Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ You've Got a Hold On Me ❯ Chapter Five - Like a Swan ( Chapter 5 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Hello All!  Having had some awesome conversations with some lovely ladies (you all know who you are), I finally managed to beat this chapter out of my brain.
Today, a huge, gi-normous thanks to Adli (ti_ana) for beta-reading this for me.  It is a tough job to edit someone’s work and I am so grateful for her patience, as I am a tough punctuator, lol.  Go read her fiction; she is quite the story-teller!  I appreciate the time and effort it takes for someone to beta, thank you lady!
I would like to offer this chapter in homage to catgirl26 for several reasons – but she knows the hell why.  (>^ù^<)  If anyone caught the Star Trek reference in there, 10 extra points!
Thank you all for your support – it means the world to me!
Hey all you followers and favorite-ers out there, thank you so much!  I’m so excited that emails get sent out to you whenever I update.  Let me know what you think, even if you’re shy about it, it’s totally cool!
Enjoy this one!

“Bulma?  You seem distracted; is anything wrong?”
Her father’s voice cracked through the vines of thought that wrapped around her brain like a boa constrictor.  Dr. Briefs was staring up at her, one hand on the stack of readouts she’d held out, his brow furrowed with mild concern.  Bulma realized vaguely that her hand still clutched the readouts with intense ferocity, and that she was so far unwilling to let go.  Had she been seeing Vegeta’s soaked muscle shirt instead of the paperwork?  She jerked to life and released the calibration readouts she’d promised her father days ago.
“Yes, I mean, no, Daddy, I’m fine.  Thank you.”  She paused, because Dr. Briefs’ expression of incredulity had not changed.  “I’m sorry about this; I couldn’t get the calculations to come out properly, and when I first opened up the mainframe the engine stalled entirely.”  She leaned on her father’s work desk and watched as he read over them.  He made a noise of questioning displeasure.
“Perhaps the mainframe will need to be upgraded.  I hadn’t thought about how the new calibration would affect the capacity.  Isn’t that something you would usually catch though, my dear?”
Bulma cringed; yes, it was something that her doctorate (one of three) in Applied Physics or her dual masters (two of three) in Mechanical and Computer Engineering should have been able to catch.  Even after printing the results and bringing them to the lab for her father, why hadn’t she thought of it?  For Kami’s sake, she’d gone over the calculations ten times and hadn’t thought about the fact that the mainframe couldn’t handle the new calibration.  She blinked a few times and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Daddy.  I should have been able to see it, I?”  She stopped and pushed away from the desk.  A few destroyed spar bots were lying on a table, and Bulma ground her teeth together.  “It’s been a long week,” she said finally.
Dr. Briefs pushed his chair out and came to her side.  She was watching the bots as though one of them would get up and tell her exactly what was going on inside that gravity simulator.  After Vegeta’s abrupt departure nearly a week ago, after his wild and overwhelming assault that left her a shivering, wet mess, Bulma had crawled like a wounded animal into the GSR in his absence and overridden the bioStatus software so that the simulator would function without it.
At that moment, trembling against the coldness of her skin and the memory of his obvious, rock hard arousal still burning against her leg, Bulma had realized that nothing would stop him, and nothing would contain him.  Vegeta wasn’t just a ‘potentially homicidal, maniac alien,’ as Yamcha had so endearingly referred to him.  He was something else entirely, and so far she had been unable to figure out just how she was going to get into the Saiyan Prince’s head without getting herself burned.  Because now with the memory of his touch, violating and demanding as it had been, nothing seemed as simple as flirtation anymore.  Blessed Kaioshin, was she in over her head!
“He’s an enigma, that one,” Dr. Briefs said suddenly, interrupting her brief reverie.  Bulma turned her head to her father and stared with parted lips.
“Vegeta?”  She said his name with a measure of irritation.  “He wants to be the best and he’ll do anything to be the best; that’s all there is to it.”
“Is that all?” her father asked, not really to anyone in particular.  Bulma eyed him curiously; her father was not always so engaged by the plights of others.  “Oh, I think you’re right, Bulma.  I just don’t know if that’s the whole story.”
She blinked.  Holy shit, he hadn’t seen anything that night, had he?!
“Daddy, I don’t know if you?”
Dr. Briefs turned his head, ruffled lavender hair drooping down into his tired old eyes.  He smiled.
“He seems like he would give anything, doesn’t it?  Like he would give anything to reach his ahh?  What do you call it, dear?”  Bulma relaxed quickly.
“Super Saiyan.  Son-kun did it on Namek.”
“Eeeh, right.  It seems he would do anything to reach it, even at the cost of his life.”
Bulma huffed and patted at the headband next to her ear.  Her curls were the only thing keeping her roiling thoughts at bay as she stroked them away from her face.  She crossed both arms and approached the table full of spar bots.
“He would, I think,” she said absently.  “He’d kill himself if it meant surpassing Son-kun; if it meant that for one moment he had been what he was meant to be.”
Bulma realized, as her eyes rose from the mangled robots, that she had admitted to Vegeta’s madness without even realizing it.  Was it really what he was meant to be?  A Super Saiyan?  Kami, there weren’t even anymore Saiyans to dash themselves at his feet anymore.  Not only that, but the only other pure-blooded Saiyan alive hadn’t even realized he was one until about four years ago; for all intents and purposes, Son-kun was a human.  And that was probably how Vegeta saw it, too.  Dr. Briefs had come to her side again.
“I don’t know, Bulma,” he said, very quietly as though it were the biggest secret in West City.  “I’ve seen what happens to a living thing when it wants to die.  Vegeta could’ve scorned his second chance at life.  But he hasn’t.  Even if he thinks he would die for his ahhh?”
“Super Saiyan, Daddy,” Bulma said again, turning her head and smiling wanly.
“Right,” he said in reply.  “Super Saiyan.  Even if he thinks he would die for it, he wouldn’t.  It’s just not in his eyes.  He wants it too badly.”
“Hah!”  Bulma said, partly to contain the rush of emotion her father’s revelation had sparked in her.  “He wants it so badly so he can prove it: to everyone – to himself!”
“Exactly.”  Dr. Briefs tapped his chin with one finger and approached the work table.  “Now, how can he prove it, if he’s dead?”
For this, Bulma had no answer.  Her father reached out for one of the bots and picked up its stabilizer.  Somehow, the jumbled machinery on the table echoed the myriad thoughts that now danced through her mind, uninhibited.  The smell of machine grease assaulted her nostrils, but she merely wrinkled her nose at its familiar tang.
“Do you think he wants to live so badly, Daddy?” she asked aloud, perhaps unintentionally.  Lips pressed against hers in savage desire that bordered so closely with disdain.  Hands clutching at her with a lust that nearly resembled a repellent admission of respect…  That oppressive desire deep in her belly.
Dr. Briefs was watching her when he spoke again.
“Oh yes, dear,” he replied.  “He wants to live; more than anything.”
Bulma stared at the bots for another moment, marveling at the savagery that had torn them apart, and very suddenly everything her father said made perfect sense.  This was what made Vegeta so mad with determination; so completely driven by his goal was he, that he thought he would die for it and yet—!  Yet, her father was right.  Everything about him:  his anger at the shutdown of the GSR, his utter glee at the chance for a verbal spar with her, the distrust apparent in his impossibly dark eyes whenever she came close of her own free will—even the sinful, handsome pleasure he seemed to gain from provoking her!  Yes.  All of these things belied the reckless self-abandon he so carefully flaunted.
Vegeta had survived this long, and had even lapped up the opportunity of training to defeat the Androids with as much Saiyan gusto as ever.  In the rush of panic, planning and mechanical flurry that had followed that strange boy’s appearance, she’d almost forgotten how adamant Vegeta had been against her suggestion to seek out and destroy Dr. Gero.  He wanted the challenge, and he wanted to prove himself, probably more than anyone else in the known universe.
Why in Kami’s good name would he want to die now?  Up until now, all her assumptions about him had been wrong.  Though one thing still remained clear after her last encounter with him; he still needed to speak their language, and not just the words.  Maybe – maybe if he could, then she would see the thing inside him that still begged to live.  To really live.
“Daddy?”  Bulma said distractedly.  Her father, absorbed in the repair of a spar bot, glanced over at her quizzically.  “Daddy, I need to go do some research.”
“Research, what—?  Bulma, I need you to complete the new calculations for the calibrator.”
But she didn’t see her father’s look of consternation; she was already on her way out of the lab.  This alien man would not invade her working mind for one more second!  She was Bulma goddamned Briefs and NO one got the better of her.  One minute she was pinned against a Capsule spaceship by his groping and furious demands, a prisoner to the heat pressing into her, the next she was forgetting recalibration calculations that should be child’s play to a multiple-credentialed genius.
If it was to live or to die, she would find out his motivation and get into his mind before he got any further into hers.
Lusty abandon be damned.

Out here in the middle of the sea, where the air was fresh and invigorating with salty moisture, while the waves crashed gently against the small island where Bulma now sat, one could almost believe that the world was ever at peace.  It was in stark contrast to the center of West City, where the Capsule Corp compound lay, and it seemed altogether a very different world.  Perhaps even another universe where the threat of the Androids seemed a distant possibility, and where no atrocity was even possible.  Bulma regarded the lush, tranquil scene around her and for a moment – just a moment – it was true.
The palms surrounding Kame House swayed gently in the sea breeze and Bulma couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of Muten Roshi, snoring delicately as he lay prostrate on his favorite beach recliner, an appropriately censured porn magazine draped across his face.  He hadn’t changed a bit, and the sight of him made her nostalgic for times that seemed now another lifetime.
Bulma took a sip of the mai tai Krillin had graciously prepared for her, and pressed her own back against her chair.  She wriggled her bare toes in the warm sand and waited for Krillin’s answer to her question.  After a few more seconds of uncomfortable silence had passed, she lolled her head to the side and peered at him over her sunglasses.
“Well?” she inquired.  The sun gleaming off of his head, and by contrast reflecting so poorly on his small nose, Krillin shifted uncomfortably in his seat across from her.  He pushed the bridge of his sunglasses higher up on that tiny proboscis.
“Bulma, Vegeta wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist on Namek, ya’ know?  He mostly just grunted out orders and mocked our ‘pathetically low power-levels.’”
“But you said he confessed quite a bit to Son-kun,” Bulma said irritably.  “You were there, Krillin.  Tell me more about Saiyans, tell me about what he did to help you.  If you remember, I was left to fend for myself for a majority of the trip until Gohan and Piccolo took me back to Goku’s ship!”
“Hey, I was dead at that point, ok?!  In pieces!”  Krillin had swallowed a hard swig of his own mai tai and made an explosive gesture with his free hand.  He then settled back into his chair and pushed his own toes into the sand.  “Vegeta was the last of his kind, Bulma…  He didn’t tell us much about Saiyans except for the whole ‘get beat to shit, recover and become more powerful’ spiel.”
Bulma frowned in disapproval and flicked the tip of her straw in frustration.
“He must have said something – done something that would explain the way he is, the reason he does what he does.”
“Listen, Bulma, I know you think you’re trying to help him but you may as well forget it.  If being impaled through the heart by his most hated enemy didn’t change him, nothing you do to try and understand him will change what he is.”
“And what is that?” she asked, defiant.
“He’s a warrior, Bulma.  Different than Goku, though; he’s not just a fighter, he’s a killer.  It’s a wonder he’s lasted this long at Capsule Corp without managing to destroy something besides his simulator.”
Despite the truth in his words, Bulma chuckled into her drink at that; she’d related the “Incident” to Krillin when she’d first arrived and they’d taken to drinking cocktails by the water.  Roshi snorted and shifted in his chair over by the porch, muttered something about tits and threw a hand over his face, now left bare from the displaced magazine.  Bulma sighed in resignation and let her head sink into the chair.  The sound of waves crashing soothed the maelstrom in her mind, and the feel of soft, powdery white sand under her toes reminded her of being a teenager.  Being so naïve that not a trouble in the world could give her cause to worry…  
At least her trip hadn’t been a total waste.  And Krillin was fair enough company when one needed a good friend.  She blinked and looked at him.  He was staring at her with a guarded expression.
“What?” she asked, removing her sunglasses.
Krillin had put his mai tai on the small table between them.
“I was there though.  When he died, I mean.  I saw Vegeta die.”
The straw in Bulma’s drink floated errantly to the very top of her glass, and pushed against her upper lip.  She blew it away with a distracted poof of air, and leaned forward in her chair.
“You were there?” she reiterated, to be sure.  Krillin nodded slowly.  “Why didn’t you say so from the beginning?”
“Because I just didn’t think it would matter, Bulma—”
“You thought it wouldn’t ‘matter’, based on the questions I’ve been asking you?”  Her tone was flat, but she could feel the irritation creeping up her throat and tickling her vocal chords.  She would not screech today, she would not!  She took a shallow gulp of fresh sea air, just to keep the demons at bay, at least for now.
“I said he was a killer.”  Krillin said, resolute.  “Nothing about his death changed that, at least in my mind.”
“You said Frieza killed him,” Bulma remembered.  Krillin nodded and picked up his mai tai again.
“Only after beating the bloody shit out of him first.  Kami…  I don’t even remember how long that part lasted.”
Bulma sipped her drink and pondered these words.  After all she had seen Vegeta be capable of since his initial training had begun at Capsule Corp, it was difficult to imagine him being beaten bloody, even by the likes of Frieza.
“If Frieza was more powerful,” she wondered aloud and gazed out to sea, “why didn’t he just kill Vegeta, instead of fighting him first?”
Krillin was silent for a long moment, and when Bulma looked back at him she could see that his forehead had wrinkled underneath his sunglasses, and the six kyûjutsu dots there turned darker and more pronounced.  She waited, albeit impatiently, and took another very small sip of her drink.
“You know he betrayed Frieza by helping us, Bulma,” Krillin explained, and then took a breath at her look of exasperation.  “But Vegeta was defying him long before that, and Frieza knew it.  The Saiyans and Frieza had some connection in the past, from what I could get out of it.  Some agreement.  While he was lying there, he…?
When Krillin stopped again, Bulma could barely contain the beast.  If he thought he was sparing her with the gory details he was dead wrong.  It was the reason she came here, it was the reason she couldn’t ask Son-kun about it!  She’d wanted to know why, now that Frieza was dead, Vegeta still couldn’t let go.  There was something he couldn’t let go of and the Saiyan Prince had built a wall around it: an impossibly strong work of masonry, brick by brick fashioned by his own hands.  Son-kun would never have revealed everything; he cared too much about her ‘sensitivities’ to risk it.  Krillin on the other hand—
“Spit it out, shorty!” she snapped, startling the thoughtful monk with the barely contained witch voice.
He jumped in his chair, and the ice clinked around in his glass.  Roshi muttered in his sleep again and shifted to lie on his side.  A slow, loud and rolling noise detonated out of his shorts, until the last gasp of it crashed off the walls of Kame House the way a mortar shell may explode and echo.  The Turtle Hermit chuckled sleepily at the artistry of his gaseous eruption, and resumed snoring.  Krillin glared at Bulma from over the rim of his sunglasses, and she had a difficult time maintaining control of her expression as Krillin rolled his eyes at his old master.
“Sweet Kami, Bulma!” he hissed, and relaxed back into his chair.  “You know how he is if you startle him; he’s three hundred thirty fucking years old!  Last time it was worse…  Way worse, and I’m the only one here who can clean him up!”  Krillin pinched the low bridge of his small nose, and Bulma snorted in quiet hilarity.  In a moment he was again solemn.
“It’s just…” he began, hesitant.  “Vegeta spent a lifetime in service–no, slavery—to that monster and the only thing that mattered to him the whole time we were on Namek was that he be powerful enough to defeat Frieza.  While Vegeta was lying there, bleeding out through the hole in his chest, he begged Goku to kill that white-skinned freak.  It was the most pitiable thing I’ve ever seen.  He said it had to be a Saiyan, for all the humiliation brought on them—that it was destiny.  He was a gory heap, Bulma, but he still managed to do that one thing.
“All I know is it must have taken a lot for him to say those things, for him to beg Goku, a warrior he despised with all his soul, if you remember.  I’ll never forget what it looked like, watching him do that… Watching his tears.”
Bulma swallowed her mouthful of cocktail – hard.  Her throat convulsed with the image that Krillin’s words presented, suddenly quite vivid in her mind.  Vegeta’s… tears?  The concept seemed ludicrous; completely and utterly impossible.  She imagined his usual, handsomely stoic expression and regal nose cinched up with the strain of grief.  Even the thought of it was—well, it was heartrending.  Bulma was staring at her toes in the sand when the words finally came.
“What was it like?” she asked Krillin, her voice far-away.
She could sense that the monk was looking at her, and probably with utter disapproval.  But she didn’t care.  All she could see was the image of Vegeta crying, sobbing his heart out with every bit of breath left in his collapsing lungs.  And, Bulma mused; who was there to hold him as he lay dying that day?  Who had ever been there?  Who was there for him now?  
“It was like watching an angry stray dog, Bulma,” Krillin said finally.  His tone brought her back to reality, and she glared back at him.  The monk stirred the ice in his glass, holding her gaze.  “I had a talk with Yamcha before he left for the desert.”
“I don’t like where this is going, Krillin,” she warned, suddenly angry that he had spoiled the conversation with talk of her estranged ex-boyfriend.
“Just don’t do anything that—?”
“That what?”  Bulma growled through her clenched teeth and squeezed her cocktail glass so hard that it shook.  “That would provoke Vegeta?”
“Just don’t tell him I told you all of this, ok?”  Krillin pleaded.  “Shit, he’d put another hole through my gut.”
“Ha!”  Bulma couldn’t help the note of sarcasm in her voice.  “I’m sure he has other things to keep him occupied now.”
When Krillin looked over at her, his newly removed sunglasses revealing his overly childish face, a bit of her evil screechy twin died down.  Her friend was nothing if not concerned for her welfare, and his bid for protection had only been an attempt at concealing that for her benefit.  After a moment or two more of calming silence, Bulma reached out to the table and put her drink down.  Roshi was awake now, and as he searched the sand underneath his beach chair for the abandoned porn mag, Bulma giggled.  When Krillin took notice his face loosened with amusement, and he shook his head.  He turned his attention back to Bulma.
“Look, Bulma, I know you pretty well, don’t I?”
She crossed a leg over the other and leaned forward, nodding.  They’d said enough about Vegeta today–about his death.  About his tears.  She blinked away any residual turmoil that still churned in her brain and smiled at Krillin.“Pretty well,” she said finally.  Her friend grinned back and shook his head, then leaned back into his chair.
“Just don’t give him too much slack, ok?  I know how you are with lonely, brooding bad boys.  When you get right down to it, Vegeta’s still a menacing little asshole.”  
Bulma could not help the questioning lift of her brow, and Krillin was on to her before she even replied.  He groaned aloud at the humiliation of it.
“Little?”

This time she was waiting for him.  Bulma resolved to herself hours ago that she would never again be caught in the role of Vegeta’s evening entertainment.  She replayed the scene outside the GSR a hundred times in the corner of her mind; there were so many ways it could have ended differently.  The way he’d touched her, the way he’d kissed her–he could have had her right there in the torrential rain, against the rounded walls of Capsule 3 while she cried out to the thunderclouds and raked half-enraged scratches into his already marred skin.  Great Guardian Kami, what a slick bastard he’d been!  And she hadn’t even seen it coming.  No, not that night, she had not.
But she was glad she’d stopped him.  Yes, she was giddy even at the thought that she’d resisted such a challenge from him; because that’s what his furious assault on her had been, Bulma realized.  Somewhere in the depths of his mind, Vegeta saw her as a challenge.  Whether he realized that or not was another matter entirely.  Perhaps he even saw her as an intellectual equal, but well, she didn’t want him to get ahead of himself now, did she?
If she had learned anything from her conversation with Krillin, it was that Vegeta’s demons were too restless for him to leave any challenge without a fight.  But Krillin’s warning still echoed in her mind, and the short yet (surprisingly) introspective conversation she’d had with her father earlier that day was an element of this setup she could not ignore.
It was windy tonight.  It was so windy that, if she listened long enough, she could hear it buffeting against the rounded walls of the compound.  Bulma sat, comfortably perched on the bar stool at her kitchen island.  She shut her eyes in blissful satisfaction as she downed another heaping spoonful of butter pecan ice cream.  The full gallon container of it sat in front of her on the island like a trophy.  The lights inside the kitchen were dimmed by the computer to about forty percent, and she already felt like a woman on the edge of something very dangerous and exciting.  As if sitting in front of an entire gallon of her favorite ice cream weren’t enough, the idea that Vegeta would eventually come into the kitchen to find her was somehow both frightening and enticing.  Bulma licked an errant drip of ice cream from the corner of her mouth and shifted in her chair.
Earlier, during his usual meal time, Bulma had made her way surreptitiously out to the GSR to reengage the bioStatus and deactivate her override so that, were he to notice and shut it off or perhaps to injure himself in some way that gave the bioStatus software cause for alarm, the simulation would shut down.  Deductive reasoning told the blue-haired genius that one or the other would happen, and sooner rather than later.  Vegeta was also no fool; even if he did not injure himself tonight, he would notice that the bioStatus had been restarted and would probably be furious.  
Good, she thought.  Good.  Vegeta was probably most handsome when he was furious.  A shiver of thrilling fear ran up her spine.  
Bulma drove another spoonful, laden to the absolute limit with ice cream, into her wide open mouth.  Shit, it felt good to be a pig sometimes – especially when one was celebrating such a well-thought-out act of courage as angering a half-psychotic, hot as hell alien prince.  She thought of her dear friend Krillin and his observation.  Kami, maybe she really did have a problem with lonely, brooding bad boys. She glanced at the clock above the kitchen door panels:  four a.m.
He’d been at it for some time tonight, she thought.  His usual quitting time was about three, coinciding with the end of her night’s work in the lab.  Tonight, after she’d completed the recalibration calculations for her poor, patient father, Bulma had literally skipped into the kitchen and had been sitting here gorging herself for nearly three quarters of an hour.  But the glow from the East Lawn still poured into the kitchen bay window, accompanied by the hum of the GSR’s systems, and despite that she’d been waiting so long, something about that glow assured her of one thing:  Vegeta was out there, pretending to be a martyr, and soon he would understand that she could see through this farce through and through.
As though it were dying, the GSR’s engine system hummed out a long and drawn out breath as it powered down.  The sudden loss of white noise split open the silence of the kitchen so completely that Bulma’s lips paused around the tip of her spoon.  The comforting glow from the window disappeared, and the lights of the night program bathed the kitchen in a wash of light sienna.  Bulma smiled and dipped the spoon into the softened ice cream.  She waited just as he had waited for her that night, begging her to rip the smirk off of his face with gusto.
The squeal and screech of metal contorting around itself brought her to immediate attention.  The asshole!  He’d ripped the door of Capsule 3 right off of its pistons!  Bulma shuddered with fury and wondered how long it would take her to reconstruct, and if it would all be worth it in the end.  She glanced furtively out the bay window to see him, in all his flame-haired glory and enrobed in a ki aura, approaching the compound on foot.  Kami-sama!  Why the hell was she doing this again?  Was it simply to get into the mind of a lost alien monarch who could, quite literally, kill her with a flick of his wrist?  Well, shit, it was too late to contemplate that now; he’d already entered the lab wing and was probably making his way up toward the residential area.  The wind howled outside and slid up the walls of the compound in tandem with his approach.
Bulma had long ago accepted that she would never be able to handle or wield her own ki, as her friends did, but she could feel it.  It was an unmistakable sense of live, static essence.  Gathering ki made the air turn heavy with life force and, if it was powerful enough, it made the earth shudder and shake with its very movement.  That shaking, shuddering aura was headed right for her – right now.  In fact, as she dropped the spoon into the gallon of melting ice cream, she realized that it was right outside the kitchen door panels.
With delight Bulma watched as the doors slid open in an anti-climactic, ordinary motion.  Vegeta’s palm dropped from the control panel, and he stepped into the kitchen with controlled movement.  His aura had dissipated from the growling sphere she’d seen outside to a softly glowing, blue halo.  There was still sweat dripping from the sides of his face, soaking his hair line and parting the thick swath of hair in ripples against his skin.  His bare chest heaved with barely contained wrath.  Bulma swallowed the mouthful of ice cream in her mouth, and dragged the spoon through the remaining treat in front of her as she watched him.  As she casually brought another spoonful, now dripping rather than heaping, toward her mouth, his voice boomed into the kitchen with core-melting intensity.
“You turned it back on.”
She assumed he meant the bioScan.  Despite the trembling fear and treacherous anticipation that squirmed in her belly, Bulma shrugged.
“Of course I did,” she replied, and lapped the ice cream off of her spoon with childlike obstinacy.  “What did you expect me to do?”  She paused and grinned through the mouthful of creamy butter pecan.  “Did you expect me to give in?”
“I expected you to respect my wishes!”  Vegeta growled, still waiting stock still by the doors of the kitchen.
Bulma laughed aloud then, heedless of the remaining food in her mouth.
“But you don’t have to respect mine?”  She patted the voluminous bun of curls on top of her head and adjusted the headband near the top of her ear.  “It’s my machine, you know, Vegeta?  Mine and my father’s.  If you don’t want to play by the rules, I can pull the plug on it – no more demands or questions.”
“You won’t do that,” he said, and his voice had finally settled into a more playful rhythm.  It was more like the voice he’d used that night in the rain.
But Bulma would not let her burning legs fail her this time; she dropped the spoon into the now soupy froth of her treat and pushed herself off and away from her seat.  She stood straight, her back rigid and her neck extended and proud.  Like a swan, she’d reminded herself.
“Won’t I?” she asked, proud that her voice did not shake.
The whole kitchen was awash in the bluish gray hue of his aura and though he could easily destroy the whole room with it, it remained as it was: simple and volatile at the same time.  Vegeta took a few steps forward this time, and Bulma felt the muscles in her legs begin to tremble.  Shit… No!  No, he would not intimidate her like this, not just by coming closer.  Kami, how would she ever win this fight with him if she could barely approach him without turning to jelly as she had against the walls of the GSR?  His lips cracked into a characteristically vicious smirk, and his teeth glowed strangely in the mixed light of the kitchen.
“What is it you want from me, Earth Woman?” he asked her.  This time, the curiosity in his voice outweighed the fury–the wary irritation.  “You provoke me as if you want something.”
Well, shit, how was she supposed to answer that?  Did she want something from him?  Probably.  Did she like provoking him?  Oh yes, without a doubt, and it solidified the challenge she’d wrought for herself weeks ago in the shower after Yamcha’s galling accusation.  But why?  Whywhywhywhy—?
Vegeta chuckled at her silence.  He actually chuckled, the prick.  And so, without a choice, without another course of action she stepped forward.  His mirth was losing this battle for her and the only thing that would stop his evil little sense of humor was her closeness; specifically, her voluntary closeness, the kind she could initiate.  Because if there was one more thing she had gleaned from him thus far, it was that Vegeta did not like it when someone else was in control.  No, he hated that.
Sure enough, as she came closer to him his body tensed like a stretched out coil spring from the door he’d just torn off the capsule.  Bulma felt the smile return to her lips with an unintentional sensuality.  She couldn’t get too carried away, could she?  Could she?
Vegeta crossed both arms over his bare chest, and she could actually see the muscles in his thighs bunch up under his shorts.  He stood with both feet shoulder width apart, and one of his thumbs peeked out from under his bicep to stroke the skin there.  Bulma took a deep breath and stopped about five feet from him.  His aura had not dissipated, and it tickled the fine hairs on her arms.
“What do I want from you?” she asked, merely a re-statement.
She leaned an elbow against the kitchen island and regarded him from head to toe.  His eyebrow twitched with nervous inquiry; his bravado was failing just as it had when she’d approached him each time before this.  Bulma regarded her painted fingernails to distract him from her trembling voice.
“Yes, Bulma,” Vegeta snarled across from her.  It was the first time he’d used her name without being reminded of it, she noted with shock.  “What is it you want from me?”
Now he let his aura dissipate and, to her horror, he came to her so quickly that she had little time to do anything but back into the island.  Her heels hit the hard stone and she flinched, eeking out a girlish gasp of pain.  His face was so close to hers that she could feel his breathing, and his palms were flat against the countertop on either side of her.  Shit.  Shit, shit, shit.  Had she lost all control now?  But no!  Bulma Briefs would get it back, goddammit.
“What do you want from me?!” he insisted, his voice grazing along the edges of control.
Bulma breathed deeply, taking a few seconds before each new breath so that they would not fail her.  She tightened the muscles in her arms, willing them to remain positioned and keep her precarious balance.  Her feet tensed on the ground, and a gust of wind outside drowned out the outburst of breath from Vegeta’s mouth.  Her mind, so close to the edge of abandon, came creeping back to her.
And so without a word, without a single shred of hesitation, she tilted her chin up and pressed her lips to his.  The contact of gorgeous, pliant heat against her mouth was so different than the kiss he’d consumed her with outside in the rain that her knees nearly buckled.  But Bulma kept them locked.  Kami help her, she would not let this defeat her!  In an instant though, he pulled his neck backward with a violent snap.  The heat was gone, and Bulma mourned its loss.  Vegeta watched her with narrowed eyes, and his breath was heavy against her face again.  His hands had not moved.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked.  Crass, she thought, but to the point.  Bulma lifted an eyebrow and frowned with confusion.
“It’s ok for you to kiss me then?  To grab me like a street walker and grope me, but it’s not ok for me to kiss you?”
“’Street walker?’” His voice was winded, and he was starting to back away, to look away.  Ah!  Did she have him now?
Bulma reached out with one hand for his neck, and her fingers slid over his sweat-soaked skin with ease.  They curled up into the coarse hair there, and suddenly the feel of his closeness was much more real than what she’d felt the first time.  Oooooh, Kami…  Her eyelids were low, so low with desire that she wanted to curse aloud.  Instead, the elation she felt at having regained her control made her giddy.
“It means ‘whore.’  ‘Prostitute?’  I think you know.”  She giggled; a silly sound that she hoped would show him how harmless she really was.
The column of his neck was so tight that she thought it may burst, so she stroked the tips of her fingers into the wet hair there.  Her words, her simple movements would have melted anyone else against her like the ice cream in the abandoned carton behind them.  And good gods was it melting her resolve.  But Vegeta’s menacing glare returned and he pushed the entire length of his body against her, as he had done before.  It was not a kind, or even a sensual gesture.
“I don’t think you know exactly what you’re dealing with,” he told her with a low growl.
The thrill of fear she’d felt earlier returned.  But instead of deterring her, Bulma felt the fear turn into a disdainful kind of annoyance at his accusation.  She pushed back against him, glad to see that his ardor had returned and was pressing against her thigh with dizzying fire.
“Don’t I?”  She ground out through her teeth and pressed her fingers deeply into his wet flesh.  “You don’t know who I am, really; how can you say what I do and don’t know!”
Her voice ended in a shocking gasp as he reached a hand up to her neck and gripped it with enough force to hold her still, though he did not squeeze.  His thumb snaked under her chin and pushed up until her throat was exposed and he was looking right into her eyes.  The black, so utterly black, irises in his wide eyes pierced into her so completely that she felt her legs start to burn again.  They shook under his dominating stance, and his free arm tensed next to her on the counter.  She heard the faint crack of tile, and could not help herself as she gasped for air.
“You don’t know who I am, either, do you?” he said, and then leaned into her ear.  “Do you?”
Unable to do much else besides shake her head, Bulma croaked out an agreement.  Oh fucking hell, this had not gone as she’d planned.  Bulma’s ego struggled for the reigns again and she reached up to grip his wrist, the one that held her neck so tightly yet would not choke her.
“No…” she breathed against his check.  “No, I don’t.  But I do know what you are.”
They grappled there for a moment, suspended in time as each rallied for control.  Her fingers dug into his neck and his grip tightened on hers, until another chuckle rumbled in his chest.  She felt it, pressed against hers and reverberating through her body until her fingers ached.  Vegeta, to her credit, was still breathless, and he pressed his cheek harder against hers.
“Oh, you do?”  His voice echoed in her ear.  “Then, what am I?”
The sound of his words sent shocks of uninhibited desire through her limbs.  She would not say it aloud, but Bulma did not know what she was dealing with—because no one had ever wrestled her back for control.  No one had ever challenged what she offered, not even Yamcha.  Poor, tamed and domesticated Yamcha…  The desire she felt for Vegeta at this moment could have broken the bandit’s heart though he was hundreds of miles away.
“Yes!” she hissed finally and slid her fingers further into the coarse, wet hair at his neck.  “I know what you are.  You’re a defeated, displaced prince who can’t admit when he’s cornered.  You don’t like being cornered, do you, Vegeta?”
Now this outright bravery surprised even her, and she felt a soft crow of joy at this small victory.  She stretched her other set of fingers out and touched them to the hard muscle on his chest.  But her victory was short-lived as he snarled and hooked his free arm around her waist.  The animalistic sound echoed in the kitchen, and he plucked her easily from her place against the counter until she was pressed, cheek into the wall near the dual stove.  Bulma slapped both palms against the wall and pushed back, but her bottom came in direct contact with his hips, and he shoved her forward again.
“No, I don’t like being cornered,” he said, and slid all five of his fingers into the messy bun of curls on top of her head.  He tugged until she was flush against his chest and he could snarl in her ear again.  “But neither do you, right?”
This time it was she who growled, but when her bottom pressed against the rock solid heat in his shorts, she let her breath out in a sigh.  No, no, no this was not how it was supposed to go!  But she wanted it, without reservation!  She’d wanted it since the night in this same kitchen when he’d told her about his Saiyan word for ‘beautiful’.  Gods and guardians above, she was lost this time.
“No, I don’t either, Vegeta,” she told him, and leaned back into his fierce embrace.  “But I’m not afraid to let it happen.  I’m not afraid of you.”  She’d said the words before, and had meant them.  Did she mean them now?  She didn’t know.
Vegeta roared out a protest behind her and released the grip he’d had on her hair.  He took one shoulder and spun her around so she was facing him again, and through her haze of confusion, desire and disarming fear, she could really see him.  Oh, Kami, she could really see him.  His eyes begged her not to let him, but why?  He reached down to hook his fingers in her gym shorts and slid a palm up under her thin, pink shirt until he’d pushed her back against the wall.
His hand felt like a hot, cast iron pan against the plane of her stomach, and she gasped.  Bulma’s shorts fell to the floor, forgotten as he hooked her leg over his arm and lifted her off the floor with ease.  Her heart thudded wildly in her throat; dear Kaioshin, was it possible to be so on fire?  But this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen, it just wasn’t!  Vegeta’s fingers slid under her thigh and brushed along the seam of her panties, right between her legs where it was obvious now how much she wanted him.  He pushed aside the damp fabric and slid two fingers into her without pretense.  Bulma gasped at the sudden violation but shuddered at the wave of pleasure that shot through the center of her body, at the idea of what his hands had done for so many years—how many lives he’d ended with them.
Vegeta’s other hand slid further up her shirt to wrench down the top of her bra and cup one breast in his ferocious grip.  He pinched the already tingling nipple he found there unapologetically and she cried out in spite of herself.  She could see that he was pleased by that; the unadulterated satisfaction washed across his face like hot water.  His fingers pushed, hard, into her and he pressed his forehead against hers when she gasped with a mixture of pain and pleasure.
“Did that hurt?” he asked, his voice gruff and heavy.  When she did not answer, he huffed with breathless amusement.  “This is what I am!  And you still have no idea.  No idea.”  She watched his eyes, so close to hers that they merged into one, and blinked at the strange and burning anger she saw there.
Wait… She wanted to say it so badly, but his relentless fingers worked their way out of her, and in again until she shook with the wanting of him.  She should tell him to wait—this wasn’t how she wanted it!  He wasn’t speaking the same language yet!  Oh, she understood his words all too well.  But it wasn’t the same, goddammit!  No, it wasn’t right.
But she rode against his hand uninhibited, on fire as she never had been by such a brash, unrepentant assault on her lust.  He knew what he was doing—but only as he knew how.  Vegeta gathered her shirt in his fist and tore it from her, heedless of her protest, then dipped his head to catch her exposed nipple in his teeth.  She shrieked and cursed the hands that dove into his hair of their own will.
With a swiftness that was nearly painful, he withdrew his fingers and pushed her further up the wall so that her other leg rested precariously on his hip.  Her eyes fluttered open, because she could sense that he was looking at her now.  Vegeta held her gaze for what seemed an eternity, and for the first time in those onyx depths, she could see a question.  No question that she could answer, but it was there nonetheless.  There she could see what her words had done to him; because he was a defeated, displaced prince, and the desire to live she had been seeking from him was burning in his gaze like a torch.  Perhaps she could keep it aflame.
Bulma reached down to push his shorts off of his hips, suddenly frantic for this man—this alien man—who set her on fire with a mere glance.  It didn’t matter how she wanted it now, because all she wanted was him:  around her, against her, inside her.  Vegeta growled as she set him free, pushing forward until the back of her head hit the wall and she sucked in a breath.
He nudged into her carefully until he gasped and pressed his cheek against hers again.
“You’re a fool, you know that?” he snarled at her.  It was not really a question.  “Vash’halla…”  It sounded like a curse as he pushed further inside her, filling her up and bringing her panting breath to a hysterical, gasping keen.  “Fuck… You should be afraid of me!”
So thankful for the vastness of her own home, Bulma let the cry of his name escape before she could stop it.  It seemed only to urge him on in his merciless quest as he slammed into her with an unfamiliar sort of ferocity.  It went on and on until the smack of his flesh against hers mingled with her gasps of delight.  Good gods, how had it happened so quickly?  She hadn’t planned it this way, she hadn’t—!
The building tension between them now only served to take her to the point of climax so quickly that she felt like a trembling, terrified virgin.  Her legs squeezed him with a vicious need, and as she sobbed out her oncoming release and tugged on his hair, something else came to life in his body.  Yes…  She’d found that spark she’d been looking for.
“Yes, yes, yes!” For a moment she did not realize she’d been moaning the word out aloud.  But before she could grasp that spark from him, to really know it and hold on for dear life, it was gone.
Almost as quickly, Vegeta lost himself in her; he came with a deep and gratified groan and slammed one fist into the wall beside her head.  The plaster and fiber there cracked under the strike of his hand, and Bulma’s eyes snapped wide open so she could see the small little chasm of destruction he’d wrought.  It could have just as well been her head, she knew.
He pulled out of her quickly and let her panties slide back into place.  Bulma winced at the discomfort and loss of heat, and then watched him with indecision.  Kami save her, now what?  But Vegeta stood there, and the fist he’d planted into the wall relaxed.  He reached down to cup her bottom in that hand and squeeze.  She gasped at the sensation; she was still so very tender.  His other hand encircled her neck again, and he kissed her with the same gentle press of lips that she had shown him before.  Could he have understood at least that?
When they parted, Vegeta panted against her lips for a soundless moment and, to her great surprise, he smirked.  It was not a pleasant one, to be sure, but it did make the handsome lines of his face quirk with residual desire.
“You’re such a fool…” he whispered, and craned his neck to bury his face in her neck.  “A fool,” he said again, into her skin.  Was he telling her, or was he telling himself?
Bulma stood with the broken prince’s head on her neck, the two of them panting like teenagers in the back seat of a car, and she knew the truth of it.  She was a damned fool.  Bulma gazed at the carton of ice cream on the counter, forgotten now and a mute testimony to how quickly a thing could change into something else entirely.