Scouring the grocery store for a dinner that required only a few brain waves to assemble, Bulma's ringtone interrupted the late night quiet with an obnoxious jangle. She slid her phone from her pocket and wheeled into the cereal aisle.

And committed the age-old sin of answering a call without checking who was on the other end.

His voice was rough and strident over the line. "Does your boyfriend know about you calling me?"

Bulma's eyes widened and her grocery cart jerked to a stop.

Her heart fluttered with the shock.

Why would he be calling again?!

Unless…unless he was after a free ride?

Bulma Briefs was not loose.

"That's hardly any of your business. Are you calling me because you think I put out easy or something?" Her eyes narrowed, her fist planting on her hip. "Because that was a one-time thing."

Vegeta snorted. "You're insulting." Like he'd call someone for sex. "Who said I'd be remotely interested in a repeat?"

"You wish," she replied suspiciously, tucking her short hair behind her ear. "Besides." Bulma stared up at the cereals. "Him and I, we're not really...together." She winced. She definitely wasn't doing herself any favors here. She gazed at the ceiling with exasperation with him, with herself. "Look, we've dated off and on again... We're just currently 'off.' No harm, no foul," she muttered. Bulma grabbed some cereal from the shelf, shoulders hunched around her ears.

"So you called a man who's not even interested," the stranger observed, oozing mockery, "moaning and begging for attention?" He laughed at her. "Can't say I see the logic in that."

Even a total stranger was criticizing her love life. Bulma clutched her purse tightly. Her friends used to call her thrill-seeking; now she was just trying too hard. "Look, I just thought...I just thought it would finally catch his interest." Her voice grew small. "He doesn't seem interested in...sex," her cheeks pinkened, "or me, anymore. He's a nice guy and all, but he's..."

Too nice.

Bulma swatted away the memories. "Look, I'm at the grocery store." She glanced around the cereal aisle. "Can't this conversation wait?"

Vegeta frowned. "You shouldn't chase after a man like that. You shouldn't chase after anyone you're not trying to kill."

It was very Saiyan advice, and his jaw tightened as he realized he may have given himself away with it. A Saiyan would have picked up on the sentiment for slaughter right away; then again, fighting was such a natural state of being for them that it might have gone right over her thick Saiyan head.

Was she Saiyan? Did he even want her to be Saiyan?

The box of cereal hovered over her shopping cart as Bulma's own teeth grit. "Can we not talk about this right now?" The cardboard box clattered as she dropped it.

Vegeta's mouth opened, but the words dried up in his throat. He was having the problem where the verbal lashing he had anticipated giving suddenly wasn't what he wanted to say.

With his scouter smashed against his ear to prevent other people from hearing, gliding through the hollowed out dark of the barracks with a ground-eating pace, it didn't matter if she were Saiyan, but that he wasn't like other Saiyans.

In the spectacular way where he was a like a god among men, sure, Vegeta could accept that. But it was becoming obvious in a totally fucked up way that he wasn't the stuff of worship as much as he was a Saiyan anomaly. Leadership above him treated him like a pariah these days, or like any other fucking foot soldier. Granted, he wasn't very good at following the rules, and trespassing them had caused him to be exiled to this blood-boiling planet.

But he'd spent years using the laws of warmongering to his advantage so that he could claw his way to the top of the food chain, and now there was no longer any reward in it. The line between following the rules and getting what he wanted was becoming increasingly ambiguous. He used to blow shit up to feel better about life. "Rearrange the scenery," as Nappa elegantly called it. Being sat on the shelf in the cobwebby part of the closet, with no promotion or explosion in sight, was, for Vegeta, the deepest insult.

Vegeta didn't want to be just some rank-and-file sent to the trash can of space. He didn't want to be average. He didn't want to be ignored. He wanted to be applauded. He wanted to be appreciated. He wanted to be special.

His throat was tight. "Have you ever done that before?" Vegeta suddenly needed to know.

"What?" Bulma looked around the empty aisle with embarrassment. "Phone sex?" She whispered, cupping her hand around the phone.

"Yeah."

Her parted lips were frozen on the answer. "...No."

"You're not awful at it."

"Thanks," she said dryly, pushing the shopping cart slowly to the self-checkout register. "Good enough to make men cum for a living?" She smiled, teasing. The clerk behind the register blinked up at her in surprise.

Vegeta was finally striding down the hall again, and he pressed the scouter to his ear as he looked suspiciously around the hall for interlopers. "Cumming," he said experimentally, "is always good, isn't it?"

Her smile grew as she tossed her items into the plastic bags at the checkout. She sighed dramatically. "Well, I'm so glad you got some benefit out of it."

Passing row after row of windows, peeking into training rooms, Vegeta gave a quick once over to form and progress distractedly. Babying the lower class peons hadn't ever been part of his duties until he'd gotten his orders for Earth. He despised it here. "Why waste your time? Don't you have better things to do?"

Bulma grumbled under her breath. "Why are you harping on about this?"

Why was he? He came to a stop at a window…and failed to answer. Why had he called her again?

Because he was a fool. He clenched his teeth. It had been the part of him that couldn't leave well enough alone. He'd never been bested in this way before, and this felt an awful lot like what being overpowered felt like. The agony of the humiliation and indignity needling him. This was an obsessive need to right the scales again, to one-eighty back to this woman who'd called him with the most vulgar and basest of intentions, and whom he hadn't successfully resisted...

Reminding her that she had a boyfriend had been just a way for him to get a jab at her right out of the gate. To regain control on a planet on which he had increasingly no control of his life or himself with some good old-fashioned low blows.

So, if he wanted to finally end it with the ball in his court, he'd end it on an insult here and hang up for good.

His mouth opened, preparing for nuclear emotional obliteration.

Instead, one hand drifted up, touching the scouter they spoke through lightly. "I just don't understand the logic of enduring troubled interpersonal relationships when there are plenty of more rewarding pursuits," he grumbled.

"Love doesn't make sense," Bulma explained, even if she felt like the last person to be waxing eloquent about the emotion. She pressed the phone to her ear with her shoulder. "Look, you're looking for logic where there is none," she finished. That, at least, she could get behind.

He smirked. "A softy, then? Hard to picture you as a romantic, what with all that panting and 'fuck me' business the other night."

A gasp caught in her throat. "I'm a beautiful young woman who is capable of both things, thank you." The automatic doors opened to the outside world, and she walked leisurely to her car, bags hanging from her arms as she swept through the parking lot. She readjusted the weight of the sacks so that she could snatch the strawberry lip gloss from her purse. "No wonder your girlfriend dumped you." She gave an unladylike snort as she dragged the lip gloss over her lips. "You're an asshole."

Vegeta's eyes widened with shock. He made a choking noise, going stiff with embarrassment and the anger that came with it.

But he looked away self-consciously. "I work much better alone anyway."

"By choice?" Her tone was playful.

Her only answer was a growl.

"If you can ask the hard ball questions, so can I," she reminded him.

"If you don't answer, then I don't have to either," he countered.

"Fine." Bulma sidled into her hovercar and buckled up, staring out the windshield with her jaw set. "I'll answer if you do."

"Amuse me."

"You called, you first."

"Fine. I never turn down a challenge." His tone was cheery and totally full of shit. "No, I'm not in a relationship." He said the word like it were something disgusting that he wanted to drop and then stomp all over.

Bulma rolled her eyes. What a boy.

"What I had with…my ex...I made an exception, and it didn't work. I'm too career-minded to care." And because now he felt vulnerable, Vegeta crafted an insult and a brag all in a neat little package. He was good at those.

He puffed up. "And that strategy has assured that I am more successful and revered than you will ever be, so you tell me who wins."

She just scoffed. "I'm so hurt." She shifted in her seat, dismissing the snub, eyes sharp with interest. "But your job can't be all of it."

She doubted him? Vegeta shifted his feet, uncomfortable, ill-prepared. "I manage a lot of people," he finally said. "That's...draining." He leaned heavily against the wall. "That's enough socializing to give me nightmares in Hell. I'm not a people person. That's why the last...relationship...didn't work."

He'd wanted his last relationship to work because he wanted to feel like he worked. He'd chased her because he needed to feel competent. And normal. Instead, he'd failed spectacularly. Things had been so pathetically lonely and boring and bleak that he'd accepted an offer to go out on a date. But he wasn't comfortable mingling or performing, acting the way a man was supposed to act with a woman, being clownishly sociable among coworkers. When she'd pulled him aside to castigate him at the bar last week, she'd called him dysfunctional. It wasn't the worst name he'd been called, but it was the most apt.

Bulma shifted the phone. "What do you do for a living?"

Vegeta gave how much he could safely divulge some thought. Any mention of his home planet or a snippet of his line of work and he'd be found out. Saiyans were well-known throughout the city, a city smattered with military posts and tourists. They tended to…draw attention. "I lead a military squad," he said carefully. "What do you do?"

"I'm a machinist and technician," she answered easily. The city was a huge port for intergalactic visitors, and star ship maintenance was a big business. She could be anyone, and she knew it. "I fix star ships."

Not Saiyan, then, he realized.

And relaxed.

Her mind turned over this new information as she idled the hovercar from the parking lot to the mouth of the street. In the military? He could be anyone or anything, then. He could be exceedingly ugly, one of those bulbous, inhuman looking aliens. Her nose wrinkled. Or he could be buff and strong and noble and sacrificing, like the warrior hero on the cover of a romance novel or a men's fitness magazine...

"You know what? I don't think nice is what you want."

Bulma's foot jerked on the brake as the street light suddenly turned red.

"Girls who want nice guys don't beg them to unload in her mouth."

Bulma gasped.

"Shit. Gotta go."

The line clicked.

She stared incredulously at her phone. "Did he just hang up on me?!"

The red light turned green, indifferent to the abuse. She tossed her phone irritably on the passenger seat. Noble warrior her ass. The crass mercenary. "The nerve!"

Vegeta turned the corner and walked right into his squadron, who laughed at some bawdy joke about tomorrow's plans once their guard duty shift ended.

"Want to come, sir?" They asked hesitantly.

Vegeta barely spared them an apathetic look as he continued stalking down the hallway. "I have plans."

He fingered his scouter.

They watched him head to his office with expressions of sympathy.

Eighteen and ChiChi speared salad with their forks as Bulma tried her best to look unaffected.

"So...you just left? Like, you didn't even mention it?" ChiChi was visibly fuming. "…That you had expected a ring?"

Bulma sipped her wine haughtily. "No." She primly folded her napkin and placed it in her lap. "I did not."

"Why?!" ChiChi's level of noise startled the diners around them.

Bulma stared at her very loud friend. "Because. If that's how it's going to be, then he's made his choice. I can't change that he's a wimpy jerk who I want to strangle." Bulma's hands clutched the stem of her empty wine glass, and then she shook it with a wretched scowl.

"It's also not much of an aggressive tactic," Eighteen countered flatly, eating her lunch with her usual disdain for all things. "You could have just told him you two were over. I'm surprised you didn't." Bulma wasn't known for keeping her opinions to herself.

At Bulma's look of guilt, the women across from Bulma shared a pause.

"...You," Eighteen began tentatively, "are breaking up with him, aren't you?"

"Of course!" Bulma cried flippantly, cutting into her steak. "Right after I make him regret ever taking me for granted," she ground out, and the knife sawed against ceramic.

"That sounds ominous," ChiChi snarked into her glass of water.

"How exactly," Eighteen asked carefully, "are you proposing to make him pay?"

Bulma sighed noisily, and her head sank into her hand. "I don't know. I don't know. I just...I can't stand this anymore. I want him to regret losing me and have a change of heart and realize I'm the best thing he's ever had, but I also don't want to ever see his face again." Bulma tossed her napkin down, her voice rising. "You know, I don't want to have to try. I shouldn't have to try." Bulma looked at the women with her hand buried in her bangs. "I shouldn't have to beg him to commit. He should be begging me to commit to him. I'm the catch."

ChiChi considered the issue. "Do you think he hasn't proposed because he just doesn't want to marry? That it's not you personally?" ChiChi watched Bulma. "Or, because he's scared to?"

"It is Yamcha," Eighteen replied.

All three women snickered.

Bulma sighed. That Yamcha didn't exist any longer, though. He was no longer too scared to approach her, too timid to touch her. Since entering the upper classes, he'd become a proper philistine businessman. Now he wasn't interested in courting a fallen socialite. Repulsed was more like it.

ChiChi scowled. "Why hasn't he just broken things off then?"

"He hasn't proposed or broken things off because he has it too good," Bulma muttered, downing her glass of wine.

"I don't think nice is what you want."

A few years ago, Bulma might have said Yamcha was a nice guy and it wouldn't have even done him justice. Yamcha had been a little awkward at first, nervous, new money in a city ran by old money that had invested in intergalactic interests from the minute Earth had mastered space travel—a project the Briefs family had helmed.

From the deserts on the opposite end of the continent, Yamcha and his mother had struck it rich and migrated to wealthier shores. That's when Yamcha's mother had made a bargain with Bulma's own mother at Wednesday bingo night, causing a chorus of gasps and sniggers from the other socialites. If Yamcha's mother won, she scored a first date for her only son with Bunny's snooty, glamorous, playgirl daughter. Bunny had laughed and graciously accepted.

Yamcha's mother had surprised them all with her victory. She'd scored a slam dunk for her son's upward mobility, and it started with Bulma.

Turned out Yamcha's family was really good at gambling.

Bulma had been ready to ground him beneath her heels. But he'd been skittish. Fumbling. Sweet. Eager to please, just because, and with big, dopey, naive eyes. He saw a beautiful woman who may be right in front of him but would always be out of his reach. Bulma, jaded and rich, had found it refreshing and endearing. He'd been so bumbling and cute. Harmless.

Now she was a thing that he had really liked to play with back then but then sat on the shelf one day and never really felt like coming back to.

And he was bored, bored, bored of her, but he was too nice to call it quits. Too nice to break her heart, too nice to tell her he was seeing other women, too nice to slap her ass when he was fucking her from behind.

He was just a nice guy.

She used to be a proud woman. Why did she take this shit? Just because she was so goddamned lonely?

"Maybe you should start phone sexing random men as a part-time thing," Eighteen offered drolly. "Maybe they'd be more willing to commit."

"Sugar daddy!" ChiChi cried.

Bulma reddened with embarrassment and irritation. "I'm a classy woman. Bulma Briefs requires more than a phone call before she puts out."

A number on her phone though proved otherwise.

...

Bulma was the kind of person you could leave in front of a rock in the middle of nowhere, and when you came back she'd have figured out how to intercept enemy satellite signals and communicate in sixty different languages with the thing.

That's why her employers allowed her to work infinite overtime, and she took advantage of it, because she was a broke bitch and they knew she was worth more than her hourly pay anyway.

And so, alone in a vast, empty hangar and late into the evening's clutches, when her walky buzzed to life in her pocket, she startled.

"What are you doing?" His voice was dark, demanding, and just the slightest bit tinny and unclear.

She hadn't expected him to call again. She made a face down at the walky in her hand. Well, hadn't expected, but maybe, way, way back in the recesses of her mind, she'd wondered as she washed her hair or made her bologna and cheese sandwich if he'd call her again with that voice smooth as honey, asking her about herself, and she could slip the walky from her pocket and say...

"You again? Haven't you gotten your fill of me already?"

"Careful," he warned. "You might not want to hear how many men you leave dissatisfied." Vegeta smiled. It was a dastardly, terrifying, well-practiced thing, but Bulma couldn't see it, so she didn't know to be scared. "Tell me," he dove right in with a question that had seared him since they'd spoken last night. "Do you ever feel trapped?"

Bulma blinked. She put down the drill, wiped her greasy hands off on a rag. "What do you mean?"

"By your job. By others." His tone was strung tight and persistent. "Do you ever feel alone, even when you're around other people?"

Her eyes wandered over the metal guts of the ship she was working on. The hangar was empty of life, but his voice filled the space.

Tonight, she had once again stayed late when others chose to leave early, in part because she was ambitious but cock blocked by no formal education, having been an heiress and not expecting to need one and all…. But also because she had no one to go home to. She knew it was maudlin, but her girl friends had significant others and lives, no matter how zealously Bulma wished they'd call and hang out more often. It was hard enough feeling rejected by your significant other, but to be low on the list of priorities for your friends, too? Bulma felt like she'd gone from hero to zero. She'd once been the belle of the socialites, and now she could stand in the middle of the subway platform, jostled by hundreds of bodies whose faces only stared through her. Where once she'd had a fete of a social life, now she twiddled with tech in front of the late night talk shows, talking at her after a long day at work, a single-serving frozen dinner and a celebrity gossip magazine on her lap, and just hoped life would get better tomorrow. It didn't. "Yes," she whispered.

Vegeta felt a torrent of rising emotion overflow with her agreement. "I'm surrounded by other people all the time," he complained forcefully, "but I never want to be close to any of them. I don't even have any friendships forged in the fires of battle. I just have people I lead. I think it's impossible for me to care about others emotionally and not as some kind of Saiyan inventory I'm in charge of."

"I think that's why sex is so nice," she confided softly, shimmying further into the bowels of the ship, holding the walky tight as she pulled a socket wrench from her belt. "It's nice to feel that closeness for a moment, even if it doesn't last."

Her mind slid to the last time she and Yamcha had gotten physical. The look he had as he undressed her, with as much excitement as one regards laundry that needs to be folded; the fancy finish of the paint on the ceiling as she faked what she'd hoped were sexy sounds, imitating closeness; the hollow boredom, the throbbing discontent afterward. Was she a freak or something? Was sex always so dull? But when she was with him, it didn't feel right.

Was it shallow of her to need more? To need something overwhelming, hard and fast? Some one that could make her scream, clawing his back and holding him tight as he drove into her because he wanted her just as badly? Where the hell did a woman find a man like that? The classifieds?

She pulled herself up and out of the engine and headed into the cabin to test the electrical.

The last time she'd been over at Yamcha's—it felt like ages ago, with an altogether different, richer, and more hopeful Bulma—they'd been watching a movie. She'd climbed onto his lap, giggling coyly, drawing circles on his crotch with her hips. But he'd rejected her advances, complaining he was tired. So she'd excused herself to go to the bathroom, hiding a face colored with shame.

And she'd lost her mind. She'd hiked up her skirt and rubbed herself with her fingers on the closed toilet seat until her thighs were wet and she was biting her lips to keep from crying out as she came. When she'd come out of the bathroom, he'd been asleep.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

As if the stranger had read her mind, he asked, "But do you feel that way with him?"

Bulma looked out the windshield at a concrete wall, the hangar enclosing her.

"No," she said, the admission ghosting her lips.

Had she said it out loud? Her heart drummed in her ears.

She'd thought admitting it would hurt more. It was admitting a perfectly fuckable man didn't want to fuck her, like she was broken or wrong or really unattractive or something.

But hearing herself say that she wasn't attracted to him...

Wow.

She wasn't head over heels for Yamcha. She really didn't like Yamcha. She didn't even want to get married to Yamcha. It didn't matter to her that he didn't want to marry her, but that he didn't think she was special enough to ask.

It was absurd, putting up with him, she realized. No, she never felt close to him when they were physical. Intimacy was the last adjective she'd used to describe how she felt towards him. So why did she endure his rejection? Because women were just expected to put up with their wandering man-children? Because she'd settled? Because she was willing to pay a high price just for a friend these days? What was wrong with her?

She looked out the star ship's windshield as rain began to patter and then grow thunderous on the metal roof of the hangar, the red and yellow glow of the cabin lights marring her face and creating shadows which streaked down her cheeks.

"What if I told you," Bulma said softly into her walky talky, "that I'm done with being sat on the shelf?"

What the fuck did he care?

"I'd say you'd be a lot stronger for it," he said instead, and meant it.

Bulma's couch was soft against her bottom as she sat in only panties and a crop top, fiddling a screwdriver in the mechanical guts of a radio and laughing into the phone pressed against her ear.

"It's an old world walky talky. It's pretty elementary, just an old nine volt connector and in-line coupler and stuff I picked out of a junk pile, but…I managed to call you on it, didn't I?"

"And now you're building a radio?"

"Mm-hmm," she said with a bunch of stray wire bit between her teeth and her safety glasses inching down her nose.

"…Why?"

"My family has a long history of gadget-making," Bulma replied, laughter in her voice. "This is pretty rudimentary stuff, but it relaxes me." And it was all she had of them these days.

"If you use palonium cable, you'll get better reception," Vegeta mentioned carelessly, head hanging off his bed.

Vegeta had called her again. Called her while he was walking out of work, glancing around to make sure no one would catch him in the act of being weak. Called her compulsively, for the third time this week. Tonight he'd walked the few city blocks that divided the Saiyan garrison inside the sprawling intergalactic military complex to his apartment, waiting for him dark and silent as a tomb. At least the military had structure. At least he knew what was expected of him on a mission. Out here, in the rest of the world everyone else inhabited, he felt wild and purposeless. An outsider.

"I tried that," she said, juggling the soldering iron and wire clippers and searching for the tape that had rolled under her butt. "That stuff costs a fortune, though."

"Nothing worth having is free," Vegeta said carelessly as he gazed at the upside down skyline, bare hand lying on his stomach.

She snorted. "Is that what you told your ex before she went down on you?"

His eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't you be telling it to your boyfriend?"

"Ouch." She plucked a pen from the couch cushion and scribbled notes on the back of her hand, before closing up and tightening the last screw on the back of the radio. "You're vindictive."

"You don't get far in my profession without a particular disposition."

"Yeah, well," she snickered, "that disposition doesn't include a sex drive, apparently."

He couldn't say why he let her get under his skin, because that's exactly what he was getting himself into. By calling her he was inviting her to needle him. It was a game they shared. Why he kept seeking her out, even though she said things he wouldn't let anyone else get away with. Why a proud man with an anger problem like himself would enjoy this kind of masochism. He didn't want to reflect on it, honestly. He just wanted to escape.

"You're so tasteless."

"I taste perfectly wonderful."

"You've proven my point."

"I thought all soldiers had insane sex drives. Isn't that the stereotype?"

"I'm not just any soldier," Vegeta grumbled. "I'm way beyond that league. And there's nothing wrong with my sex drive." His eyes narrowed. "I just have selective tastes."

"Even if you dislike being sociable, even if you're uncomfortable wooing women. Don't you still want it? Need it?"

"All I need is to hear my enemies lamentations," Vegeta said drolly.

She sat the pliers in her lap, gazed at the wall. "Eight-nine. Don't you ever just want to take a woman without worrying about what others might think?" The penetrating question surprised her as much as it surprised him. "Don't you ever just want to know what a woman looks like under you as you make her moan? Don't you ever want to look at a woman and think she's the only one for you?" She stared out the window. "Don't men feel that way?" Because she needed one, somewhere, to feel that way, or else there was nothing to live for.

"What?" Vegeta stammered with shock.

"Hey," she reprimanded, "don't tell me you don't have physical and emotional needs. Don't act," she threatened, "like I didn't make you cum, like you're some angelic sex-less creature apart from us all that doesn't need to sploosh once in awhile."

Vegeta blushed a fine shade of tomato red. "I don't feel anything I don't want to feel."

"You're full of shit," she just replied.

Bulma didn't understand why she was bedeviling him, poking him in sensitive places. She was just so tired of keeping things in. Of letting men brush her off. Of pretending that she wasn't a person with her own needs and feelings, surrounded by men who kept theirs from her. "All this talk about how unemotional you are, how you control everything, but you know what? I think you're full of emotion." She twirled the screwdriver in between her fingers. "That's why you're so uptight. You're full of it. You're afraid to let it all out."

Vegeta was aflame with indignity. If he could just reach through the phone and throttle her.… "I've had to work hard my entire life," he seethed, "for everything I have. With my power level, I should have been handed everything. Instead, I've had to fight for everything I rightfully deserve! Without that drive to fight, I would have nothing." I am nothing. It echoed and pinged around in his head loud enough that he wondered if she could hear it.

Bulma sat the screwdriver on her knee and frowned with concern. "You're not nothing, eight-nine. Your work life isn't just all you are."

"It's part of my profession," he disagreed. "We're soldiers. The culture consumes you. Competency ensures survival. Rank and power and survival and destruction are the only rewards. It…defines you completely."

"I don't think any less of you for being complex or emotional. You're more than just a soldier, after all. You're flesh and blood and some super sophisticated neurological wiring. You have needs beyond fighting things and being tough. All of us do."

Something caught in Vegeta's throat. He was a master of getting put in the dirt and getting back up again and again, but he felt like the time was soon approaching when he just wouldn't get back up, and he'd just lay there with the reality of his failures pressing him into the ground, and he'd cry and laugh and want to die.

"Did you ever explain that to your ex?" Her voice was tender over the line. "Ever tell her that it's hard for you to relax or relate because you're so consumed by work and how it defines you, the way you explained it to me?" He was silent. Bulma waited, and then frowned testily. "You're not less of a man if you talk about it with me. I'm not judging you. You work really hard and you're obviously really good at what you do. Take pride in what you've accomplished, not what you haven't, eight-nine," she ended warmly.

Vegeta felt feeling slam into him as he looked at the city, upside down.

"But you have to tell women what you're thinking and feeling," she said hotly, "or else we'll never know what's going on in those dumb heads of yours. You can't just keep compartmentalizing everything."

Vegeta finally had a breakthrough and put his feelings into words. "I feel a sudden desire to destroy this planet."

"Instead, eight-nine," she purred, gazing at her finely painted pink toenails and smiling, "I have an idea. And you're not going to like it."

The hair on his tail was already bristling.

"Consider it…therapy. You need to relax. You have all this stress and these demands of yourself, but tonight, I want you to forget them. I want you," her voice dipped low and teasing, "to jack off."

He scoffed loudly, but she ignored him, continuing.

"You should lay down in bed and just pump your dick in your hand and feel how fucking good it feels, jerk it the way it feels right. With nothing else in the world but a man and his dick."

"I am questioning my sanity for calling you. I have obviously become unhinged."

"We're talking about how you're going to take it out," she breathed, "and take it in your hand, and you're going to stroke it. And stroke it. And stroke it—"

Vegeta stiffened.

Everywhere.

"Until all you want in the whole world is to fucking cum."

Mortification roiled in Vegeta, and he rolled onto his stomach to better fill his lungs up with air and yell at her.

"Cum. And then tell yourself it's okay to feel that."

His voice was tight. "I want to strangle the very last breaths from you."

"Strangle your dick instead," she whispered, and then chuckled. "Do it and thank me later. As a…friend…I only want what's best for you. I want a full report tomorrow."

Vegeta was still aghast as she hung up on him.

His grip tightened around his phone, but then loosened, and it dropped to the comforter beside him.

He watched the skyline of the city, his elbows pressing into the mattress.

And he thought of his ex's face. The sharp chin. The shadow just under her broad cheek bones. The sharp, knowing eyes, the thick black hair that, come to think of, he'd never touched. He hadn't ever felt the compunction to.

Vegeta rolled onto his back, resting his hands on his stomach.

And then, slowly, his hand moved to the waistband of his pants.

And stalled.

He really couldn't remember what her skin felt like, or anything about her. All the memories of touching her were awash with his own anxiety. He'd just felt imposed upon. Hadn't enjoyed a second of it.

He cursed.

And then unbuttoned himself impatiently and grabbed his dick from beneath his underwear.

He considered the curve of his ex's ass, the way her hands spread on his thighs as she tried taking him in her mouth. Then remembering her look of discomfort and dislike, his dick softened.

He lashed out, knocking over the lamp with his foot.

He rolled out of bed and wandered to the window.

And rested his forehead against the cold glass.

"You're going to take it out…and take it in your hand…and stroke it, and stroke it…."

Experimentally, Vegeta allowed his hand to wander beneath his underwear. He sighed and closed his eyes. "I'm in the bath. There are bubbles all over my naked body..."

Vegeta's apartment was quiet and still as he began tentatively pumping his dick to the memory of the woman's voice.

And when he came, breath catching and semen slick between his fingers, instead of feeling frustration or shame, he tugged the shirt off from over his back, wiped his hand off, threw the shirt into the hamper, and then stared out at the skyline with a rare poignancy.

He unlatched and threw open the window. I can do anything I want to. And that husky, know-it-all voice, the chime of bath water, and the night that often contained them in its hands, he just felt it, the breeze sensual as skin and the lights of the city as optimistic as a woman's laughter.

Friday night at Spacey's, where the gimmick was, unimaginatively, space.

They were the first restaurant chain to make it off-world, and, naturally, the first taste of Earth's cuisine offered to the vast universe was burgers and fries.

"Mmm." ChiChi made a satisfied noise low in her throat, staring over Bulma's shoulder at something. Bulma looked behind her with confusion.

A few tables away sat a group of Saiyans.

Bulma rolled her eyes, turning back around in her chair and looking out from under her bangs sassily. "Really, ChiChi? What do you want with those idiots?"

"I just have a thing for tall, hunky, dark haired men," ChiChi whispered, licking her lips at the sight of them.

"You're married," Bulma reminded her.

"I can look if I wanna," ChiChi responded smoothly, sipping soda pop from her straw and blatantly ogling the men.

One bolted upwards from his seat, looking down at his stomach with his beefy arms stretched wide. "Damnet, you spilled beer on me," he roared as the rest of his table laughed uproariously.

The Saiyan began tugging off his spandex shirt.

ChiChi's jaw dropped, a wide grin stretching her face.

Bulma groaned. "What do you like about Saiyans, anyway? They're all brutes," she complained, popping a tater tot in her mouth. "They're like…the cavemen of the space age. 'Me hit thing. Me fight you. Me hungry." Bulma had fought off and let down a lot of suitors in her days as a hot rich girl, and though she'd never been approached by a Saiyan, she'd been at enough flash bar fights to feel extremely irritable toward them. There was only so many times a person could have a chair thrown over their head and not take it personally.

"Yeah, but I don't care about how smart they are," ChiChi said dismissively.
"I just like to look at them."

Bulma gave her a stinky side eye, tearing a tater tot in two.

"You'll see. Once you're married and old like me, you'll appreciate a good show once in awhile, too." ChiChi's eternal irritation transformed briefly, expressive and giddy. "It's nice to feel like I could hit that if I wanted to. To flirt with them. To feel hot again. And when you're married like me, you'll be begging strangers to flatter you, too, because your husband never compliments you anymore." ChiChi's scowl deepened impressively.

"But…ChiChi." Bulma reminded her dumbly. "You married a Saiyan."

ChiChi just shrugged. "He wasn't born there or socialized like one, though. I didn't get the full, romantic, meet-the-soldier experience. He's just another idiot to me." She chomped her fries hotly. ChiChi was still angry because her husband had turned down this month's time off to train with a bunch of Yardrats halfway across the galaxy.

Goku, ChiChi's husband, had been an errant, misbegotten Saiyan boy manning a one-man space pod, scouting Earth for resources before the United Intergalactic Council scolded the Saiyan government for sending child mercenaries as spies to allied planets. They'd been stiffly fined. It seemed the Saiyan government, no matter their bluster, wasn't immune to the shame of a good old-fashioned financial penalty.

As such, Goku had grown up on Earth as an Earthling until being recovered by the Saiyan Army when they'd installed a barracks planet-side, like so many new races the past twenty years. Goku'd been conscripted and went on a cycle of six month tours in which he eagerly got to fight stuff and briefly stop in to visit his wife, leaving ChiChi part of the proud club of women-who-married-their-flighty-adolescent-sweethearts-and-became-bitter-naggy-unfulfilled-wives.

"If he had been like those Saiyan dopes," Bulma conjectured, "he'd have been stationed on Earth for only six months and then left your ass."

"I woulda still gotten a piece of that ass, though," ChiChi assured her smugly as she leaned in to suck up her milkshake. "And then he'd have left me with Gohan and I'd still be taking care of my baby boy all by myself. Look at that! Shit would still be the same."

"I don't get the appeal," Bulma deliberated. "I love to look at handsome men as much as the next woman, but Saiyans are too much trouble." Her nose wrinkled with distaste. "It'd be like trying to date an explosive. 'Oh hey guys have you met my boyfriend—boom' 'Honey lets go out and get dinner—boom.'" Bulma thought of how on and off she and Yamcha were. "I need something more stable than an explosive. Someone reliable."

"Yamcha is reliable," ChiChi interjected.

Bulma stared stonily.

Yamcha was a thing that wouldn't go away but was never there.

"You don't want reliable. You don't need reliable." ChiChi's voice rose with enthusiasm. "You need fast, and passionate." ChiChi always had a look of hard seriousness on her face even when she was being playful. She made a really good overbearing mother. "And Saiyans were designed for that by some benevolent sex god in the universe. They're like sex machines. All bulging, glistening muscles and beautiful hair and endless, enthusiastic endurance…."

Bulma slipped another tater tot into her mouth and sighed. "I guess I could get on board for that." She stared at the Saiyans. One was choking on a fry and another was patting his back helpfully with enough force to knock a human into the next solar system. "But before you get them into the sack you have to deal with them in public. And they're all embarrassing. Loud, and they eat and drink the restaurant dry, and they get into fights no matter where you take them and gosh they probably don't even know how to read or write…"

"Bulma you're being kind of racist right now."

She frowned down at her tater tots. "If I think about the kind of man I want and need, the ways in which Yamcha doesn't work for me…" She stared up at the ceiling, looking for answers. "He never makes me a priority. I need someone who worships me," she explained haltingly. "I don't want to be someone's second choice anymore. I need to a man whose very reason for living is me. I need someone doting, generous, affectionate, someone who'd go shopping with me and not be a baby and act put out about it, and buy me a boat just because they love pleasing me, and not act like I'm a burden when they're working…"

"You might as well just buy a new vibrator." ChiChi rolled her eyes.

"I have plenty," Bulma corrected. "But Saiyans are too self-absorbed. I need a relationship to be about me, damnet. I need a man, not a child. And I'm too much of a type A to bother butting heads with another type A." She waved her hand around dismissively. "I just need a man to sit back and listen to me give orders." The tater tot on the way to Bulma's mouth paused. "I need a whipping boy."

"Don't you know that means they like it rough?" ChiChi wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "A-type people who have to take control and be the boss all day want someone to dominate them in the bedroom." She winked.

Bulma rested her chin on her knuckles, swiveled in her chair, and watched the Saiyans. They provided the restaurant amusement, at least. Half of them barely fit in their chairs, and even over the top 40 hits blaring over the radio, all she could hear were their boasts and double-dog dares.

ChiChi's phone alarm beeped. "Oh shit, I have to go pick up Gohan from the babysitters."

"Your dad's not watching him tonight?"

"Nope." ChiChi stood, smoothing her dress.

"When will I see or hear from you again?" Bulma said sadly.

ChiChi returned the sad look with one of her own. "I don't know. I'm sorry, taking care of Gohan just keeps me so busy…"

"Being a Mom is the worst," Bulma whined. "You're always so busy. No one ever calls me…"

"Now you're just making me feel bad," ChiChi snapped.

ChiChi leaned in to give Bulma a hug before making her way to the exit. Spacey's was crowded, hot, and loud, and Bulma was going to have to fight just to make it out the door herself. She stood and pulled the hem of her red dress back down her thighs, fluffing her hair and sighing.

As she waited at the edges for the crowd to clear so that she could walk out the door herself, she blew her bangs out of her face impatiently and sipped her milkshake.

And then locked eyes with a man who watched the fiasco from outside, a still and menacing silhouette leaning against the lamp post. Another Saiyan. Spacey's was full of them this Friday night.

Her eyes ticked over him assessingly as the line out the door stalled. Ripped, with a jaw line and cheek bones like one of those impossibly handsome, ethereal Hollywood beings, and oozing infinite coolness like a fucking rock star. Well, ChiChi wasn't wrong. Some Saiyans were just ridiculously hot.

He was giving off all the signs of being completely aloof as he leaned away from the rabble with his arms crossed, but scrutinizing her without trying to hide it.

His expression didn't change whatsoever, but he didn't look all that impressed with her. Her eyes narrowed at him fractionally. To be fair, Saiyans didn't think much of anyone who wasn't also Saiyan, and even then it was an argument about power levels. They were a scrappy bunch.

The crowd in front of her began to move. Fucking Saiyans, they were all so conceited and holier-than-thou.

But his gaze had kind of heated, wandering briefly over her. Bulma's eyes widened with surprise. It wasn't the kind of checking her out by a man that made her feel icky, either. "And when you're married like me, you'll be begging strangers to flatter you, too, because your husband never compliments you anymore." When was the last time she'd been so brazenly gawked at like a piece of meat? Here she was, a hot woman and a vagina in between her legs and everything, but she hadn't been ogled or catcalled since leaving the circles of the rich and famous. It was foreign, it was liberating, it was a man's attention on her for the first time in so long—

A super hot one that still managed to be completely, cooly, irritatingly indifferent to her. The crowd pressed from behind her, and suddenly she was in his direct line of site as she waited for the idiots to clear the door. For just a moment, she had nothing else to look at in the whole world but this Saiyan framed by the shoulders of those milling in front of her.

The crowd suddenly broke, and it pushed her towards him. The people loitering in front of her turned in opposite directions, depositing her into the freedom of the outside world, and Bulma felt the slick sweat cool in her dress as the breeze hit her.

Now directly in front of the other with nothing but empty space measured between them, Bulma, inflamed by the Saiyan's interest and his disinterest and his Saiyan good looks and most of all the memory of a stupid idiot who didn't look at her the same way whom she wanted to STOMP. ALL. OVER. KILL. KILL., she grew bold.

She put her lips to the straw of her milkshake, suggestively sucking with her pursed lips as she put one heel slowly in front of the other, and watched him with fearless interest.

His eyes narrowed, acknowledging her cues.

It was a confrontation.

A voice in the back of her mind screamed at her. But, oh, what did standards matter anymore. Truthfully? She'd bang the shit out of him.

She'd put her hand right where the blood-smeared hand-print was on his breastplate and then tug that long, upwards flame of hair down to her so that she could steal a kiss, slide her hand right down those washboard abs to slide underneath the waist of his spandex and possessively grab his long, hard….

And then she was walking past him, and she put her head high in the air, heels clacking on the sidewalk, nearly brushing him in the crowd. His eyes didn't leave her as he watched her with a scary and exciting kind of predatory absorption.

Something inside her flared with excitement.

And she turned her head over her shoulder to see him once more.

He still watched her, with dark, penetrating eyes.

She smiled, slow and suggestively.

His gaze got sharper.

She turned back around again and snorted with restrained giggles.

Bulma Briefs still had it!

The milkshake straw grew noisy and there was nothing left at the bottom. She tossed it into a trash can with disappointment.

Bulma was telling a complete stranger about the time she had surprised her boyfriend by ripping open a trench coat to reveal an expensive set of lingerie underneath, and her boyfriend had just sighed.

"Bulma," Yamcha had began in that voice that made Bulma want to tear at her hair. "I don't have time for this." He gestured behind him, to the desk in the living room, piled with paperwork. A laptop was open, a window open to his email. He could have been talking down to an employee that had shown up late again, or explaining an oft-explained rule to a toddler. "I have work to do."

And then he'd held open the door for her and said, as if it dulled the sting:

"Thanks for being such a good friend."

"What the hell did he mean thanks for being a good friend?" Bulma stomped down the ladder and snagged a tool from her box, shaking it furiously and fantasizing that it bludgeoned a certain someone.

"That he thinks of you as a friend," her stranger said pointedly over the sound of his crunching.

"I am not just a friend. And I made that very clear with the tits bouncing out of my lingerie."

"He must have had a lot of work to do," her stranger offered indifferently, popping more chips in his mouth. But even her stranger didn't sound convinced.

"But I looked amazing. Even if he had a lot of work to do. What kind of man could have turned me down?"

Vegeta snickered, cleaning the last bite of his dinner from his fork and shoving the plate away.

"It's not funny, eighty-nine," the woman snarled, which only made Vegeta's smirk crook higher. She was frantic now. "I'm a beautiful woman. I'm smart. I have a mile high sex drive. I, I put up with his shit. Why isn't he attracted to me?"

"Maybe you're not what he's into," Vegeta suggested.

Her scoff was loud and clear over the line. "You should have seen me. The prettiest crotchless teddy, shoving my boobs practically up to my chin. Real silk thigh highs. I served myself up on a dinner plate. And no one ate me!"

"You're not selling yourself here," Vegeta laughed.

"Don't you make fun of me!" Bulma pouted. "It was..." Bulma tucked her hair behind her ears, grimacing. "Hard to endure."

"It's supposed to be getting him hard." He rested his boots on top his kitchen table. "Unless," he smiled wickedly, "you're not much to look at?"

She gasped. "How dare you." Bulma shoved her gloved fist onto her hip.

And it struck her.

"Hold on," she demanded.

The phone grated through some static, and Vegeta frowned, eyes flicking at the screen of his phone with confusion.

And a picture text of a half-naked woman imposed itself over his screen.

His eyes widened.

Practically spilling from a lacy bra were the most round, creamy breasts Vegeta had ever laid eyes on in real life. An elegant collar bone spanned the luscious chest, and his gaze raked down, down the bare expanse of pale skin, tracing the cinched silhouette of her waist, to the low, frilly underwear peeking just over the mouth-watering mound of her pubis. The flight suit had been unzipped and hung off her hips, where the ribboned fingers of her underwear clung against each hip, but where the bottom edge of the picture, unfortunately, ended.

Vegeta's heart flatlined.

The kitchen chair scraped loudly as he looked around his dark apartment with paranoia. He put his hand over his face, massaging the days scruff. His hand slid over his eyes with a mixture of weariness and disbelief, propped up his heavy head.

Splaying his hand, Vegeta peeked between his fingers and gawked at the picture.

He sat rigidly in the kitchen chair, staring at his phone.

"Yesterday's was so much better," she assured him quickly over the line, as if she still had to convince him.

It wasn't the lingerie that had redirected the blood from his brain to his cock.

"Perhaps he's just not interested in women," Vegeta suggested thinly. Carefully. Careful wasn't a known term in Saiyan nomenclature, however, and the statement was about as blunt and merciless as it gets.

Bulma startled. The memory was as vivid and palpable as if it were happening right before her. Driving in the rain, on her way to dinner. Spying Yamcha with his arm around another woman, under an umbrella in a curtain of rain. Clasping the woman's ass in his hands and laughing together before saying goodbye to her at the door of the restaurant where he and Bulma were to meet. Watching them in the rearview mirror until running into a parked car. Staring out the windshield for a long time.

Finally calling and canceling their date, feigning a stomach ache.

No, the issue wasn't that he didn't like women.

Her voice was tight. "I'd like to think I'm not that inobservant."

Vegeta sighed. "Where I come from...in my line of work...sex is sex," he explained, struggling. Look at him, a success story doling out advice to the less fortunate. "Man or woman, it's always welcome." He thought of all the tours around the universe when he was young, all the unspoken physical relationships that his comrades guiltlessly indulged. But not him. He didn't know how to flip that switch, and it had cost him a few females in his time, including the persistent one that had gotten him in the sack but been so underwhelmed she'd given him up for an Earthling. His ex hadn't stomped on his heart, she'd stomped on his pride.

But Vegeta understood what it meant to be Saiyan. He was an arrogant battle-junkie as much as any other Saiyan. But somewhere along the way, self-consciousness had usurped the happy-go-lucky nature of a Saiyan that got to fight things. Contempt for himself had poisoned his relationships with other people. Intellect and strategy had malformed into self-doubt, single-minded purpose and emotion had turned inward and ransacked his direction. He was in a position of power in part because he was a neurotic strategist, and that kind of acuity was rare among Saiyans.

But no matter what, a Saiyan was united with their body in a closer way than any other race, and yet Vegeta lived in a cage in his mind. Sex and camaraderie were a part of him he should feel connected to as closely as blood and pride, because Saiyans were social creatures, because sex was second nature to a Saiyan. It was just another way Saiyans used their bodies, bodies preternaturally honed for strength, for speed, for endurance, for overwhelming displays of emotion that rode them hard...

"It's how we all get relief from the madness of battle and release our pent up natural aggression," he explained. "If he doesn't take it when you offer it," Vegeta explained in the cloaking darkness, "he doesn't want it."

And Vegeta felt there was only one reason a man would refuse a woman like her.

Because he was getting it somewhere else.

"When was the last time you got laid?" Her question was innocent, gentle, but he heard the emptiness in it, too, as if some understanding of her own inferiority was occupying her.

He hadn't bothered turning on the lights when he got home; Saiyan's saw supremely well in the dark. And yet the darkness of his apartment was overwhelming. It blanketed his vision, giving him the sense that it was just him and the woman's voice over the line.

In the thick of the dark, he leaned forward into her voice.

"It's been awhile," he forced, but his tone suggested it had been longer than that.

"Why not just release your aggression then?"

Vegeta's eyes slid to the shadowed corners of his apartment. "I'm not like them," he tried explaining. It was half-hearted, even to him. "I can't...relax enough...around another. I don't like bothering with it, and it shows. And those who may be interested...are my colleagues. In my position, it's very hard not to find someone who isn't intimidated by that." But it wasn't them. It was him, Vegeta realized. He was the one with the issue. His fucking pride was like a wall that kept him from letting loose and getting laid.

Across the city, with growing certainty and determination, Bulma made a decision she didn't realize that she wanted—needed—to make.

Maybe to spite the stirred up memories, the realization that whatever she had with a man was not working and hadn't been for a very long time. Maybe because who she'd thought she was—a normal woman content with her life—had shattered, and now she was being forced to build herself anew by different rules. And here was this man, this stranger, who could be anybody...someone she could safely be herself with, not fear rejection from, whose voice she had heard reliably every night this week and she could lose herself with...

She bit her lip, looked around the empty hangar from the bowels of the ship. "Well...what about right now?"

"Huh?"

"You have time to talk to me," she argued. "You are talking to me. And you don't talk to anyone."

"Its easy to talk to you because you don't know me." His reply was clipped, as though he were resisting the trap he sensed she was laying. "This is...different."

"Well...you have time to cum right now, don't you?"

Vegeta's eyes widened.

"It's just me tonight, working overtime." She bit her lip. "I'm in the engine of the ship, and it's hot in here. So I could stand to take my coveralls off..."

She waited nervously.

There was a long silence.

"Go on," he finally said.

A smile stretched Bulma's face.

She slid down the engine bay wall with her lips twitching upwards conspiratorially. "My jumpsuit is already unzipped and around my waist. So that I could show you what I was wearing underneath it..."

"Do you always wear nothing under your flight suit?" The question had an edge of a dark taunt, hoping for a darker answer.

"Sometimes," she answered, and his lips curled up with approval. "I have a thing for lingerie. Push up bras, lacy bodysuits, crotchless underwear..."

Vegeta's senses sharpened with the image.

"They're my weakness," she admitted, but this time the confession held an edge, a ripple of flirtatiousness.

Vegeta looked down at the phone screen again, at the mouthwatering vision of her in her underwear, the creamy plane of her stomach that he could imagine trailing with his mouth as he held her by those hips. She was a woman most soldiers would be howling for. She was wasted on the lesser man. What he would do to a woman like that...

A dangerous competitiveness curled in the pit of him, coiling to strike with black intent. He looked out over his shadowed apartment with the eager expression Saiyans got when hunting. "You're wearing that lingerie because you want somebody to enjoy it."

"No," she corrected him primly. "I wear it because I enjoy it. But it'd be nice if I had somebody to share it with..."

"You shared it with me," he pointed out, half aware that his voice had grown deep and husky.

"Did you like it?"

"I approve," he said, every breath feeling looser and looser and his head spinning off just like the second a Saiyan freed the ki rampaging inside him. "I think I would just look at you and admire you for awhile before even putting my hands on you."

Bulma grinned happily, toeing her boot against the star ship engine. "Do. I am a beautiful woman, after all. You'll find yourself admiring me everywhere you look."

Vegeta slid further down in his chair, looking up predatorily through dark lashes, eyes dilated under his straight brows. "You can't expect me to just look at you for very long though."

"What would you do when you got tired of looking at me, eight-nine?" Bulma slid her hand down her side, smoothing the jumpsuit further down her hips.

"I'd grab those luscious hips, and I'd sit you on my kitchen table." He pulled his gloves off with his teeth. "And I'd wanna shimmy those pretty little panties off you, but I'd keep them on instead, just pull back the damp crotch of them. And I'd show you exactly how you deserve to be eaten."

"He doesn't go down on me. He thinks it's gross." "That's a fucking shame."

Bulma threw her head back with a satisfied sigh, and she took her own gloves off, fingers trailing experimentally under the front of her underwear.

"I'd love it if you put your mouth on it," she sighed.

"I'd put my tongue in it, too."

Shock and lust made her belly flop. Was it embarrassment, was it excitement? And she ran a finger over her lips, imagining it might be this stranger's tongue, the short hair there brushing her fingertips.

"I really want to know what you taste like," Vegeta admitted, grabbing his shirt by the back of his collar and tugging it over his head. The cool air was shocking against his warm skin.

Her heart skipped a beat. It might have been the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to her.

"Then taste it," she urged, and her voice didn't quite sound like the one she knew.

"I want to lick you real thoroughly, all the way up and down." Vegeta tugged his pants from their button and shoved his underwear down over the front of him in a hurry. His dick was already achingly hard, the skin silken against his palm. "Fuck," he bit out as his bare hand met hot flesh. He gave himself a second to breathe. Then he leisurely stroked the tip. "But I'd have to take some time just to bury my face in you."

Something about shucking control in some other scenario besides battle was fucking exciting. With someone he could be himself with, and yet someone else? His hand slipped down the length of him, and then back up, testing. "I wouldn't be satisfied until you came in my mouth, with your hips trapped in my hands."

Bulma bit her lip on a moan. "Good Kami," she commented wryly, and slowly, she sank two fingers inside herself. It should have felt wrong, in the middle of a massive star ship engine in the empty hangar where she worked, with someone she'd never even met.

Last time had just been foreplay compared to this. Last time she'd faked it anyway. This time was already more fulfilling than anything she'd done in recent memory. And naughty. God this was naughty.

"Eight-nine," she panted, "even if I cum with your mouth still on me, you better not stop there."

"I would never," he threatened silkily. Vegeta's head started rolling back on his shoulders, lolling on the back of the chair. It was just him, the dark, his cock in his hands, and the woman that was his to tease on the other line.

Her panties were stretched across her hand, confining her knuckles. "Should I leave my underwear on or take it off?"

"On," he informed her quickly. He arched his back slightly in his chair, stomach rippling, slipping his hand back and forth over the hot member in his hand. "I want you to keep it on."

"Okay." Her eyelids closed and she smiled.

And Vegeta began describing exactly how he'd pull the panties she wore to the side, and how he'd stand up, drawing his fingers over her as he did it. How he'd slowly nudge her with the tip of his cock until she whined for more. How he would teasingly, gradually push inside her. With her eyes clenched and her hands in her drawers, Bulma could feel exactly how hot the naked flesh of him was against her as he waited for her to adjust to his size, the soft, round head of him, how she'd be so ready and wet that the thick tip of him would begin to slide in and cause her to bite her knuckles as it flared wider, stretching her. Then he'd glide in and out against her at an angle, teasingly, thoroughly, to wrench out every inch of anguished pleasure before going any further.

Their breath caught, waiting, readying.

And then he thrust in all the way to the hilt.

She moaned, and he hissed in answer, his cock painfully needy with every rasp of skin against his palm.

"God I'm so wet," she told him secretively, and for all they knew it was just the two of them left in the world.

He was fucking her on his kitchen table, taking her with long strokes, and Bulma could already feel herself start to coil tighter, her fingers rubbing faster and thrusting harder as she imagined him there. She wanted to clutch him tight between her thighs as he drove into her, the hot skin of his sides velvet and caressing the insides of her legs as she hooked her ankles around his back, imagining his mouth on her breasts through the lace of her bra….

And at the sound of his husky voice on her walky telling her exactly what kind of depraved things he'd do just because he wanted her, how he wanted to be the one to make her cum, hard and loud, Bulma lost her grip on control. Her back arched, ramming her hips against her fingers as the orgasm that had coiled tight in her lashed free.

"Oh god, oh god," she cried out as she spasmed over her fingers, mouth parted.

Vegeta inhaled sharply as it took him, throwing his head back on the edge of the chair, and then he sprawled in his kitchen chair, wrung dry.

Alone,

in the dark,

Bulma and Vegeta both smiled.