A wrench cinched inside the panel, then a frozen moment where he could hear Bulma inhaling a huge breath to half-shout, “If you tell me to hurry up one more time - ”

“Get it done and I won’t have to tell you hurry up anymore!” 

“Yeah, sure!” Bulma rolled into view, throwing a wrench aside and grabbing some other tool from the messy pile she’d accumulated outside the central station. “Then you’ll be yapping at me to do something else!” Her eyes lingered on him for a split-second, narrowing in on his bandaged arms, otherwise bare in his new Capsule Corp tank top. 

“I’m fine!” Vegeta barked, because he knew what was coming next. “The scabs fell off this morning.”

“So why the bandages?”

“I…I don’t want the new skin to get damaged again.”

“Huh. I guess you do heal fast, then.” She rolled back out of sight, feet tapping on the ground as she resumed her work. The view of her lower half wasn’t helping his composure, he knew, but he also savored the view without worrying she’d notice and bite his head off. 

“I told you I did,” he said. The cuffs of her jumpsuit were rolled up, revealing slender, white ankles that disappeared into red socks and tennis shoes. 

“Blah, blah.” A slight grunt and hiss of air. “Listen, this is going to take a while, so you may as well go use the gym inside - ”

“No! I will supervise so as to ensure you don’t slack off.” 

“Who do you think you are, my boss?”

“I think…I think you don’t realize the urgency of my needs!” Vegeta stated, shifting his weight slightly. 

“Go use a bathroom.”

“Not that kind of need, you wench!” 

But Bulma laughed, the noise filling the pod and his ears and overflowing until he found himself rubbing the goosebumps on his arms unconsciously. 

“If you’re going to stick around, amuse me, then,” she said. Rolled out again, plucked a new tool, rolled back out of sight. Not too quickly so that Vegeta saw the precarious hold the zipper of her jumpsuit had over her breasts. “Did Planet Vegeta have princesses?”

Out of all the questions she could have asked, he wouldn’t have placed a bet on that one. Not that he’d reveal how taken aback he was. “If I had had a sister, it would have,” Vegeta intoned. “But no.” 

“So who would you have married, if not a princess?”

He nearly choked, eyes bugging out as he stared at her legs. “I would have likely wed a high class warrior to strengthen my line and my throne.” The answer was simple enough to give, and he felt certain he’d given it quickly enough that she wouldn’t suspect how uncomfortable he was treading over this ground. He’d left the planet too young for much more than suggestions of an early betrothal from over-ambitious councilors of his father’s, and once the planet was gone there had been no one left to push for an alliance. 

“I see.” Bulma’s voice was quiet. He didn’t hear her tinkling around inside the panel, so gruffly he took the offense to bark, 

“And who would you marry? You seem to think yourself a princess of Earth. Which prince's life will you ruin?” 

“Earth doesn’t have any royalty like that,” she said, still quiet. “And I’m not a real princess.”

“Your father is one of the most powerful men Earth has, politically speaking,” Vegeta said, feeling pragmatic as he wandered around the console, pretending to scrutinize the buttons and keys. “Not physically, of course. I understand that in some worlds, when it comes to royalty there are other qualities that a race may value more highly than brawn. I don’t understand the appeal, myself.” 

“Of course you don’t.” Her muttered comment likely wasn’t meant for his ears, but his hearing was exceptional compared to a human’s. He ignored the comment, anyway, closing in his offense with,

“For the closest this rock has to a princess, I’m surprised you don’t have more suitors.”

Silence. Vegeta waited for her screaming and screeching, a smile already upturning the corners of his mouth, but with a sudden sense of horror in his gut he heard the interest in her voice as she asked, “Oh? You’ve thought about it?”

“No!” he roared so quickly that he could have cursed himself for giving himself away. 

“Where should I send my Earth ambassadors to negotiate such an alliance?” Bulma teased. Vegeta grunted under his breath, glad that she couldn’t see him hunched over a keyboard with his fists holding his weight on the frame. “Goku? Will he stand in as your advisor?”

“I’d sooner take counsel with a frog!” 

“I’ll send the ambassadors to the pond, then.”

He could have screamed. His entire offense had backfired. 

“Oh, lighten up!” Bulma’s teal head appeared around the console, standing up with a wince as she twisted from side to side. Her zipper had lost its battle with her breasts, the red tank top underneath too vivid for Vegeta’s wellbeing. “I’m done for today. It’s late and I’m tired and hungry. I’ll run the tests first thing tomorrow so as long as I did everything right today, you can be training in heavy gravity by lunch.” 

“Fine,” Vegeta said, turning away. 

“Not going to boss me around to keep working until it’s done?”

“What’s the point? You’re not going to listen.”

This time her laugh crawled over his skin like soft fingertips to tickle around his ears. He almost itched them, just to be sure she hadn’t crept up on him. Not that she could; his reflexes were fantastic. 

“True,” Bulma agreed. “Want to order a few pizzas and watch a movie?” 

He hesitated. Thought of the zipper on her jumpsuit, the smudges of grease on her cheeks and neck and hands, the braids over her shoulder that could barely be called braids at this point of disarray. “What movie?” he asked. He didn’t want her to suss out how badly he wanted to say yes. 

“Oh, whatever’s on.” No surprise - she didn’t bother cleaning up her tools, simply kicking a few aside to make a better path to the door. “And don’t get any ideas,” Bulma added, pointing a finger at his face. “I want to watch something with a good plot. That’s not an invitation to kiss me through the whole thing.”

Vegeta was left, open-mouthed and gaping as she left through the door with a wink. He hurried to catch up with her, fuming. As if his anger would disguise the blush creeping up his neck. “I didn’t offer!” he hissed. The compound lawns, golden in the sunset, made his words muted and weak. And Bulma laughed again. 

“I’m offering,” she said, nudging him in the side with an elbow. He jerked away, though that area had no recent injuries, her touch still electrified him. 

“But you just said - ”

“Oh, Vegeta.” Bulma shook her head, hair clinging to her face and the wide beam of her smile. “You don’t understand women.” 

He scoffed. “What’s the point in trying?” 

“The point is, a few hours of making out on the couch. Interested?”

Vegeta couldn’t say yes too quickly or she’d know how much he’d liked kissing her. And how much he wanted to repeat the occasion as often as possible. 

“My gosh,” Bulma said when he remained silent. Her brows were pinched now, sending him a veritable glare as they made it to the sidewalk leading to the main entrance of the dome. “This front you put up is exhausting. Why do you live in a constant state of self denial?”

“Why do you live in a constant state of self indulgence?” he sniped back. “Some things matter more than pleasure.”

Her brows rose, lips compressing together in a thin line before relaxing into a smile. The doors whooshed open ahead of them, the lobby already emptied of the usual secretaries. 

“Life is hard,” Bulma said with a feminine shrug that sent her zipper south a few more teeth. “And the difficulties simply aren’t worth it if you can’t wring out a few minutes of pleasure here and there, I think. What do you think?”

Vegeta thought that maybe she had a point, but all he gave was a grunt. 

Incidentally, an hour or so later when the living room was littered with empty pizza boxes and a movie was playing in the background and Bulma’s tongue was in his mouth, he decided it was worth giving up his side of the argument. Even just in his head, and he hadn’t admitted it out loud. 

Something about the kissing being planned and bargained into their evening had left him feeling more in control than their first kiss, when he’d given into impulse and lost himself in how delicious her reactions had been. Now that he knew how soft she felt with his hands all over her, he could steel himself. When he suckled on her throat to brand her sweet, tangy taste on his tongue and she moaned her approval with little breathy giggles he could pretend not to hear. If this was going to happen again, he didn’t need to remember every little detail. He could simply enjoy himself. 

And that was why he became more and more sure that she was right about pleasure. 

“Ouch!” Vegeta jerked back with a scowl, Bulma’s eyes already wide with remorse as she took her hands off of his shoulders, holding them to her chest. 

“I thought you said you were better,” she whispered. High-pink suffused her cheeks in the flickering television light, her lashes fluttering as her chest rose and fell with each of her panted breaths. The zipper of her jumpsuit was now nearly to her navel. Her undershirt, as it turned out, didn’t go so far. Vegeta dragged his eyes back up to her face with a thick swallow. 

“Some of the deeper wounds remain tender,” he admitted. “Just…touch me here.” He tapped the front of his chest. 

“Fair game where you didn’t get hurt?” she asked, tentatively reaching out to place her palms on his chest. Ten fingertips dug into his shirt and his skin, jolting his blood to rush faster than it already was. 

“Fair game,” Vegeta said. Bulma beamed up at him, wriggling further down on the couch so that her head could lay more comfortably on a pillow. 

“I’m ready. Actually, no. I’m too warm.” She removed her hands from his chest to tug the sleeves down her shoulders, baring the skin there until the jumpsuit was no more than a pair of trousers with the shirtsleeves slung around her waist. 

His groin ached so badly at the sight of her breasts spilling out of her top and her hair strewn over the pillow and the feeling of her hands traveling back up his chest that his hips bucked forward without thinking, nestling between her thighs as he groaned aloud. 

“The movie isn’t over yet,” Bulma reminded him, giving his tank top a tug. “We have more time to kiss. Come on.” 

“Is this what movies are for?” Vegeta asked dubiously, but lowered himself so that his elbows held his weight on either side of her arms, swallowed in the couch. 

“Some might say so.”

“Perhaps I discredited human entertainment too soon.”

Her laugh, this close to his body, may as well have been an energy blast. He had to stop it before his feeble control slipped any further. Vegeta leaned down and smashed his mouth against hers, eating up her tiny gasp like ambrosia. 

“You weren’t,” Bulma panted some time later, when his feet had completely left the ground and they were tangled on the couch in simulation of true coupling. “You weren’t this good at kissing when you - when we - the first time - ”

Around and around her mouth his tongue made its possessive path, tasting every inch of her skin that he dared. Much that he wanted to lick was obscured by her clothes. Vegeta gave a grunt, gripping her chin in his hand to tilt it to the side, allowing him better access to her throat. “Saiyans learn best under pressure,” he muttered into her collarbone. 

“Am I pressuring you too much?”

He thought of the pain in his groin and the heat in hers, joined in a mockery of what he desired. “No,” he decided to say. 

“Then why do you feel pressure?”

“If I wanted to talk, I wouldn’t be kissing you!” Vegeta snapped, teeth sinking into her earlobe for effect. She squirmed, but her whimper wasn’t one of pain. “Be quiet.”

It was a lesson he’d learned long ago: to shield himself with his own aggression, his own pride. It had worked enough to keep him alive. 

Were he not so distracted by coaxing more of those moans from between Bulma’s lips with the fast-growing skill of his mouth and tongue, Vegeta might have wondered why he couldn’t have borne it if he tried to bring Bulma pleasure and failed. The answer would have been pride, of course. He sought to win his every battle, and every encounter with this woman felt like a new one.