Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ You've Got a Hold On Me ❯ Chapter Six - Starving ( Chapter 6 )

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

Here on Earth, even in the deepest parts of the night, there were moments when clouds all but obscured the brilliance of the heavens.  Those heavens:  thousands of stars dotting the endless expanse of universe that even Frieza, in all his galactic omniscience, had only begun to explore and conquer.  The part of Vegeta that had been so long in space mourned the loss of the clear field of black on a night like tonight.
Those bright stars; they had been the secret longings of a lost Saiyan child, and later of a vengeful, throne-less prince.  Perhaps one of them protected a distant planetary system where others of his kind had escaped the fate of Planet Vegeta.  Perhaps one day he would find them, and then together with his lost and loyal subjects they would reclaim the past glories of his forefathers.  But on these nights when the clouds were moving slowly over the bright, beautiful stars, Vegeta could not find the promise of so long ago.
From his place in a chair near the balcony, he looked away into the shadow of the Earth Woman’s room, clenched his fist and bowed his head to gaze at his bare feet.  The carpet was abnormally soft, and his toes tingled slightly at the unfamiliar sensation.  When Vegeta looked up again, he could see that sunlight was creeping over the horizon and that he would have no more hope of the stars tonight.  The woman’s figure on the expansive bed across the room stirred, turned onto her back and hummed a sort of contented tune until her breathing returned to a steady, deep rhythm.  Vegeta watched her intently.
“You’re a defeated, displaced prince who can’t admit when he’s cornered!”
If not for the memory of her fingers sliding through his sweat-soaked hair and digging into him like little scalding hot pokers, well perhaps he would have killed her.  Yet there she lay, across the room and content in her soft bed, one bare breast only just revealed by the white sheets.  Worse, instead of killing her, he had fucked her twice more just as hard as he had in the kitchen and given up trying to reason why someone as spoiled and purportedly intelligent as she was would even want someone like him.  What a complete and utter fool she was.
There were moments during that last time, with her lovely pale legs draped over his shoulders and his quick, powerful rhythm stoking the azure-haired hellcat’s ardor underneath him, when Vegeta could sense that although she’d wanted this from him, perhaps had even orchestrated it, it was not really what she needed.  She didn’t need—whatever the fuck it was he had just given her.
But gods it had been so long since he’d even had the desire, or the opportunity, to pursue such outright self-gratification that instinct had taken over.  Instinct that, over and over, had driven him so deep inside her warm acceptance that it was the only thing worth having.  The only thing worth taking.  What a complete and utter fool he had been: crying out himself like a rabid animal, clutching her hips and coming inside her with enough force to scare away any normal female.
“Do it--!  Don’t stop, Vegeta!” she’d told him that last time, between cries of delight.  Her body arching off the bed to meet him…  “You hold it all in—you hold it all in!”
She was right of course.  If she knew how much he really held it in, she’d run screaming into the night.  Yet, watching her as he was now Vegeta could only press two fingers each against either side of his head and curse the twitch of his groin at the mere thought of her brazen and fearless assault on a warrior who, if he remembered correctly, had probably threatened to kill her on more than one occasion—and meant it.  He thought of her standing in the rain opposite him, her brow creased in a scowl rivaling his own while he imagined scraping his teeth over her wet, plump ass; he thought of her sitting casually in the kitchen with that utensil dangling from her fingers as though a planet purging, genocidal monster was not glaring at her in utter contempt for her meddling.
Vegeta sighed, blinked at her motionless form again and pressed his chin into his fist.  The dawn breeze drifted through her open balcony and danced a silent waltz with the curtains.  It was a feeling of comfort he was so very unused to, that it almost put him on edge.  How many times had he woken from stasis inside a cramped pod?  How many times had he woken in an overcrowded, shit excuse for a bunker?  Raditz would be snoring a scant few feet away or Nappa would be stinking up the precious space they had with his shameful hygiene.  He’d never seen a sunrise like the ones on Earth, and he didn’t remember the sunrise on Planet Vegeta.  No, not even if he sat and tried could he remember one of those.
He cursed, stood from his chair and swiped his shorts from their heap on the floor where he’d tossed them earlier, then slid them over his hips and carefully over his still sensitive cock with a hiss.  It had been about an hour and a half since they began by his reckoning, with little breathing time in between, but it felt like mere moments.  The sky was getting a bit brighter now, and he looked out the balcony window one last time.  The light drew him toward the edge of the plush carpet, where the tiles on the floor began and the sky was turning blue.  Vegeta found himself mesmerized by the sight, as he had so many times before, and leaned an arm against the edge of the doorway.  The balcony doors opened outward, like an invitation to join the sky in its golden, ferocious glory.  Fucking Kakarot and his golden, ferocious glory!
Vegeta pushed away from the balcony door with enough force that it creaked and gave a little under the pressure of his hand.  He lifted his lip in a silent snarl and stalked over to the side of Bulma’s bed.  She lay there, for all the world having just been ravished by her most delicious fantasy, the upside of a delicate smile on her restful face.  As silent as a predator would be, Vegeta knelt on the floor beside her.  He exhaled, sighing out whatever frustration he felt at his indiscretion, and watched a few of her loose blue curls tickle the sides of her face.  What an utter, utter fool.  She really had no gods damned clue what she was really dealing with.
Vegeta reached out a hand to hover over her sleeping face, and paused.  His brow furrowed, and he brushed those wayward curls away from her neck and back onto the pillow so that they joined the halo of blue surrounding her—her and her veil of sickening naïveté.  He leaned forward until he could smell the contentment from her pulse point, and his lips lingered there without contact.  He drew in a breath and touched one finger to her parted lips; they were still wet and glistening.  She stirred just a bit and hummed in her sleep.
“Something will break this, Earth Woman,” he whispered to the rushing blood underneath her too-delicate skin.  “Something will break this, and you will hate me by the end of it.”
He almost chuckled, because there was something distinctly unpleasant about that certainty.  Convinced of its inevitability though, and certain that there was little he could do about it, Vegeta stood and strode from the brightening room, his eyes focused on the door until it had slid shut behind him and he could not look back.

Bulma cursed, shrieked and sat up so she could fling her soldering tool away and plunge her forefinger into her mouth.  It was the third time she had burnt herself this afternoon, and not the first time she’d done it because her mind had been on other things besides repairing the busted pistons of the GSR entryway.  She plucked the digit from her mouth and cursed again.  Her eyes drifted upward at the realigned pistons; she hadn’t even started on the attachment of the door.  That would require the use of her father’s drone bots.  An angry Saiyan had plucked its hinges off with little effort, but not even absentee Yamcha would be able to lift the door and Bulma had cringed at the thought of hitting up Son-kun for such a task.  That would certainly have required something of an explanation, and Bulma was running dreadfully low on those.
She stood, pleased with the work she’d completed, and let the summer breeze cool the sweat from her neck.  The muscles in her thighs screamed at her efforts, and she grunted in discomfort.  It had been two days since her encounter with Vegeta and her body still protested the slightest strain, especially in her legs and bottom.  She’d held on tight for the ride, enjoyed every moment of it, and even now the remnant soreness made her equally giddy and irritable at the same time.
Surely Bulma’s giddiness stemmed from her victory.  She’d actually done it, for Kami’s sake.  Somehow, and even now she was not sure exactly how, she had wormed her way into the dark mind of the Saiyan Prince and managed to awaken something in him; but even now, even having let him inside her, so much remained a mystery.  The tears Krillin had mentioned during her visit to Kame house, the unknown and perhaps perpetually unreachable parts of his past that only Son-kun and his allies had been privy to for a short while; all these things were still so far from her grasp that it only fueled her desire to attain them.  His words that night, as few as they had been, had done nothing to answer the burning questions in her mind or scratch the itch of her curiosity where he was concerned.
“You’re such a fool,” he’d said.  “This is what I am!”  And she remembered the way his hands, his fingers, had made her feel like bursting into pieces—the way he’d filled her up to the very limits of her endurance, and she’d let him.  Shit, she’d loved it.  Damn him…
Ah, yes, her irritation; it was a direct result of his absence in the past two days.  Bulma was resolute in her determination that the urgent, slightly vicious fuck-fest she’d allowed herself to indulge in would not be the last word she had with Vegeta, regardless if he ever touched her again, and in spite of her desire for him to do just that.  Grudgingly her aching legs trembled at the thought of it, and she growled aloud at the shiny pistons she’d just soldered back together.
“You can put the door back on yourself, asshole,” she snapped at the empty air around her.  It was humid today, and bloody hell was it hot.  She sighed through pursed lips and wiped a bit of grease and sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.  Bulma cursed when she realized her hands were equally as dirty.
As she began to gather her tools and think longingly about a cool, delightful shower, the air suddenly became heavier.  Impossibly, it seemed even harder to breathe.  That scent was back, she realized with a slow and nervous aha!  The one from the kitchen the night she had first put her hands on him, and he had nearly throttled her in the process.  Oh, shit.
“You are brave to the point of stupidity, Earth Woman: even when you think no one is watching.”
His voice wafted through the heavy air from around the right wall of the GSR.  It sent trickles of mixed emotion inching down her back, just like the snaking fingers of sweat that itched at her skin.  Bulma’s eyes narrowed and she glanced around the curved wall to see him standing there, leaning up against the GSR with one foot propped against it.  His arms, crossed over the broad expanse of his chest, tightened when he saw that she had found him.
 Bulma blinked at him, unable to fathom how a man, even one so alien as he, could possibly look so solitary and distant.  She recalled that he believed he’d done a fairly good job of being just that up until now, but the memory of his persistent and all but needful love-making (if one could call it that) revealed that he needed so much more than that: more than he even knew.  The knowledge of that made her daring, and despite that she could still feel the heavy air on her skin and smell the tinge of whatever small part of him still wanted to keep her away, she came to him.  Vegeta watched her approach with the same wariness as always, eyes wide so he could observe her every movement.  As though she posed him some threat, some—injury.
The grass was cool, despite the hot afternoon, and Bulma let it tickle her ankles for a moment before she inhaled deeply and closed the distance between them to inches.  He did not move, but continued to watch her with a gaze so penetrating that it burned.  His body, so close, was as far away from her as it had been before that night.
“Still can’t say my name, Vegeta?” she asked, noting how the air around him was even hotter.  She looked him up and down, wondering how god-awful she looked in her coveralls and grease-smeared face.  “Still can’t say ‘Bulma’?  It’s just my name, you know.”
Kami save her, he finally blinked, and his eyes narrowed.  Vegeta’s arms shifted against the blue sleeveless shirt he wore; clearly he had been back to Capsule Corp even in the two days she had not seen him.  The clothes smelled fresh, and she saw with some surprise that although he wore a pair of loose gym pants, his feet were bare.
“You’ve no concept,” he said finally, “of how infrequently I have addressed a female by her name.”
Bulma felt the scornful chuckle rise up her throat before she could stop it.  She almost gulped it back down, but the memory of his shameful two-day avoidance urged her on.
“Even the ones you’ve fucked, hmm?” she hissed, right on the edge of a lustful little sneer.
Oh, balls, she hadn’t meant for it to come out that way and his eyes narrowed even further at the candor of her voice.  Classic, Briefs, she mourned.  As if the Prince of All Lost Souls from the depths of Space Hell was going to respond well to such an Earthly, piss of a retort as that.  Bulma ground her teeth together, and her nostrils flared involuntarily when he leaned closer.  The sound of his shirt sliding across the wall of the GSR mingled with the rush of cicada song in the trees, and the corner of his mouth turned up.  She could just barely feel the tip of his nose against hers.
“Why can’t you admit that you don’t know what you’re dealing with this time, Bulma?” he whispered.  The sound reverberated against the wall, into her ears and down into the deepest core of her belly: that part where only a gut reaction would come from.
“Because I’m fucking smart, that’s why,” she snapped and caught his deep, dark gaze over the bridge of his nose.  “You’re no different from--!”
Vegeta stepped back a few inches and laughed aloud.  It was that same laugh from the night in the kitchen when the sound had sent a shockwave of desire through her that was as outrageous as it was delightful.  But this time Bulma felt his laughter right in the center of her chest, where her ego had just been sucker punched.
“No different from what, Earth Woman?” he said; it was not really a question.  “From your dear friend, Son Goku?  I am like nothing, no one you’ve ever met before!  You think to compare me to Kakarot, or that that fool who thinks he stands a chance against the Androids when even that half-breed brat Gohan could show him up?”
“Yamcha is not a fool, he--!”
“Am I no different from any other poor choice you’ve made, Bulma?  Is that why you think you understand me?”
At this the characteristic gusto and self-assurance in her dropped to the floor with her bruised ego.  She stood stock still in front of him and for the first time, in any of the possible parallel universes that made up the fabric of time as she’d studied it, Bulma Briefs felt tears of frustration well in her big blue eyes.  A poor choice was it?
A wave of raging embarrassment washed over her, and instinct lifted her right arm into the air, palm flat out to make direct contact with his handsome, smirking face.  But she had forgotten who she was dealing with, hadn’t she?  Vegeta’s hand snapped out from his side to catch hers mid-air.  After he glanced at it, and wrapped bare fingers around her wrist, he let out a short breath of air.
“Oh-ho!  You almost surprised me, Earth Woman.  I had thought your only means of attack was your lovely, vicious mouth--?”
He stopped when one belligerent tear slipped from her eye.  Fuck!  No!  No, it would not do for him to see such a thing!  But it was there now, and there was no denying the trail of clear skin it left on her grease-stained cheek.  To her great surprise the smirk died on his face, and something about his aura changed.  A gust of wind rushed by; he had just let his guard down, Bulma knew that trademark quite well.  But why?  A distant, unfamiliar glaze brushed over his black eyes, and his lips parted wordlessly.  Vegeta’s fingers brushed upwards against the inside of her palm, and his grip tightened.
Bulma gathered her bearings, because it would not do to lose her god-damned cool in front of the haughtiest being in the known universe.  Because she was fucking Bulma Briefs, and because she was just as determined as he was.
“All you can do is hurt,” she said finally.  “Why?”  His eyes, though focused at hers, seemed to look past them into something—somewhere?—else.
“Why not?” he replied, resolute.  
“Because it’s not all you’re capable of!”  Bulma leaned forward so that their noses were almost touching again.  Vegeta’s eyes snapped back from the haze of whatever time or place he had been, and his ever-present scowl deepened.
“I can prove you wrong about that.  Right now.”
Bulma shook her head, swallowing down the rest of her wayward and disobedient tears.  The one on her cheek had dried.
“You can’t prove me wrong,” she said, and slid her wrist from his grasp.  He did not stop her, only held her gaze with dizzying concentration.  Bulma opened her mouth and drew in a shaky breath.  “I already know how good you can make me feel.”
A brief moment passed while Vegeta seemed to absorb her words, and the truth of them kept him silent for that oh, so quiet piece of time.  But then Vegeta snarled, he gripped both sides of her face and spun her around until her back was up against the wall of the GSR, just like that night in the rain.  He still couldn’t stand to lose his control over anything.  
Bulma struggled futilely for a few seconds until she realized that even now he was not hurting her; even now when the rage on his face was bright and hot as the summer sunlight around them, his hands did nothing but turn her insides to traitorous, eager mush.  She watched him simmer until the gushing wind returned and his aura began to rise again.
“You know nothing!” he snarled, and a crackle of ki around his eyes startled her into submission.  “You know nothing if you think what we did was good in any sense of the word.”
Bulma put both of her hands on top of his; the ki shock had frightened her enough this time that she wanted to remind him she was still there.  He glared down his regal nose at her and loosened his hold only a bit.
“Vegeta,” she managed, “when you touched me, it felt good.  Didn’t you feel good, too--?”
“Stop it!” he raged, “You know what I meant.  No matter how ‘good’ it felt, what happens when you do find out what you’ve gotten yourself into?  What is it that you want from me and just what in the name of all the gods do you think I can give you?  Have you completely forgotten just who the fuck I AM?”
“Let go of me, damn you,” Bulma growled under his fingers.  When he finally did release her, none of his aura had dissipated, and it was slowly gathering momentum around them.  Her skin tingled with its bio-electricity.  She clenched her fists at her sides and pressed her lips together before opening them to gasp in a breath.
“So what exactly is it that I’ve gotten myself into?  Yes, yes, you’re Vegeta, Crown Prince of All Saiyans and the craziest fuckwad known to Planet Earth since Emperor Nero!  If you want to, Vegeta, burn West City to the ground and me with it!  It won’t change anything about what happened between us, and it won’t change what I want from you or what you want from me!  It was only that we wanted each other, Vegeta.  Is that too simple for you to fathom?”
“Great gods you are a fool!” he shouted at her, and Bulma realized vaguely that outside the storm of his ki the sun was shining.  It was like suffocating in a tornado, with every word from his mouth a strike of agonizing lightning.  She glared at him and pressed her face forward until their noses touched again; a stinging little shock crackled between them.  Bulma snarled.
“A fool who can say she doesn’t care where it goes from here, if it ends or how it ends!  A fool who saw what you needed and gave it to you, you conceited prick!” she shouted above the din of his ki storm.  “Now power down before you singe my god damned hair!”
Seconds passed as they stared at one another, and Bulma found herself mesmerized by the pulsating force of Vegeta’s energy.  She had never been so close to Son-kun as he prepared to fight; had never been so completely devoured by the rushing life force that flurried around her now with a dark and fiery insistence.  He watched her with obvious disdain, then a flash of admiration.  Then, just before he sighed and his eyes slid shut with the effort of controlling his ki, Bulma saw Vegeta’s spark again: that spark of desire for life and all it promised him that she had so desperately been searching for.  His head leaned back just so, and he paused.
Bulma felt the ki dissipate, and again the rush of wind as his guard dropped.  The summer was heavy and silent around them until the cicadas came back to life in the trees, and a few birds returned to chatter about as though trying to discern what had disrupted the tranquil afternoon.  Vegeta’s eyes opened, and he looked at her.  Again though, something in his gaze was very far away.  He leaned forward and pressed both palms flat against the GSR on either side of her head; he was searching now, some place deeper than where her eyes could take him.
“What I need?” he said then, deep and quiet: dangerous.  Though her tears were gone now, the quake and shudder of her body was not.  “You think you know what I need, do you?”
Bulma sucked in a breath at the sudden rush of slight panic in her chest.  She swallowed it and blinked at him, and then she nodded.
“Maybe I know better than you do,” she whispered.  “You fuck like it’s the last chance you’ll ever get.”
Vegeta’s arms tightened as the weight of the GSR shifted under his powerful arms.  Bulma slid forward as her bearings were lost, and the sound of his sudden, thunderous voice all but drowned out the remaining snide retorts she’d been hoarding since his unexplained disappearance.  She dropped to a squat in the grass, reflexively shutting her eyes and covering her ears.  Oh Kami, it was different this time, she thought.  His voice was so different.
Something old and horrible came gushing from his throat now and though he was angry, Bulma heard something of sorrow in his roar.  When it stopped, he spat a few choice words she did not understand and stood in front of her panting.  Bulma’s eyes winked open and she squinted up at him, against the sunlight.  Though it seemed that there should be some destruction wrought by his generous tantrum, there was no sign of it but for the approximate four-foot shift of the GSR behind her.  Bulma took a few deep breaths to watch him; he gazed skyward and let loose the fists at his sides.  She shook her head and felt the words escaping her before she had a chance to stop them.  Great Kaioshin, she’d already said enough, hadn’t she?
“Look at you,” she said finally, against the hum of the summer insects.  “I think you are the one who’s afraid, Vegeta.”  Bulma planted both hands in the cool, damp grass and stood shakily.  After she had brushed some leaves and debris from her coveralls, she saw that he was looking at her with distinct, furious shock.
Now, in the shadow of the GSR, the angle of his face and the deep ‘v’ of his brow were so well-pronounced that he had never looked so handsome: and never so very wretched.  Bulma thought for a moment, about the alien warrior she had seen when he’d arrived on Earth, and the one in front of her who looked so much like a human man, felt so much like a man, that she had forgotten his true nature entirely.  Vegeta was still staring at her, his left eyebrow raised, and she swiped a hand across her greasy face one more time.
“Afraid?” he repeated the word with so much disgust that she shuddered.  But then, he took one step closer to her and craned his neck forward.  “Yes… Yes I’m afraid; but not of you, precious little thing.  So naïve, so oblivious to the evil in this universe.”
Bulma puffed out her chest indignantly at his derision.  The bastard!  Did he think she’d forgotten?  Did he presume that his sins had gone unpunished, though he had been given a second chance at life?  Though she had given him a second chance?
“I’ve seen enough of evil in this universe,” she said. “I know what’s out there.  I know what’s right under my roof.”
Vegeta chuckled his ridiculously handsome, spirited chuckle that she did enjoy so horribly much, and he reached out to brush his fingers against her hair.  Bulma snapped her face away from his advance, though the skin on her neck burned where he would have touched her.  He smirked again, flashing a canine.
“What’s in your bed?” he hissed, so gently that it could have been a whisper.
Her eyes narrowed into little slits at the flash of memory: of tangled limbs and a strong grip on her legs, fingers probing her until she was left a shivering mess against the wall of the kitchen, joined for the moment to the cock of the most unstable, dangerous creature on Planet Earth.  The fire in her belly begged for that feeling again, for the frightening urgency she had seen in him.  ‘This is what I am!’
But Bulma nodded to him.
“Yes, Vegeta,” she said, her voice clear and decisive.  “Yes, I know.  You want me to understand you, but you need to understand me, too, for that to happen.”
“Hah!”  His voice rang out into the open space, and his hand dropped back to his side.  “I know what I need to know about you.”
Bulma felt a tendril of a frizzy curl fall into her face, and she allowed herself a small smile.  As she stepped away and bent to pick up her remaining tools, she could feel more than see the curious glare His Royal Highness had bestowed upon her.  Despite the pull, the magnetic force of his aura and the desire that rushed to fire between her legs at the thought of his powerful and urgent lust, Bulma readied herself.
She did not look back when she slung her tool sack over her shoulder and adjusted the waist of her coveralls, but she did pause.  She could feel the licking tongues of flame from Vegeta’s glare behind her, but she pressed on.  One foot in front of the other, Briefs.  Do this—do it!
“Let me know when you discover empathy, Vegeta,” she called over her shoulder to him.  “Oh, and like I said; you can put the door back on yourself.  Asshole.”

“Miss Bulma, you ought to see how much stronger I’ve gotten!  My father and I’ve been training with Mr. Piccolo for months now.”
Gohan’s beautiful, innocent face gazed up at her with impatient respect.  He had shown up with his father just moments ago, inside the west compound of Capsule Corp where they were literally half a mile from the GSR location, and had been touting the training progress he’d made with his father ever since.  His eager, eight-year-old face was so very similar, and yet so very different from any other boy that Bulma gave pause.  Then, Gohan was not just an average eight-year-old boy at all; he was half-Saiyan, half beastly warrior breed, and she’d seen that perfectly well on Namek.  Bulma smiled at his naïve eagerness and crouched to the boy’s eye-level.
“You’ll have to show me, Gohan.  In a bit though, alright?”
The youngest member of the Son family nodded, his bright eyes such a jarring contrast to the dark and brooding pair she’d been staring at mere hours ago.  Gohan reached up with a curious tilt of his head and touched the silky, newly blown-out locks of her straight hair.  She’d only just returned from the salon half an hour ago.  So far it was much longer than she intended it to be, her curls having gotten out of hand these past months, and reached past her shoulders down the hollow between her shoulder blades.  It tickled the bare skin there around her tank top.
“Your hair looks different,” Gohan stated, his brow creased with a childish concern.  But his brow lifted then, as though he had been contemplating something.  “You look beautiful Miss Bulma!”
Bulma smiled warmly at him; it was the most wonderful thing she’d heard all week.  She reached out to ruffle the unruly, black Saiyan hair on his head.  He squinted and laughed.
“Thanks, kid,” she told him, and he continued to gaze at her with innocent wonder.
Looking at Gohan, one would never guess that the terror that boy from the future had warned them about was now less than two and a half years away.  A soft noise at the entryway made Bulma blink, and she gazed up into the pre-evening sunset to see a familiar silhouette.
“You do look beautiful, ‘Miss’ Bulma,” Goku said, the never-absent and playful lilt of his voice so very uplifting.  Bulma stood and did not think to thank him as she threw an arm over his high, broad shoulders.
“Son-kun,” she said, nearly a whisper, and closed her eyes.  Her friend’s strong arms wrapped around her, and his palm pressed against her back with a platonic and comforting squeeze.  “I’m so glad you’ve come.”
When they parted, Goku grinned happily and planted both hands on his hips.
“It hasn’t been as long as it usually is, huh?” he joked.  The two shared a chuckle as Gohan glanced eagerly around the foyer of the west compound, Capsule Corp’s corporate offices.  Bulma watched him and longed for his oblivious fascination.
“Why don’t you take a look around, Gohan?  This is our display room.”  The demi-Saiyan nodded with glee and rushed up to a hover plane prototype from the early days of her father’s manufacturing business.  Bulma looked back up at Goku.
“Sorry about the formal location.  Vegeta’s been in the GSR since the afternoon and I didn’t want to cause any…?”  She paused, thought heavily on her words and mimicked his pose.  Her friend laughed softly enough to keep Gohan’s attention away from him.
“It’s ok, Bulma,” he said; the smile only he could smile was just too sweet.  “Anyway, he already knows I’m here.”
Bulma huffed and crossed both arms over her purple tank.  She hadn’t even considered it.
“I should have known that,” she confessed.  “I was just hoping to spare you his ego.”
Goku lifted a hand to scratch at the back of his head with confusion.  There were times when he still looked so…  So young.  It seemed only months ago that they had scoured jungle, desert and plain together in search of Dragon Balls, not years.  Son-kun’s mouth turned up at the corner.
“Vegeta isn’t the type to let anyone be spared from that,” he replied, still looking a bit confused.  Bulma laughed though, and reveled in the relief it sent through her chest.  She had hoped, from the moment she’d phoned her friend, that nothing would seem out of place or wrong, despite her current state of mind.
“But I thought you said the GSR door was broken,” Goku continued, and his hands returned to his hips, “and that Vegeta had been gone from Capsule Corp for two days.  I did feel his ki move away for a little while.”
Bulma sighed and lifted her brow in haughty frustration.
“Yes, well,” she began quietly.  “He replaced the door himself; in fact, I told him to do it himself.  I just didn’t expect him to, Son-kun.  That’s why I asked you to come, but by the time I realized he’d already done it I figured you were already just about here.  And anyway, I--?”
Goku’s eyes blinked wide at her pause, and it looked as though he expected her to say more.  Much more.  Bulma squinted at him.  Great fucking Kami.  Did he know?  How could he know?  There was no way unless his heightened Saiyan senses could smell something on her, and holy Kaioshin maybe that’s what it was!  Son-kun was so like a human, raised as one, had assumed life as one and it was only recently that Bulma (along with the rest of their small social cluster) had discovered that he was indeed not one of them.  Piss and corruption!  She hoped against hope that his look of questioning anticipation meant nothing more than a genuine concern.  Bulma reached out to put a hand on his arm, and when it then slid down he caught it in his strong fingers.
“Anyway, it’s so good to see you, Son-kun.”  
He squeezed her hand and smiled boyishly.
“You too, Bulma,” he replied, his radiant smile so reassuring that she forgot about the brooding Saiyan Prince for just a moment.
“C’mon in, sit with me!  It’s been ages since we ate together!”
After Gohan had finished ogling the multiple exhibits in the foyer, Bulma lead them to the guest sunroom and paged her mother over the intercom.  Within minutes a veritable heap of hors d’oeuvres arrived via several servo bots, and Mrs. Briefs came strutting in behind them, a lovely white sundress trailing softly behind her ageless bottom.  She carried a tray filled with some very thick sandwiches, and giggled pleasantly at the grins of enthusiasm on the faces of Son-kun and his eight-year-old.  They were nearly identical.
They ate and talked, through stuffed mouths, for a solid three hours.  Bulma couldn’t remember the last time Son-kun had been so long in her company, and wondered vaguely how he’d actually managed to get Gohan away from ChiChi for today.  
“Listen, I don’t think I ever apologized for stealing your panties,” Goku said later, quietly but with the same mischievous glint in his sweet eyes.  He sat on the wicker loveseat opposite her, looking up at the stars through the skylight.  Despite the very warm day, the evening had turned a bit chilly and Bulma had already closed most of the windows in the sunroom to a crack.  Gohan was out cold on the seat next to Son-kun, and breathed quite deeply.
Bulma stared at him for a moment before bursting into a fit of chortling against the cool skin of her arm.  Goku pressed a relaxed fist against his mouth and grinned unabashedly.
“Can you look at me now and honestly say you had no idea what you were doing?” Bulma inquired, her voice the closest to happy hysteria it had been for a long time.  “I mean you were, what?  Eleven, twelve?  You HAD to understand what they were there for.”
Goku shook his head and wagged a finger at her.
“You forget where I grew up, Miss Bulma,” he teased, “really and truly; I’d never even imagined that girls were any different than boys.  My Grandpa didn’t really talk about… things like that.”
They both dissolved into laughter again, but Gohan slept on, oblivious.  Bulma tilted back into her seat and gripped both knees the way a young girl may.
“I believe you,” she said, her mirth dying into a genuine acquiescence.  “I forgive you.”
Son-kun’s laughter slowed, and for a moment he seemed almost regretful.  His smile held a sad, but quite resolute kind of warmth.  Bulma tilted her head to the side, let her legs slide back down in front of her, and was about to ask him why.  Why the sad smile, Son-kun?  The boy, the man she knew never smiled like that.  But her mother had slid quietly into the sunroom.
Mrs. Briefs cleared away some trays and made a soft noise of approval at the sleeping Gohan.  She reached down to tuck a wayward lock of thick hair behind his ear, and then she brought a hand to her mouth.  
“I just thought!” she exclaimed quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping child.  Mrs. Briefs turned to Bulma, who had just finished off a lovely lemon bar from its wax wrapper, and blinked.  “My goodness, there’s nothing left for poor Vegeta.  I’ll have the servos make sure there is something for him.  Of course he won’t eat it until late tonight, don’t you think so, Bulma?”
Bulma gazed at her mother incredulously, finding herself at a loss for words.  In the resulting silence, Son-kun began patting his stomach.  Bulma was drawn to the sound, as it was the only thing saving her from having to comment at all on Vegeta’s nocturnal habits.  It was also the only thing that made her forget his sad smile.
“Mrs. Briefs, this was just wonderful.  Thank you!” Son-kun, clever as always underneath his naïve façade, rubbed his belly and winked at Bulma’s mother.
“Oh, Son-kuuuun!” she mewled and tossed a hand at him, giving Bulma a chance to recover from the unexpected embarrassment she’d experienced at her mother’s words.  Really… The whole situation was making her quite paranoid around friends and family.  Kami save her, she felt like Vegeta.
After a few more words of thanks and gratitude, Bulma’s mother left through the sliding doors to the servo kitchen.  When the quiet again settled over the three in the sunroom, Goku shifted in his seat and reclined further into the couch.  The wicker creaked loudly in the high-ceiling of the sunroom, and Bulma’s wide stare caught his.  She looked away.
“Don’t worry about Gohan,” Son-kun said amusedly.  “He sleeps through just about anything.”
Bulma nodded to him, her mind horribly absent from the room.  It was somewhere up in the ceiling, floating out towards the east compound… To the residential wing… her bedroom.
“Bulma?”  Son-kun’s voice snapped her out of the tumultuous reverie in her mind.  When her eyes found his again, Goku’s brow creased gently.  It was not a look of concern, or even of disapproval; but that was why she loved him like a brother, wasn’t it?
“Son-kun?”  Her voice was thin, like a scrap of tissue.  A flurry of butterflies tickled inside her belly.
“How is it, Bulma?” Goku asked, and on the edges of a laugh, “I mean, with Vegeta here?  You didn’t know what you were getting into, huh?”
Bulma felt her eyes widen and her lips part of their own free will.  She laughed heartily at this description of her Saiyan houseguest, and clapped both hands over her mouth, despite Son-kun’s reassurance.  Her friend chuckled generously at her reaction and reached back to scratch his head again.  His black, so black hair reflected even the dim lighting of the sunroom, and Bulma took a great gulp of air.
“That’s an understatement,” she quipped bitterly.  There was a moment of silence, heavy with unspoken words, until Bulma pushed away the walls of silence.  “It’s ok, Son-kun.  It’s ok, you know?  He’s…  He doesn’t say much.”  She stopped on the last word, remembering indeed how little he had actually said, but how much he could communicate with a mere glance—or a touch.
Bulma leaned forward on her elbows and attempted the most convincing nonchalance as was possible.  She shrugged and watched Goku’s brow crease again.
“I’ve tried Son-kun.  I really have, but he isn’t quite used to life here.  I don’t know how else to make him feel,” she paused, unsure, but with no other explanation available to her, she said, “at home.”
Without taking his eyes off of her, Goku reached down to lay one big hand on Gohan’s head.  The child stirred, but continued to sleep as though no threat in the world could cause him any harm.  As long as his father’s hand lay just where it was now…  Goku breathed in deeply.
“Bulma, I don’t think he’s ever spent this much time in one place,” he said thoughtfully, his mouth set in an atypical frown.  Her lips pressed together before he continued.  Son-kun leaned further back in the wicker chair.  “After he left Planet Vegeta, he didn’t have a home.  At least, that’s what I know.”
Bulma’s mouth, drier than a sack of sand, hung open just far enough to allow an audible intake of breath.  Great Kami!  Would she be able to understand something else if she prodded Goku further?  Could there be something that would explain her dangerously obsessive curiosity, her sick satisfaction at having seduced a gorgeously aloof, alien sociopath?
“What else do you know, Son-kun?” Bulma ventured, noting that he had gone back to staring into his lap.
His eyes lifted, and in them she was reminded of the other-worldly golden glow she saw emanating from her childhood friend.  What else did he know?  His eyes danced for a moment, and he smiled knowingly.
“I know that inside of him, there is a great power that he can’t reach: maybe even greater than mine.  He knows it too, Bulma, but he doesn’t know why.”
“Do you?”  The words were out before she had a chance to stop them, but Son-kun’s expression did not change.  His hand continued to stroke Gohan’s hair.
“Because he can’t let go, Bulma.”  Goku lifted his other finger at her, pressed it to his forehead and winked.  “But you can’t tell him that, ok?  He wouldn’t understand, even if you tried.  He has to find out for himself, if he can.”
She thought of his words outside earlier in the day; Afraid?  Yes, I’m afraid… But not of you.  Before Bulma could respond though, the air became very heavy.  The weight of it crashed down on her like a great slab of rock, and she felt the need for a deep breath.  Goku’s eyes shifted, and his hand sat idle on Gohan’s head.  The boy continued to sleep, until he stirred again and took a few short breaths.  Bulma lifted a hand to her arm and felt the gooseflesh there.
“Son-kun?”
“Listen, Bulma, he knows I’m still here; I can feel how unhappy it makes him.  Don’t worry; we’ll be gone before you know it!”
Her friend stood quickly and gathered his sleeping son in his arms.  Bulma followed as he made for the entrance of the sunroom and put two fingers on the side of his head, then closed his eyes to concentrate.  She reached out for his shoulder, knowing he wouldn’t transmit with her.
“You don’t have to leave because of him, Son-kun.”
Her friend glanced down at her, and the smile that had mystified her all evening poured over her like a waterfall of sunshine in the dim room.  Goku blinked, watching her the way a child may watch an adult: with blatant, unadulterated curiosity.
“It’s not for him, Bulma,” Goku said.  “Remember not to tell him, alright?”
Her hand slid from the soft shoulder of his gi, and from here she could hear the gentle chirp of the night crickets.  She nodded to him, eager, so desperate to tell him the truth but unwilling to imagine his disapproval, even though she knew he would never give such a thing.  He was incapable.
Before he went though, Goku reached out and touched her long, straight hair with his fingers and smiled warmly.
“See you soon big sis,” he said.  He touched his forehead again, and in an instant he was gone.

When he touched the control panel on the GSR, disengaging the program and ending the gravity simulation, Vegeta’s knees nearly buckled at the release that flowed through his limbs.  For just a moment, in the soundless void of this room, he leaned both arms against the control panel and groaned out the protest of his limbs as they readjusted to Earth’s paltry gravity.  Gods, his fingertips shook with the pleasure of it.
Vegeta read the clock at the top right corner of the control panel.  Three hours after midnight; late by Earth standards, and yet the most perfect time of night.  At this hour, when the sky was darkest, he could see the stars.  Tonight, though… Tonight something drew his mind away from the black, glorious repose of space.  It was as maddening as it was curious; as exciting as it was terrifying.  Vegeta’s encounter with the Blue-Haired Minx earlier in the day had weighed on his mind with infuriating persistence.
Routine spar bot drills had been a chore, to say the least, and even simple strength training had left his mind open to the more efficient ways he might next pin her to the wall—or the bed, or the kitchen table, for fuck’s sake.  Anywhere, so long as she was screaming and squealing in delight just as she had a few nights ago.  But the more he thought about it, the more it aggravated his sensibilities; her squealing had no place in his main priority, the gods damn her!  Vegeta slapped a palm heavily against the control panel, though not so strongly as to break it, and turned with a huff to head out the exit of the GSR.  As the door hissed open, he mourned the utterly foolish decision he’d made by replacing the door on his own, especially after her particularly petulant request that he do so.  In the end, though, it was either that or forego more training just to get her ludicrously attractive bitch-mode up and running again.  Neither outcome seemed more appealing at the time; both would have done, but he had androids to destroy, didn’t he?  He had something to prove to that low-class, moronic son of a bitch, Kakarot, didn’t he?
Outside the air was still heavy and humid, albeit a tad chilly, but Kakarot’s ki signature had left the immediate area over five hours ago.  That distraction had merely portended the others that followed; what the fuck had he been doing there, cooped up in Bulma’s west compound for so many hours and toting that half-breed brat with him?  Vegeta let out a short puff of hot breath and gazed heavenward.
The night insects of Earth chattered all around him, so numerous that they nearly drowned out his thoughts entirely.  This was a rare ability, indeed.  But as he blinked, staring up into the dark sky and lifting his lip in a defiant sneer, he noted that the night was cloudy.  Somewhere close by, a cat mewled.  Blasted, furry things.  Blasted clouds, blocking out his view.  That blasted, big-headed, gorgeous wench, blocking out all other thoughts but one.
Vegeta stalked through the dewy grass, silencing the insects as he rushed by.  At his speed, the east compound grew by inches until he was upon it, and as though he had known it would be all along he spotted the kitchen light glowing on the edge of the eastern most dome structure.  Unwittingly, his lips curled into a smirk.  She was awake, of course she was, and the moment she saw him she would erupt into a flurry of staggering harassment that would probably ignite this troublesome obsession of his into outright arousal.
Somehow, from somewhere in the depths of hell, Vegeta couldn’t help but think Frieza was still tormenting him; Holy Blood Goddess, he was torturing him with Bulma Briefs.  That slimy, lizard bastard was probably enjoying it, too, the way he had enjoyed mind-fucking the Saiyan Prince for twenty-five odd years until he’d pierced his heart with a simple flick of his finger.  Vegeta blinked away the memory of the slow, creeping darkness of imminent death that had followed, and the unbearable pain of his denied revenge as he’d slipped away, cursing that red-eyed son of a whore the whole way down to the River of Blood.
He shook his head and growled.  The sound was muted by the humid air, and it washed away on the wind as he made his way inside the lab wing, intent on his final destination.  Two days away from Capsule Corp and in the mountains outside West City had given him ample time to consider his options once he returned; he had to return, given his current situation and the lack of any other sufficient training equipment, but then what?  At some juncture during that time away, Vegeta knew that he could not attain the things he needed without encountering her again.  But he had not expected the conversation outside the GSR today.  No, he had not expected that at all…
Vegeta punched in the access code to the lab wing and stormed inside.  Though his ki was significantly suppressed, he still felt the telltale signs of it swishing around his ankles and curling up around his thighs until it reached his arms, his wrists and hands; it tingled and gave life to his bare skin.  He squeezed his fingers shut and strode down the long hallway toward the residential wing, where the kitchen was the main entryway.  With precise, controlled movements he engaged the door panel and steeled himself for the sight of her: the sight of that maddening, insufferable sexuality that oozed out of her pores like glistening, gorgeous moonlight.
As the door panels slid open though, and Vegeta was met with the sight of a dimly-lit, empty kitchen, his brow furrowed ever deeper.  Why wasn’t she here?  Why wasn’t she poised at the end of that ridiculously situated counter top in the middle of the room with an evil little fucking grin on her face and some sort of snide comment?  In fact, the only evidence that she had been in the kitchen at all was a laptop at the end of the counter, plugged in but sleeping, and a cold mug of that brownish bitter substance she referred to as ‘coffee’.  Her scent lingered in the air of the kitchen, but by the saturation in the air Vegeta could sense she had been gone for at least ninety Earth minutes.
And by the bloody gods, was he furious now.  She would not have the last say, after all the brazen, cocky insults she’d thrown at him earlier—no, damn her.  He would be the one to speak now, and by the end of it if she did have anything to say it would be his name on the edges of a howling pleasure.  But how had he missed her location in the compound?  He’d been so hell bent on the kitchen, their usual place of disturbed business, but had obviously missed cues as to her whereabouts.  Vegeta glanced around the empty kitchen once more, and noted with some amusement that a bit of fiber-filling paste had been sanded down into the dent he’d left in the wall near her pretty head three nights ago, but not yet painted.  Then his lip turned up, and he headed through the kitchen into the main residential wing.
The sitting room was empty, but her scent was a bit stronger here.  The Earth Woman had been here more recently than the kitchen.  Vegeta lifted his nose just slightly and turned to the right, toward the room where the giant, flat box was—apparently used for entertainment rather than as a communications device; it seemed quite a useless and conspicuously extravagant means to attain such a thing.
Yes, her scent was quite strong in here, and a string of her pathetic ki signature actually lingered near the couch.  Vegeta let his eyes slide closed, and after just a few seconds of deep concentration, he could hear the running water above the noise of the night insects outside the compound.  He squeezed his fingers into fists again, because there was only one other person inside Capsule Corp who would be running water so late at night apart from him.  Oh, good.  
“Very good,” Vegeta said aloud, quite surprisingly calm.  The Briefs daughter would know now how deeply her words had affected him, and she would know that it had not necessarily been her most prudent choice.  If she did not realize what she was dealing with by the end of tonight, then by all the gods he would resign himself to accepting her hatred and possibly another catastrophic confrontation with Kakarot, as he had early that morning before he’d left her in the very bedroom he now approached.
In a few short moments he had reached the double sliding doors of her suite and the heavy scent of her, mixed with something clean and slightly sweeter than native fruits, accosted his heightened awareness like a fierce blow to the face.  Vegeta glanced at her door panel, noted that it was locked, and without any more hesitation or indecision, thrust his bare fist into it until the touch panel cracked and the small circuit board pealed out a soft warning.  Just as he had the day his rib had come poking out the side of his torso, Vegeta pressed four fingers into the juncture of the two doors and pulled.  With little effort this time they slid open to reveal the object of his violent fixation.
Blessed Vash’halla, King of the Heavens and War God of countless Saiyan generations, she was a striking vision of fury.  She stood in the middle of the room, twenty feet from the entrance to her bathroom and garbed only in a thin blue robe that hugged her body the way his fingers had gripped it in mindless lust.  Her hair, suddenly straight now and hanging down past her shoulders like a poisonous waterfall, brushed over her skin just as the last bit of his small ki storm died down and whisked out her open balcony doors.  Bulma put both fists on her hips, and to his ears her heavy breathing was not drowned out by the sound of her running shower.
“What in the fucking hell,” she raged quietly, “do you think you’re doing, Vegeta?”
The sound of his name sent shocks of desire coursing through his legs and right up into his cock.  He grinned like a madman and inhaled deeply before gathering his ki and letting it wrap around the flat panels of the malfunctioning doors.  With a growl he pushed forward so that both doors collided with each other in a cloud of electric finality.  To his utter delight, she puffed her chest out.  Her nostrils flared and her jaw tightened with unequivocal ire.
“I said,” she continued, and stepped toward him with a barely concealed uncertainty.  This time…  Yes, this time she was a bit frightened.  “What do you think you’re doing?”
Vegeta noted that her body was now less than a foot away.  Without pretense, he reached out for the lapel of her robe and dragged her forward with more force than he’d realized.  She lost her footing, squealed ferociously, and tumbled against his chest.  When she finally gazed up at him and attempted to regain her ground, he tightened his grip on her robe.  It was silky, soft and unbearably in his way.
“I’m here to show you a few things,” he told her.  Her wide blue eyes became glazed with equal parts wrath and uncertainty.  She had pushed herself steadily onto her feet and now nearly met his gaze at a straight line.
“You can’t just barge the hell in here, destroying more of my brilliantly designed house, and expect me to be compliant you psychotic, self-important fuck!”
“Ah,” Vegeta said, with some measure of mirth.  “So you do understand me a bit now, do you?”
Bulma growled oh, so beautifully and reached up to push on his shoulders with both fists.  But she wasn’t really trying, now was she?  Vegeta swung her around so that her back was pressed against the malfunctioned doors, and he pushed his fingers through her soft, straight hair.  The feel of it made it difficult to hold his concentration, but he pressed his forehead against hers.  Her struggle ceased, but she gazed into his glare with unwavering indignation.
“Bulma,” he said, and waited for her eyes to soften as he addressed her by name.  He sneered through bared teeth.  “Bulma, the poor choice you made; I want you to make it again.”
The Earth Woman’s lips parted slowly until they made a rounded ‘o’ of surprise and confusion.
“What?”  Her voice was a sweet mixture of irritation, desire and suspicion.
 She leaned back from his head and pressed her head against the wall.  Her breath hitched in her throat as she inhaled deeply, and then halted.  Bulma held her breath, mouth open in invitation.  Well, by the War God’s balls, who was he to deny that?
Vegeta crushed his mouth against hers, digging his tongue so deep inside her open lips that he could taste the surprise in her sigh.  Her body slouched against the wall as her lips closed around his, but her blindingly sexy resilience kicked in and she braced both hands behind her against the door panels to push up and away from them.  He backed up willingly as she pushed against him and caught both sides of his face in as ferocious a grip as she was capable of.  Her fingers dug into the hair on the back of his neck and urged his mouth to open further so that her tongue could meet his in its furious assault.  It was nothing like the kiss that first night in the kitchen—it was hungry and angry.  Vegeta tore his mouth from hers and gripped her face in response, breathed against her lips.
“That’s right, Earth Woman; don’t pretend you want it some other way,” he told her, and tunneled his fingers through the soft waterfall of her hair.  Great gods, it felt like the fabric on the inside of his mother’s cape…  He ground his teeth together and leaned into her, but she surprised him by tugging backward on his hair.
“How the hell would you know how I want it?” she growled.  “You rammed your way in and couldn’t stop until you’d had enough you poor, starving bastard!”
Vegeta tugged back on her hair, rage seeping out of his fingertips like hot lava.  Bulma cried out once, her voice low and ragged with irritation.  Her throat convulsed as she swallowed, and he could see and smell her pulse beating wildly against the ludicrously fragile skin there.  The sight made his erection throb with anticipation.
“I’m not a bastard,” he replied coolly, on the edge of a laugh, “but I am a prick, and I am starving, Bulma.  Like you didn’t know.  You act as though you hadn’t guessed that even before I ‘rammed’ my way in.”
“So you’re a master of idioms now, are you?” she croaked out.  Vegeta tugged harder and leaned forward to sniff right at her pulse, where he could smell her blood so easily that it sent a thrill of lust up his spine.  The finality of his conclusions came crashing down on him like the hot water running in the bathroom just feet away.
“You knew what I was then, in the kitchen that night when this began” he said, “you’ve always known, and you know now.  So, why?”
The sound of the water running in the bathroom, the music of her breathing, the thunder of blood rushing through her veins, it was all too much.  She shifted in his grip, and one hand reached down between them.  Vegeta held his breath and let his lips hover so closely to her neck that the pounding of her heart raised the skin to his mouth.  She wasn’t just afraid this time; she was so angry that it made his blood sing.  Her hand slid over the bulge in his shorts, fingers curling under until she was cupping his balls with maddening tenderness.  His fingers loosened in her hair of their own volition, and Bulma’s chin dipped down until her nose touched his.  She was grinning like a fucking child.
“’Why not?’” she replied, mimicking him with uncanny precision.
With that, Vegeta roared and reached down to lift her off of her feet and sling her barely clad body over his shoulder.  Bulma shrieked, obviously uncaring as to who would hear her, or if anyone would hear her.  In just a few strides, Vegeta tossed her into a heap on the bed and watched as her flimsy robe slid down one pale shoulder and over the top of her naked breast.  Good gods it had to be torment, for such a defiant and unruly, inferior sort of creature to make his blood boil with fury and burn with lust at the same time.
Bulma glared up at him, her breath heaving, and attempted to re-adjust her robe.  He reached out to stop her hand and grip her chin.  She was shaking now, with real rage.  Good.  Good…  The hand that gripped her chin slid back into her hair and cupped the back of her head.  Vegeta took a deep breath and watched as her hands gripped both of his wrists with no more resistance than a lap dog may give a generous belly rub.  Fuck if he could not help the low chuckle that escaped his chest.
“Then you take me as I am, Earth Woman,” he told her, quietly and purposefully.  “You know what I am, and you take me just as I am.  You’re a blasted fool.”
Bulma squeezed his wrists and pushed herself up to her knees.  They were nearly eye to eye again, and Vegeta’s eyes narrowed at the rush of visceral heat that climbed up his core.  He pushed the robe completely off of her shoulder, and forced her arm down at her side.  She took a breath and brushed her lips against his.
“Maybe,” she whispered, and the contact sent electric shocks through him.  “Maybe I am a fool, but no more a fool than you, Vegeta.”  
This time he chuckled more boldly and cupped her face again with both hands.
“You are right about that,” he said, and kissed her once, hard and deep.  “I am a fool, for letting you set this complete and utter shit storm up to begin with: for letting you touch me at all.”
She struggled momentarily, that gorgeous look of indignation hot against her ice-blue eyes, but Vegeta slid his hand under her thin robe and cupped her breast with real purpose.  Her skin was cool against his fiery touch, and he pinched the already pert nipple between two fingers.  His cock jumped against his leg at the little gasp of delight she allowed herself, because it was dashed with a lovely bit of angst and rebellion.
Sweet gods he had to see her naked again.  Vegeta shoved both of his palms against her shoulders until she squeaked and fell backward onto the bed.  Her robe swished open to reveal both lovely breasts, and they bounced back as she hit the sheets with a soft, sweet little growl.  Before she could right herself again though, Vegeta knelt forward on the bed and pinned her resolutely.  Bulma’s eyes met his in the dim light of the room, and her gazed bored into him like the lightning strikes of ki dancing between them earlier that day.  Her lips opened and one curled into a sneer.
“You like when I touch you, ‘Prince Vegeta’; don’t pretend.”
He laughed and pressed his forehead into hers with an insistence that dizzied even the Saiyan Prince himself.  He breathed hard against her mouth and pressed one thumb against her bottom lip.
“I never pretended anything of the sort,” he replied with a haughty grunt.  Vegeta released one of her shoulders to push the robe out of his way and brush a palm over her bare breast, all the way to where her hips flared out and the dip in her waist met her thighs.  Her eyes never left his, and she squinted at him with barely masked confusion.
“But I’m going to touch you now, Earth Woman,” he told her, and slid his hand between her legs.  Oh, bloody hell she was already wet as he slid just one finger in, then two when she arched her back and gripped his arm with a strength he had not thought her capable of.  Her hips bent toward him like the taught string of a bow.  If he was going to indulge this obsession well, he may as well do it right.
“You want me to ‘understand’ you, Bulma?” he hissed at her as her breath came in short hiccups.  His fingers worked their way deeper inside, and out again as he curled his thumb around to stroke the skin that stretched around his fingers.  She seemed to like that very much more than just his simple ministrations, and she gasped loudly against his mouth.  Vegeta chuckled.
“You like that, do you?”  She nodded, slowly with wide, fascinated eyes that begged a question and demanded an answer.  With neither to give, Vegeta pushed up on his other elbow to gaze down at her with a veiled interest.  “What else do you like, hmm?  What are you built for, Earth Woman?”
Dear gods what he wouldn’t give to eat her up and make her disappear--!  The look on her face though, it was now and had been enough to stave off his wiser instinct: the one that made him want to dispose of any weakness.  To destroy any person, thing or idea that made him vulnerable…
Vegeta nudged her forehead back until she was flat against the bed again, legs wide open, his fingers still buried deep within her.  His brow furrowed at the sharp intake of her breath when his thumb brushed the smaller nub of flesh above his fingers.
“Oh?”  His voice betrayed the curiosity he didn’t want her to hear, but he pressed his thumb down on the new piece of her he had not discovered before, and the reaction was glorious.  “What’s this then?” he asked, her voice rising above his with ardor.
Vegeta shifted, slid both fingers out of her until he could smell her ridiculously potent arousal, and drew circles around the curious bit of flesh.  The gorgeous Earthling beneath him writhed against his hand and reached down to grip his wrist.  It seemed almost a reflex, a plea.  He remembered her uninhibited shriek in the kitchen and bent his neck so he could reach the peak of one lovely breast and draw his tongue against it roughly.  She shook under him and slammed her own head against the bed as he continued to draw patterns around her flesh with his finger.
“Ve-Vegeta,” she managed, and dug her hands into his hair.  This time the tips of her fingers made contact with his skin and a wracking shiver made its way up his spine.  He snarled and bit down hard on her nipple.
“Vegeta please!”
Her voice was just where he wanted it; yes, just where he had wanted it when he’d come looking for her a mere half of an hour ago.  His name on the edges of howling pleasure…
He chuckled against her skin.
“Please what, Earth Woman?  What is this I have here?”  He leaned back, glancing down between her legs.  “What is it you want so much?”  She did not answer at first, but her glare was so furious that it might have melted a lesser creature’s resolve.  She took a few heaving breaths and bucked her hips against his hand.
“Come now, Bulma,” he murmured, quite nicely he thought.  “You’re the only Earthling I’ve ever touched, you know?  You’re going to have to be more specific.”
Her brow lifted, and there was a realization there he could not read.  Vegeta felt a fledgling fury begin to curl in his gut at the look she gave him, as though she finally knew something about him.  She knew nothing.  All the gods, if she could see the way he had treated females before her…  She knew nothing!  He growled and lifted his hand from between her legs to press two fingers against her open lips.  Her eyes changed and became hooded under the insistence of his gaze.
“You’d better tell me now, little thing, before I ram back in and let myself forget all over again.”
“Vegeta…” she whispered against his fingers.  The air was suddenly very heavy with her breath, with the sound of the running water in the bathroom, and the weight of his rock hard cock poking at her thigh.  “Vegeta,” she said again, “put your mouth on me and taste me, for the love of Kami.”
Briefly Vegeta felt an unfamiliar rush of uncertainty, and it coupled with his deep-seated yearning to really, really taste her and know what she was made of before he destroyed her.  But he smirked handsomely and made sure she saw it.  If this gods-damned, torturous beauty wanted him to taste her then by all the demons of hell, he would.
He slid off the edge of the bed so that he rested on one knee between her parted legs.  One sniff into the air told him exactly how badly she wanted this, and he leaned forward to lap his tongue all the way up the folds of her flesh until he hit that intriguing little bit of it that made her so fucking mad for him.  She jerked and moaned, dug her fingers back into his hair and pulled until the sensation made him just as mad.
She was sweet, and musky and everything in between, and the more he lapped at her like one possessed the more the candor of her voice changed into something unrecognizable.  Gods, what was it?  But the longer he tasted what she had begged him for, the more his curiosity began to crumble, and when he flicked his tongue over this apparently over-sensitive piece of her that seemed so sadly neglected, her body went rigid.  She cried out on a sob, and her long, pale legs squeezed around his shoulders as though something would save her from the torrent of release rushing through her.  Her skin was hot now, like a warm blanket.
Vegeta drew his hands up again and ran both thumbs along the outer edges of the searing hot flesh between her legs.  She shuddered and tugged again on his hair.  Now it was too much to bear.  His curiosity was gone as her slick desire trickled over his thumbs and her voice calmed above him.  No.  She was not done screaming yet.
Vegeta stood and hooked one arm under her waist on his way, so that she lifted easily from the sheets.  Her soft sighs turned into a questioning hum until he tossed her face first further onto the bed, close to the other side that touched the wall.  For a moment, her body glowed a soft gold in the light from the bathroom, and it was all he wanted in this whole dark, dank, shit hole of a universe…
He reached out with both hands to grip her hips and raise them off the bed until her bottom pressed against his hips and her elbows dug into the mattress.  
“Vegeta?” her voice came clearly, with a question, but instead of answering he buried himself inside her with a practiced ease and control.  She cried out again, husky and low, which only served to urge him on.  He pounded into her just as he had before, because she was right, Vash’halla curse her soul.  She was right.
He reached down to lift her upper body off of the bed, and she instinctively slapped a palm against the wall.  Vegeta grasped and squeezed a breast with vicious fervor and picked up his merciless pace until he was grunting against her back.  He lifted his head to press his cheek near her ear.
“You see, Earthling?  You see, Bulma?  I’m still fucking starving…!”  
To his delight, she tightened around him and her voice again began to gain momentum.  His grip on her hips intensified, and she squeaked a bit in pain.  He was unprepared for the sound of her words.
“Then take what you want, dammit,” she gasped.  “Just take it and know what it is!  Sweet, merciful K-Kami, I want you, Vegeta!”
“NO!”  He roared, rode her harder and gripped her neck just so she would stop moving.  “You don’t understand--!  Fuck!”  He cursed his war god Vash’halla again, the one who had abandoned him: the one who had abandoned his people.  “I will always be starving!”
She came over him like firelight over a vast plain of destroyed earth on a distant planet he had once destroyed.  Her voice echoed in the room until it was the only sound he could hear mingling with his own.  He cried out against her shoulder and dug his fingers so deeply into her skin that he could nearly feel the bruises come out.  He was coming inside her and the world was splitting apart, edge upon edge upon edge.  He sighed into the crook of her neck, and when he could feel his voice coming back to him, he told her again.
“Bulma, I will always be starving.”