Chapter Text
Sometimes, despite all her training in manipulating and controlling people, it seemed just too easy to get Ziva all riled up and bothered enough to throw around curses in her mother tongue.
Not as easy as it had been in the old days, granted. Apparently her weekly psych sessions included a good deal of anger management (which would not do much good if she ever found out just how much Tony knew about her Monday evening appointments simply because he had dated her shrink's secretary once and for some freaky reason she still thought of him fondly). But Ziva still had a day every now and then when she came to work in a kind of pre-itchy state of mind, all jumpy, easily annoyed and with her fingers twitching more than they usually did.
On these days, it was scarily easy for Tony to get under her skin, and yeah, deep down inside he knew it wasn't a particularly sane thing to do, but he still wasn't able to fight the urge. It was kind of a Pavlovian thing: Itchy Ziva triggered his reflexes to make her even more itchy. He simply liked to see her unravel, and he loved to be the reason her calm and hard-assed exterior showed a few dents and cracks by the end of the day.
It had been a slight surprise for him when he had found early on that the best way to get to her on these days was actually getting as close to her as possible. Hard to imagine that Ziva, Miss No-Regard-For-Personal-Space, was actually quite easily bothered by Tony leaning in just a little too close or his cheek almost brushing hers while he leaned over her shoulder to look at something. It brought his old game of touch'n'run to a whole new level.
On some days -- much like this particular one -- Ziva walked into the office all grouchy and sparse with words, which always got worse if they were stuck at their desks doing paperwork. On these days, Ziva would type and delete and type again, and then she would pause for a minute before she would repeat the same routine a few times more. On these days, Tony would soon neglect his own paperwork in favor of watching her intently, waiting for the moment when she would snap, and he knew all too well that each glance he shot her way would bring that moment closer.
"Mind your own business, Tony," she eventually ground out through gritted teeth while she seemed to delete the whole report and started it all over again for the third time.
"Oh, honey," he said with a wide grin and shook his head. "You know me, I never do that." He flipped the pages of his own report -- the one he'd been putting off for at least two weeks -- and pretended to check for last-minute errors while he actually basked in his own smirk and Ziva's itchiness.
There was no answer, and when he looked up curiously, he saw Ziva rub the bridge of her nose with two fingers. She had her eyes tightly shut now, and for a moment she looked so tired and drained that he wondered if he'd taken the game a little too far. He felt the irrational urge to offer a back rub or maybe even cover for her while she went out for a few hours to shop 'til she dropped. Even a non-girly girl like Ziva always felt pretty good after that, and whatever would help her relax a little didn't sound like such a bad idea all of a sudden.
"What's up?" he asked, and she reacted to the sudden seriousness in his voice and met his eyes across the gap between their desks.
He might have gotten an answer if Gibbs hadn't chosen this exact moment to stride into the squad room and barked at them to grab their gear. When Tony glanced back at Ziva, she was already busy with slipping on her jacket and avoiding his gaze again.
*** *** ***
Petty Officer Henderson had apparently vanished after a very loud and hands-on fight with a fellow officer, who was now out cold in Bethesda after she had pummeled him with a lead pipe. (Tony had tried several times to make a Clue joke about this, but had never gotten very far because everybody steadfastly refused to react in any way.)
Henderson was -- according to her neighbor -- a rather quiet woman he'd rarely seen. He'd also described her and her lifestyle as rather plain, and so it came as a mild surprise when her bedroom was far from that and instead revealed satin sheets, low-temperature candles for wax play and a few accessories that made McGee blush furiously and drew a low whistle from Tony. Which, in turn, made Ziva give him a glare that actually managed to raise the hairs at the back of his neck. Strangely, he wasn't entirely sure if he should classify this as one of the unpleasant sensations.
"So, Ziva," he said after McGee had excused himself with a flimsy lie and left processing of the bedroom to them, "you think our Petty Officer was the rompee or the romped in this epic scenario of carnal desires?"
Ziva had just bent down to snap a few shots of wax stains beside... well, other stains. She didn't react on the outside. Her breathing remained all calm and controlled, but he still saw a sudden tension in her stance, and he could have sworn a fresh wave of annoyance had just rolled off her.
"What does it matter who was on top, Tony?"
He grinned while he ran his gloved finger over the top of a small cabinet, leaving a trail in the faint dust covering. "It matters to the pretty pictures in my head."
Ziva straightened and lowered the camera, and for some reason she suddenly made it a point to not look at him while she walked around the bed. "You do know that at one point you will need to get past puberty, yes?"
"Ziva, Ziva, Ziva," he muttered. When she just shot him a glance and frowned, he grinned and sauntered over to her to look over her shoulder, pretending to look for clues along with her while he actually used the new closeness to press his fingertips against the small of her back for a moment, just to see how she would react this time. "You really need to relax a bit. Like, get laid. I'm told it takes off the pressure."
For the fraction of a heartbeat Ziva stood perfectly still and allowed him to touch her. Then she turned and faced him, and it was weird that the sudden fury in her eyes made him take a step back involuntarily... and sent a hot rush of excitement through him at the same time.
She stared at him with narrowed eyes and brows drawn tightly together, and he knew that right now she weighed different answers in her head while she scrutinized him. Finally, her chin rose in a weirdly defiant way, and she settled for, "What makes you think I'm not getting laid?"
Part of him knew he should back off if she glared at him like that. That it was a bad idea to get Ziva angry in the first place and an almost suicidal one to keep teasing her when she was already short-tempered. But the part of him that got excited by the heat flaring up in her eyes and came up with thoughts about sliding his hands under her clothes and pressing up to her in return... that part was trapped in the urge to tease even more of a reaction out of her. And that part of him did feel a little suicidal today, yes.
"You just told me," he grinned, and while Ziva's frown deepened and she pressed her lips shut angrily, he leaned back into her and brought his mouth down to her cheek so he could murmur the real punch line into her ear. "Besides, I can smell it."
It was weird to see her head whip around and have her freeze halfway through the motion because he was still too close and he didn't back away even when her lips almost brushed his. Her nostrils flared, and for a heartbeat she met his eyes before her gaze dropped to his cheekbone. And yeah, it sent a fresh rush through him to see that she wasn't backing off, either. This kind of game, this was what they did best, really. And it was kind of perfect that none of them had won so far.
"It's true," he said, still in her space, still way too close for common decency. "Sexually frustrated women, they just carry that certain scent, you know? That little extra spice that tells the whole world 'God, I'm so horny I could hump a tree!'."
Her face closed down so hard and fast that it widened his grin into something obnoxious, and he almost laughed out loud. Even Gibbs walking up to him and asking him what the fuck he was doing instead of his job couldn't kill his suddenly bright and sparkly mood, and so he turned with his best charmer's smile and replied cheerfully, "Just educating my Probie, Boss!"
It earned him a roll of the eyes from Gibbs and a sharp stab in the side from Ziva's fingers, but neither did anything to deflate his mood.
*** *** ***
Processing the evidence from Petty Officer Henderson's apartment would turn into the beginning of a very long and unnerving day for Ziva because after he had gotten his first whiff of vulnerability, Tony began to follow her around like a bloodhound with his nose glued to the trail.
He soon found that it didn't take all that much to unravel her. Most of the time it was enough to give her a tiny sniff every now and then, followed by a knowing smirk, and just like that she would glare at him and her eyes would darken in annoyance.
At least he thought it was annoyance. Until he stared at her screen one time and did it over her shoulder, of course, because it gave him yet another opportunity to lean into her much more than absolutely necessary.
This time, though, she didn't evade him. She leaned back against him instead, just like that, as if they always did that, all the time. He first fought the urge to back away himself and then the one to bury his face in her neck and inhale her scent. When he turned his head to look at her profile, he found her pretending to concentrate on her screen.
And yeah, he should have known it was only a matter of time until she fought back just as dirty. He just wasn't sure yet if he should feel nervous about this or anticipatory.
*** *** ***
The weird thing was, before he let his breath caress her neck and watched her skin tighten in delicious response, he hadn't even noticed how close to the truth his needling actually was. He'd thought of it as an easy way to get under her skin, and yeah, her reaction had told him clearly there probably was a grain of truth in his assumption, but for some reason it had taken him much longer to realize that she really needed to get laid. That Ziva, who usually held herself under such tight control that it was eerie, clearly had an itch to scratch today, and that itch rendered her more cranky with every passing minute.
And now, as he turned his head and sniffed her cheek while he murmured his comment against it, he found that his own side of the equation hadn't been too far off either: He'd always sensed which ones were the easy prey. Which ones needed it more than he did.
Yeah, he knew what a horny woman smelled like. And Ziva's special flavor, not tainted by anything artificial or perfume, suddenly provoked the urge to lick her all over and then roll around in her scent, even though he knew that she would never, not in a million years, be one of the easy ones. Not even in a state like this.
Maybe that was the reason her scent began to drive him nuts after a while.
Of course, once he'd started moaning about not getting home yet, things got progressively worse and quickly went from merely making a few calls and checking statements to setting up shop in a dinky apartment for an all-night stakeout with Ziva.
Correction -- an all-night stakeout with a tired Ziva whose itch was still unscratched and whom her partner had sufficiently annoyed all day. Oh boy.
Unfortunately, this description could also be applied to the hole that doubled as their stakeout shelter.
It took Tony exactly two glances -- one left, one right -- to take in the whole of the apartment, and what he saw made his mood sink to a new low. A bathroom (thank God), a single bed (twin size, no kidding) that had most likely been in this room since the 70s, and a wicker chair that matched the faux retro design and looked uncomfortable and creaky even from the other end of the room.
One chair.
Oh, this just got better and better.
"I'm not going to sleep here," he announced with clear disgust ringing in his voice while Ziva dropped her backpack unceremoniously and unzipped her jacket.
McGee, who was still busy setting up the camera and the microphone, shot Tony a quick glance and raised an eyebrow at him. "You know you're not supposed to sleep on stakeout, Tony?"
"Shut up, Probie," Tony ground out and shot Ziva a glare when her soft laughter rolled down his back. "You get to go home and sleep in your own bed, and we don't even have a second chair! Do you perhaps see the tiniest bit of injustice in this? Do you?"
"Will keep you on your toes, DiNozzo," Gibbs mumbled behind him, and while Tony yelped in surprise and clutched his heart dramatically, Ziva chuckled again.
She didn't show it, of course. She just sat in her creaky chair and flipped the pages of her book and sometimes leaned over to the camera and gave a quick peek at the very uninhabited apartment across the street.
But below the calm and relaxed exterior he saw her tense minutely every time he came a little too close while he was pacing back and forth, and after a while he noticed that she even stopped reading for a second whenever he moved back towards the window and thus, closer to her.
It caught his attention. And it made him, maybe, a little suicidal again.
He kept pacing behind her, from the foot end of the bed towards the window and back, but now he made it a point to brush past the chair a little closer each time. Sometimes he even touched the backrest, and it sent a tiny rush through him when he saw her shoulders stiffen each time he did it.
He hadn't even planned on annoying her tonight. He just felt trapped in this never-ending investigation, and teasing his partner seemed to be, like it often did, the perfect outlet for his own frustrations. And it offered him a much-needed distraction because it allowed him to concentrate on her.
In the end, she snapped when he got so bored that he leaned over her from behind. He put his hands to the armrests, right behind her elbows, and Ziva took a slow breath while she tensed up in the almost-embrace. He snuck a quick peek at her book -- Hebrew, of course, but that didn't deter him, he just asked her, "Whatcha reading?"
Whatever reaction he might have expected from her, it had certainly not been the one he got.
Ziva slammed her book shut hard, and he blinked and watched her when she took a few slow and carefully controlled breaths. She'd closed her eyes now, and her lips were pressed together so hard that they formed a dangerously thin line.
For a moment he actually thought about backing away. But that would have left him as bored as he'd been before, and he had just gotten to the point where he'd found something new to play with, so letting it go now instead of worrying it would have been... a challenge. And so he ended up pushing his luck a tiny bit further and leaned over her more, waiting for her to snap.
She didn't, yet. Instead her nostrils flared because she suddenly couldn't help breathing him in, and he froze in mid-movement, staring at her in surprise as a barely noticeable blush colored her cheeks. Now that was... interesting.
But before he could try and make something out of it, she breathed out again in a long almost-sigh. "Tony," she said quietly, her eyes still closed. "Take a nap."
He stayed where he was, glued to the back of the chair, drowning her in his presence. "I'm not supposed to sleep on stakeout," he reminded her softly, his words hardly more than a sigh against her neck. And once more her skin tightened in response and the tiny hairs at the base of her neck rose to meet his breath.
"Go to sleep," she repeated, pronouncing each word sharply and distinctly, and yeah, he was pretty sure she was fighting for control right now, only he wasn't sure what exactly she would do to him once she lost it. "Or I'll make you sleep."
For a heartbeat he was tempted to keep toying with her. Then he reminded himself that he'd be stuck with her for a few more hours at least. No fun in getting killed before he'd even warmed up.
The wicker chair creaked softly, and he rolled to his side and watched Ziva raise her hand to turn yet another page. She had pulled the chair closer to the bed, which left her in the perfect position to watch both him to her left and the camera and window to her right. Probably a leftover from the days where she'd had to watch her own back the whole time.
He blinked sleepily and took in her profile. The soft light coming from the nightstand made her cheeks look flushed and put a shine into her eyes, and when she licked her lips, he suddenly wanted to reach out and run his thumb across her mouth, just to see if she would feel as soft as she looked right now.
Ziva didn't raise her eyes once. She just kept reading, even though he was pretty sure she was more than aware of the way he looked at her. Her eyes flicked across the pages, back and forth, and for a while it looked strange because her eyes kept going from right to left. But the longer he watched her, the more comfortable he felt with her beside his bed like that.
She was close enough that he could have reached out and touched her knee if he'd wanted to, and he thought that it looked like she was about to read him a bedtime story.
For a moment he just lay there, on his side, just like he'd been before closing his eyes, and while he blinked slowly, he tried to figure out what was going on. Then her scent hit him, and his nostrils flared as he drank in the flavor that had spiked to new heights while he had dozed off.
He stared at her curiously, how she had her eyes closed and her head turned to the side and resting against the wickerwork. Her neck was taut, her muscles twitching slightly -- a strange tension that spread through her whole body.
One strand of hair had come loose from her ponytail, and he stared at it, how it was tucked behind her ear and tickling her neck. Her book lay on the floor, and for a second he thought she had fallen asleep herself and was caught in the kind of dream that sent his imagination into overdrive. He stared at her with suddenly wide eyes and heart beating in his throat.
God, she smelled like a wet dream.
He licked his lips as he felt his own body react hard and fast to the slight quiver in her lips. To the rush of blood coloring her cheeks. To the tiny beads of sweat on her brow while she suddenly tensed and her body arched up in the chair, still not making the slightest creak in it, and dear god, she wasn't asleep at all. She was wide awake, just like he was, and she was merely taking extra special care not to make a sound because her hand, the one he couldn't see because the chair's arm rest was in the way, that hand was down her pants and making her happy.
His cock strained against his pants suddenly, and he bit back a gasp because, really, the thought of Ziva David taking matters into her own hands was enough on its own to make a lot of people lose it, but her doing it while she thought he was asleep beside her...
Her left hand tightened on the arm rest now, and her body arched and then turned to the side, just a little, as if she were curling up into someone's embrace. Her lips made little gasping motions with each breath now, just that, just the motions and row after row of tension rolling through her. Not a single sound fell from her lips, and Tony bit his lip to keep quiet like her because anything else would make her stop. She looked like she was so close now, so close that her lower lip trembled continuously and her neck was stretched tight, and god, she--
His body throbbed with need, and he strained his ears, willing his senses to give him more than what had most likely been a mere figment of his imagination. There was no way he could have heard her fingers parting her flesh and sliding into her when he couldn't even hear her breathe, right?
His mouth was dry, and he fought the urge to reach out for her. His pulse stampeded in his temples when he saw her elbow give a tiny jerk, just enough for a glimpse of what was going on, but not really showing him any of it.
And god, he wanted to see her. Wanted to see her fingers at work, all slick and busy with getting her off. And fuck, yes, he really wanted to join the fun.
She suddenly arched up, and for a moment, she stayed like that, her head thrown back, her body drawn tight like a bow close to snapping. Her hand stopped moving, too, and he knew she was just pressing down hard now, just riding the high for all it was worth. Her lower lip had that telltale tremble again, twitching like a butterfly's wing, and he stared at her, awed and horny and wanting her. He had no idea how she did it -- how she could come like this and not spill a single sound.
And that was when it really hit him -- when he was lying there, so hard it was nearing painful, yearning to touch himself, too -- that now he knew what she looked like when she came. And that he would remember it.
Oh, fuck.
He wasn't sure if he'd said it out loud or if his aching, needy body had betrayed him after all and shifted on the bed or if she just opened her eyes because that was what she'd have done anyway. Whatever the reason, when she fell back in her seat and almost curled up in it, so sated and breathless, her eyelids fluttered, and then she turned her head and looked at him.
God, the expression in her face -- all relaxed and giddy and a bit feverish, too, as if this had been good, but just the first taste and she'd be ready to keep going at a moment's notice.
His cock jumped when he saw the exact moment she connected the dots, and while her gaze danced all over his body, he really tried to close his eyes and pretend he was still asleep and hadn't seen a thing, even if it was way too late for that, even if she knew already, because that was what they always did, right? Pretend they hadn't noticed what was going on, even when it was right in their faces?
It sounded like the right thing to do. Only this time, he couldn't pretend with her, and so he didn't and met her eyes instead, his own wide and shocked and the slightest bit thrilled.