that comment," he said. "Am I to assume there was a certain intention on your part with the dinner and the movie and the drinks—" He stopped abruptly when he remembered that she'd been giving him a weird vibe that night, and that he hadn't been able to put his finger on what was going on with her. The realization smacked him in the face. "Wait…am I to assume?"

Ziva took a moment to lick sorbet off her spoon. "You left early," she said with a shrug.

Tony clenched his spoon in his fist and he could suddenly hear his heart beating rapidly in his ears. Was she serious? "Why didn't you ask me to stay?"

Ziva stared at her spoon as she swirled at through her melting dessert. She seemed to be considering how to answer that, and Tony resisted the urge to lean over and grab her hand. Finally, she looked up and shot him a small, self-conscious smile that didn't sit well on her face. "I don't know," she said with a shrug and another smile, and Tony thought that was probably true. "I did not want to…" She stopped and her eyes went to the ceiling as she tried to explain herself. "You wanted to leave. And I had not made the move I had intended to. So…I let you go."

Tony's heartbeat got stronger and he got a little lightheaded as he tried to come to grips with this. He'd been keen to move things along for a while—their kiss on the night the world was supposed to end was almost a distant memory now—but hadn't worked out how to bring it up with her. Now they found themselves in the middle of the conversation, he could barely believe it.

"You haven't let go of the intent, though. Right?"

She gave him that small, intimate smile of hers that always gave him tingles. "Of course not."

He sat back, heart hammering a million miles an hour as he watched her. This could be their moment. Finally. The thought made every nerve ending in his body come to life, and he shifted in his seat as his pants suddenly got a little tighter. God, just the thought that this could be happening—now, tonight—was more than enough to turn him on. He felt a flush creep up his neck and drew a long, shaky breath. "Well," he said, and then broke into another smile. "Suddenly, I'm not that interested in my lemon sorbet."

Ziva smiled. "Be honest. Were you ever?"

"Not really."

She gave him a sultry little smile that made his pants even tighter, and then put down her spoon, pushed back her chair and stood up. "Come with me," she said, cocking her head to the side and holding out her hand.

Tony quickly stood and grasped her hand, and the two of them left as quickly as they could without causing a scene. They headed for the nearest elevator and then climbed aboard along with four women in their 20s and an older couple who looked like they were up for a conversation. He smiled politely but then pointedly turned his attention to his companion, who was staring ahead at the elevator doors with that goddamn Mona Lisa smile on her face that made him crazy. His eyes fell to her neck, and the slightest trembling of her skin over her racing pulse made his mouth water. How many times had he found himself thinking about leaning over to kiss his way around her neck in the past? It had to be hundreds. He swore to God that he would not fall sleep tonight until he had coaxed the exact sound he wanted to hear out of her when he kissed her there.

When the elevator stopped at their deck, Ziva turned her head to give him a quick wink before she led him through the doors and down the long ship's hallway. Finally, they swept into their room with a speed usually reserved for takedowns, and by the time the door had slammed shut Ziva had her hands on his hips and was pulling herself up against him. She looked up at him with sultry eyes and parted lips, and for a moment he thought back eight years to a hotel room when they barely knew each other but were already keen to scratch the itch of attraction.

He never would have been able to predict what would happen between them after that.

"Are you ready?" Ziva breathed, stretching her neck so that her lips were just out of reach of his.

A smile jumped to his face at the question, and he lifted a hand to tunnel it through her hair. "Willing and able," he assured her.

He caught the corners of her mouth curl upwards for a fraction of a second, and then her lips were on his. There was no slow build up or introduction, just desperate hunger from the first second that made his brain release an overdose of endorphins through his body. He got lightheaded for a moment and moaned as he held on a little tighter to her, snaking his arm around her waist for balance. She made a noise against him, a laugh or moan or groan, but didn't stop kissing him. If anything, she got even more insistent, and Tony could not be more pleased about it. It killed him to think that she'd let him walk out the door the other night when she wanted him to stay, but it was clear to him right now that she regretted that decision.

Ziva gave his hips a tug and he followed her lead towards the bedroom. He smacked his elbow against the doorframe as they stumbled slightly and felt sudden pain jolt through his arm, making him hiss against her mouth. Ziva mumbled something he didn't catch before she pushed his jacket off his shoulders, and he soothed the rest of the pain by letting his hands roam all over her just like he'd always wanted to. They slid over her shoulders and down and around her back, over her perfect butt and as far down the backs of her thighs as he could reach. The return journey lifted the hem of her dress enough to get his fingertips on bare skin for a second or two, and he felt himself get a little dizzy again, this time with anticipation. He paused to press his palms into her lower back, right over those two perfect dimples he knew sat just above her ass, and he made a mental note to spend a long time kissing those dimples before the sun rose.

Her mouth suddenly dropped a few inches away from his as she stepped out of her heels, and she folded her leg backwards to climb onto the bed. She kept the front of his shirt in her fist, though, and pulled him with her onto the mattress with a molten look in her eyes he'd never seen before, but which sent shivers through him. With his pulse throbbing through his entire body, he crawled after her like she was his only source of air, and lay down on top of her body that suddenly seemed 50 degrees hotter than it had a minute ago. Another sultry smile played on her lips and she wrapped one of her legs around his hip, and he felt a wave of uncontrollable desire crash through him. How he'd managed to keep his hands and mouth off this woman for so long, he had no idea.

They shared another blistering kiss before Tony broke off and commenced his exploration of her neck, kissing and sucking at the soft skin as Ziva moaned and wrapped her fingers in his hair. The smell of her so close to him and the taste of her in his mouth was an overdose of sensation that he was keen to develop an incurable addiction to, and when Ziva took a shuddering breath against his ear and squeezed her thigh around his hip he got the message that she would be more than happy to indulge him. His hand slid down the side of her ribcage to her hip and back up again, up and down as he kissed her and tasted her. He felt his brain starting to cloud over, but it didn't matter. He had no complicated strategy here that he had to follow. He was just acting on base instinct to get as close to her as possible, touch her as much as he could, flood her veins with the same desire he felt and make them both cry out and writhe and never want to go back to the way things were before.

When he found a spot on her neck right below her right ear, Ziva practically whimpered his name before forcefully yanking the back of her shirt out of his pants. He grinned at the impatient move until she rolled her hips beneath him, pressing her pelvis harder into his and making him grunt with pleasure. She pulled even harder at his shirt.

"Off," she panted.

It seemed like a reasonable request. He pulled his mouth off her neck and rolled back far enough to wrestle his shirt over his head, and before he could roll back Ziva had shoved him all the way onto his back and had swung her leg over him. She rose up above him with a smile, planting her hands on his chest and sitting back over his hips. Color stained her cheeks and her hair fell in a stunning mess over her shoulders, and for a few seconds he couldn't believe that he was seeing her—his partner, his best friend, the person he spent most of his life looking across as desk at—like this. Undone, private, and extremely turned on.

How great had his life become?

He gripped her hips as she ran her fingernails lightly down his chest to his belly, and couldn't help shivering when she reached the more sensitive skin right above the waistband of his pants. Ziva smiled under dark eyes burning with desire, and he gripped the hem of her dress in his fists before giving it a tug.

"Off," he returned, but it was more of a warning than a request. He didn't wait for her to help before he sat up and pulled the dress off her and dropped it to the floor. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down onto him, and as his hands started exploring the skin on her back, he took a moment to smile at her. "I cannot believe that you didn't want this the other night," he admonished gently.

"That is not an accurate assessment of what happened," she panted, before sucking lightly on his neck and slipping her fingertips under his waistband.

He wasn't in the right frame of mind to argue semantics, especially when her fingers found his belt and started working the buckle loose. "Okay," he sighed. "But just to put it on the table, I really think we should have got started on this a couple of years ago."

Ziva dragged her lips from his neck to his mouth. "Noted," she breathed against him. "That was a very bad decision on our part. But now we have time to correct it, yes?" She punctuated the statement by pulling down his zipper and slipping her hand inside his pants.

Tony squeezed his eyes shut. "Yes," he hissed in response to both what she'd said and what she'd done. "Let's take a lot of time."

She hummed in agreement and he wrapped his arms around her as she kissed him again. Along with the desire coursing through every nerve in his body, he started to feel something else sink into his bones. Contentedness. Absolute certainty that this was right. No misgivings, no guilt. Just total conviction that he'd been right to wait for this woman his whole life. And if he was really lucky, Ziva would feel the same way.

Okay? OKAY? They had the sex. Yes, there will be more relationshippy stuff in later chapters. But there will also be more case stuff, because I already wrote it and I really can't be bothered re-writing it.

For those of you who were hoping for a bit more steam, I'm sorry. I didn't want to go overboard and have it feel out of place. Also, it's really hard to write that stuff (for me, anyway). So maybe go read Blush or Orison or…I don't know what else. But I feel like I've written a lot of smut in the past, so it's out there if you look for it. Enjoy.