A/N: This is a chapter rife with angst and non-consent. This particular Vegeta has always been animalistic, and it seemed rather in character for him to disregard her physical and emotional safety for his own use. Please do not read this chapter if you find that material too disturbing. You will be able to skip ahead to the next chapter and pick up without difficulty the story line.

Pain

She should have known it wouldn't last. As though he had caught himself in the middle of sleep-walking, Vegeta grimaced and shook her off his shoulder. Startled, Bulma leaned back as he stood and looked out over the horizon, a pregnant tension settling in the air. "I need to train," he grunted, not bothering to look her way before he blasted off into the sky and back towards the ship.

Bulma's eyes began to burn, and she realized she was holding back tears. Venemously scrubbing her eyes with her hands, the woman scrambled to her feet to yell out across the lake in an unintelligible scream. Feelings - the oddest sense of loneliness, anger, and frustration - welled up in her chest. Why was she having such a dramatic reaction to his dismissal? Her confusion simply made her emotions harder to control, and a sob strangled itself out of her throat as she whirled around to grab the nearest stone and hurl it out into the water. She noticed with displeasure that it barely flew ten feet.

Grasping her hair with long ivory fingers, Bulma screeched again and turned on her heel to return to the little house she'd de-capsulated earlier. Tears leaked out of her eyes as she slammed the door behind her, muttering "Why why why?" to herself. Why did it matter that Vegeta had left again? Why was she feeling so… embroiled? Maybe it was the fact she hadn't seen hide nor hair of him in two days, and the moment she did see him he'd eaten all the food she'd prepared and flown off again without a word of thanks. There had been no culminating physical act after what she'd so pathetically called a 'date' - but who was she kidding? That had been an absurd stab in the dark at normalcy. That wasn't even a word in his fucking Saiyan vocabulary. What had she expected?

Bulma glanced in the mirror at her tear-streaked face and noted that she'd lost a bit of weight. Perhaps that's what he'd been referring to. She grimaced, turning away. Think, idiot. He had been clearly interested in sex when he'd arrived; he'd even been rather receptive to their relationship talk. He'd given her as much information to go off of as he could. It wasn't until their comfortable silence and her vague probing that he'd unceremoniously decided to leave. Perhaps that had been his plan all along. Perhaps that's how things would always go… Being chained to a wild ghost.

Her gaze landed on the large tub next to her, and without a second thought her fingers flicked to the control panel to start a bath nearly boiling with sudsy pink bubbles. By this time her earlier furor and mild panic had begun to dissolve, and she could think of nothing more soothing than a hot soak. As she stripped, her thoughts returned to that perplexing hurricane of emotions. Maybe her hormones were off. She'd have to do some basic blood tests to make sure all was right. The side of her mouth twitched down. Pregnancy wasn't possible with the meds she was on, but space travel, alien attacks, and new planets could fuck a girl up pretty good.

Snifflling, Bulma dipped her toe in with a sigh before she completely surrendered to the waters before her, determined to drive the unruly man from her mind for the duration of the soak.

Thoughts had crashed down on him like a sudden storm. Unbidden words of sympathy had whispered through his ears and slithered down into his chest, and he would have no more of it. Vegeta raced through the atmosphere, ignoring his original flight path to the ship as he crested the clouds in the night sky, abruptly dropping and slamming iron fists through protrusions in the lansdcape, and then rising again to repeat the jagged pattern. He was no idiot. He may not know much about mates, but he could take a hint, and hints were coming hard and fast. The further he sped away from her, though, the softer the pangs of anguish came. Finally he came to a stop, chest heaving not in strain but in pure agitation. Hadn't he made his decisions before he'd gone back to the female? What was he running from?

Pity.

The bitch had the audacity to pity him as they had gazed into the night sky. He had felt that bizarre emotion creeping up his spine, but it had taken him a moment to recognize both its foreign origins and to put a name to something he'd never felt before. Vegeta's teeth flashed in the night, and distant lightning reflected off their pearly tips.

Are you running away from an innocuous human woman?

Cringing at the thought, he shook his head at himself. No, he had simply left before he killed her - blasted a hole through that pretty little head of hers for degrading him - her mate - in such a baseless fashion. Was that how she looked at him? Like a broken version of that oaf Kakarot? Homeless, lost, weak and… pitiful?

Can I bear to hear her inane thoughts clamoring around in my head for years to come?

He couldn't imagine knowing what that insipid moron was feeling 24/7. He had watched her out of the corner of his eye before this apocalyptic hell-hole of a trip, and he had seen her moods swing from blissfully happy to savagely angry multiple times throughout the day. Vegeta couldn't imagine withstanding the gale force of her emotions in tangent with his own - which, though much less changeable, he could at least admit were quite rancorous. His thoughts hit a snag, and he straightened his spine.

…Can she feel mine too?

His brain flat-lined in mortification as a burning blush seeped into his cheeks. The idea that the little female might be privy to his own emotions was impossible to face, insufferable to consider.

Ki swirled about his form, ripping from his shoulders to connect with the clouds above. Lightning that had seemed so distant gathered to meet his own force, and the rock feature he had been standing on disintegrated, its dust whirling in storm the Saiyan called up.

It was her fault. She had gotten them into this mess. She had forced his hand into mating.

She was dangerous. A liability. A weakness that someone could exploit.

He had been wrong before, but he would remedy that. A moment of pleasure between her thighs was not worth his own vulnerability.

Vegeta glanced over his shoulder, his eyes seeking what he knew was out of his visual range. A little house waited for him somewhere in the distance. He would return, force her to give the ship's authority over to him, and crush her skull between his fingers. Nose wrinkling above his sneer, he imagined the feel of her soft tresses slippery with clotted blood, forever dyed crimson. He would savor the taste of his enemy. That he could promise himself.

She felt him in her bones even more heavily this time. Was there a literal storm approaching with him? Bulma's head, her hair piled up into a knot to avoid the bursting bubbles below, slid up to glance out the one-way window at her side. The unfamiliar planet waited beyond, lighting searing across the sky, illuminating the golden plain and whipping lake waters with a mocking glow.

Taking her attention away from her surroundings had been her worst mistake.

Calloused fingers dug into the sides of her neck as she was unceremoniously hauled backwards and up from behind. Her scream strangled in her throat as he dragged her from the cooling waters into the bedroom, the space between them filled with her kicking and flailing. Her heels banged across the marble floor as her fingers lept to pull his away to no avail. The barest hint of his dark figure flickered across her vision as he roughly spun her around and pinned her to the bed by the back of her neck. Gasping under the pressure, Bulma felt her cheek dig into the duvet as she was forced to stare at the headboard. Nevertheless, her hands flailed out behind her to attempt contact with the Saiyan whose muscled thighs pressed into her own from behind. Bulma's toes dug into the carpet, scrambling to find purchase in her position, not quite kneeling because of the bed's height. The position put more pressure on her neck, and her vision swam.

"How dare you," he whispered, grasping her thrashing left arm and pinning it to the bed with his own. Unable to speak, her right hand drew up to pull against his own clenched around her neck. Snarling, Vegeta loosened his grip while still keeping her immobilized and waited a moment as he heard the whoosh of her breath. He leaned over, feeling her legs still trembling with the effort of scrabbling against the carpet, and his breath brushed against her ear. "How DARE you, bitch?"

Bulma's vision cleared as she came back to the present gasping. She heard his repeated hiss and her mind struggled to find an answer. "I - I don't know what you mean!" she squeaked, terror welling in her stomach. He had never been like this. She realized she had been lulled into complacency by her proximity to Goku. Everyone always turned out to be good in the end in their little Z gang!

But not this one. She had been gravely mistaken.

"You're a spiteful, manipulative succubus," he hissed, pushing her further into the bed with his hips. "I see you now. I know what you are. You will not be allowed to further humiliate me."

Her eyes ached as she strained to catch his gaze while his words echoed in her head. I know what you are. She had never felt so exposed, so naked, and somehow his words ignited a feeling of shame deep in her belly. "What have I done to warrant this?" she murmured, her voice cracking with strain.

"Everything," he snarled, jarring her neck with barely-controlled rage. "You brought us here. You and your idiotic motherfucking father couldn't be bothered to get anything right and here we are - " his lips curled back in a sneer - "Mated and bonded. A thing - a thing which I had no intention of doing, much less with you, and yet I find myself here -" He cut off, struggling to find the words.

Bulma's eyes widened. "Vegeta I -"

"No, you whore! No!" he spat, and she felt him shove her again with his hips. "You don't get to speak any more! Your words - your thoughts - everything you do poisons me, and I won't have it. Do you hear me?" His voice had risen to a bellow, and she began to sob again the bed as his hand twitched against her neck, his other burying her wrist into the covers. "DO YOU HEAR ME?"

No reply but her tears met his question, and a strangled snarl of rage flew from his lips as he dipped his head to her shoulder and bit in to the tender flesh where her neck connected. Bulma screamed and bucked, and a maniacal, satisfied smirk came over his lips as he sunk his teeth further. Finally, a response he could work with.

Bulma howled his name in agony, and he felt the spark of her ki mingling with his own on his lips. Releasing her neck, he slid his tongue up and around the bite, lapping her blood and savoring the flavor as she wept beneath him. This felt right. This felt familiar. This he could understand. And yet he felt her insistent emotions pushing into his mind, her terror and her pain mixing in with his rage. It only fueled his temper. Suddenly he felt the throb of his manhood pushing up against her nakedness, and without thinking he let go of her wrist to rip his offending trousers away from his hips.

The cloth slid to bunch at his ankles as Bulma's suddenly-free hand curled back over her shoulder to claw at his face, nails raking ineffectually at his toughened skin. Vegeta sneered at her pathetic attempts to buck him off and maim him. Her mind raced back to their first physical encounter, when she had seen the wildness in his eyes and the breaking of his control.

"You said you wouldn't kill me!" she gasped, repeating the words she had uttered before.

Vegeta ignored her and roughly shoved his hand against her opening. Not wet enough. He snarled, spitting into his hand to rub onto his erection.

"You promised! You promised me, Vegeta! Why would you have bothered saving me then if you were going to kill me now?"

Unmoved, he slid his hand to the base of his manhood and shoved into her, keeping her pinned by her neck. Though Bulma screamed in response, he found himself distantly surprised that his surge forward hadn't broken her in two. Still bonded… he raged inside, and his left hand drifted away to grasp her hip. He could hear her calling his name, mewling against the duvet as he pushed in and out of her. Grunting with his efforts, he dropped his head against her shoulder again and roughly lifted her left leg up to the bed for a better angle. She was calling his name. His name. He couldn't tell if it was in pain or pleasure. Vegeta's tongue darted out to lap at her bite again, and then he found that he was kissing her neck, nipping and caressing with a strange mixture of desire and anger.

Bulma had been frightened before for her life, but the moment he had moved his hand to her womanhood she had known that something else entirely was going on. She could feel his overwhelming ire washing over her, but something had shifted, and suddenly she felt a wash of anguished desire. Confusion. That sense of confusion blipped in and out of her mind, and she saw her chance to rectify the situation - but that thought was trampled as he shoved into her. Bulma had howled his name as he slammed too deeply into her. Tears streamed as she scrambled in her mind to find control again. Her body, however, was responding to him in ways she hadn't anticipated, growing hot from walking the line between terror, pain, and pleasure. She had to get control.

His confused jumble of emotions intensified as his lips met her neck, and that's when she knew she had him. Instead of crying out, she moaned his name. It took a moment before she felt the slightest shift of his hand. She moaned again, and she heard the echo of a growl as his hand finally lifted from her neck. Suddenly the room shifted as he pulled her upright against his chest, but the position of her legs was too awkward. With a deep snarl he flipped and tossed her like a rag doll face-up on the bed. Before she could open her north to protest, Vegeta was on top of her, thrusting into her with one arm looped under her leg, the other entangled in her hair and cradling her fragile skull. Bulma grit her teeth with the intensity of his thrusts, but instead of pushing him away, lifted her hands to his face. One drifted to his temple, brushing against his unruly hair, while the other cupped his cheek, a thumb brushing the edges of his lips.

"I won't hurt you," she breathed, barely audible. He ignored her, staring through her to somewhere far away. Bulma was undaunted. "I won't hurt you," she promised again, this time a little louder. Her hand swept comforting circles up into his mane. Barely, she felt his thrust falter, but she knew he had heard. "Vegeta," she crooned, as he resumed, "I won't hurt you. Vegeta. Vegeta." She craned her neck up to lightly kiss his face everywhere but his lips.

His eyes refocused on her, and his pistoning hips slowed their rhythm. A soothing calm, like icy mint in his veins, invaded his mind. She was speaking to him.

Bulma ventured the barest hint of a smile through what she knew must be a tear-soaked, red-eyed visage. "I won't hurt you. I promise. I won't hurt you, Vegeta."

The Saiyan gritted his teeth at the foreign emotion in his brain and listlessly thrusted again before he dropped his head next to hers, his breath fanning out against her injured shoulder. As his movement on top of her stilled, Bulma mentally thanked the gods and drew him further against her, one hand delving into his hair while the other smoothed circles into his shoulders. Though he was still buried to the hilt within her, he made no move to either pull out or continue his work, and Bulma took it as a precipitous moment. Though he still had one of her legs drawn against her shoulder, she raised the other to slip it around his hip, pulling him further into her with a heel. Then she waited.

A few silent moments passed before he untangled his arm from her leg and shifted, his nose coming to rest against her pulse as he pulled her beneath him to his chest. Internally groaning at her nearly-numb leg, Bulma nevertheless wrapped it back around his hip, locking ankles.

There they stayed, listening to one another's breaths as she continued to soothe his shoulders.

He had rarely ever felt guilt, but the emotion began to collect in his spine as he scented the blood clotting against her ivory skin. Had he hurt her? Undoubtedly so. The only thing that had saved her skin was the bond they already shared.

Vegeta couldn't bring himself to lift his head and see her face. He was torn between hollow guilt and ebbing desire. He wasn't even sure what he had been so angry about in the first place, and his mind probed the spot where the killing instinct lingered. It wasn't particularly strong.

Bulma, sensing a dangerous shift in his mood, did the only thing she could think of. Clinging on to his shoulders, she bucked her hips ever so gently against his. When he didn't immediately respond, she lifted again in a slow, steady rhythm.

Vegeta's eyes shot open when he realized she wasn't simply repositioning herself. Without a second thought he picked up her slow pace and brought his head up to rest it against her forehead, his eyes shuttered again in concentration. His thrusts had barely quickened, but in moments she could feel him bunching up within her, and she knew he was close. As he began to shudder and push forward, she cupped his cheek again and his eyes flashed open with hazy lust.

"I won't hurt you, Vegeta," she repeated one last time as he groaned and came within her, lips moving against hers in his wordless cry.

Their breaths mingled for a moment before he rolled to the side and took her with him, crushing her to his chest. Bulma's cheek lay against the hollow of his throat as his breathing calmed, and she mentally checked on her body, relieved that she didn't seem to be in much pain anywhere but her shoulder. A small frown creased her lips. Bulma Briefs would not put up with someone taking physical advantage of her, and she would ensure that it would never happen again. She was reminded, suddenly, that Saiyans were very much half-beast, and she would have to tame at least some of him if she wanted either of them to stay alive.

Because rest assured that Bulma Briefs wasn't going to stand for the kind of mistreatment that his violence promised. The little woman's eyes darted up at his chin. Her vague understanding of his state of mind would be a leniency that she never offered again. She would have to explain to him that, while her promise was true, it didn't give him the right to take advantage of it. This would be a two way street and he was going to either walk it or get the hell out of her way.

A/N: Well that got dark quick. I know. I know. It will bounce back, don't worry. All the humor and chumminess will be coming in the next chapter, where Bulma will school Vegeta in all the senses. Hang in there!
Unrelated: check out my new fic "Silence Calling" and let me know what you think! Reviews are helpful!