Unwanted: Her Memory

Unwanted


Chapter 4 - Her Memory


"Have a good evening, my Queen."


The soft voice of a female servant brought Bulma back to her senses as she gazed numbly around what had been her living quarters for the past week. "When had I walked here?" the gap in her memory may have caused her some alarm had she not already been experiencing similar symptoms ever since her arrival at Vegeta's estate. Since that night, she had been slipping in and out of reality, trying to bar the heartache that she was currently calling a life.


Kakarrot's wake had been just the beginning. The sound of Vegeta's voice still echoed through her mind as he, without invitation or warning, arrived at her chambers and laid down his plans for what should have been her final chance to say a private goodbye to a man she loved.


"It is wise that we be seen together throughout the evening. It will make our subsequent union seem less suspicious. I will play the part of the dutiful brother whom protects his kin's bereaved love. Though I am sure your mind will be elsewhere come the ceremony, I thought to warn you so you would not be alarmed by my presence."


She had been anyway. It was traumatizing enough to have to sit and listen to a Saiya-jin holy man, whom no doubt never met Kakarrot once in his life, preach impassively about how 'honorable' his death was. But to have to suffer the ordeal next to Vegeta, she imagined if hell had an opening for her, that was surely it. Feeling Vegeta's arm wrapped around her waist or a gloved finger wiping her tears away, it was a silent torture like no other she had ever experienced.


With such insincerity he consoled her. It was nothing short of nauseating to watch a man, whom detested affection, have to put on a believable display of it. Though he may have fooled his audience, he had not done so with her. She knew what true care and concern looked like upon the face of a loving man; she had seen it countless times with Kakarrot. His console was nothing like the impassive drivel Vegeta displayed.


"You did well, for a woman who confesses to despise me as deeply you do." He laughed, as if there was some humor in the jest he offered after returning her to her chambers that night. Self-obsessed, as always, the bastard could not have possibly realized she did not care about their impending nuptials or what the public believed about her. The entire day her mind had been fixed upon Kakarrot's bodiless tomb, it's emptiness merely a reflection of how she felt inside.


So hollow, she could barely conjure the memory of what should have been the most blissful day of her life: her wedding day. She scarcely recalled the servants who garbed her in a simple powder blue gown Vegeta had ordered for the small ceremony. She brokenly remembered the sight of his royal blue armor as she stood across from him, listening to him repeating his emotionless vows, and then the long pause that emulated throughout the room before she had spoken hers. "Repeat the damn words," Vegeta had snapped ever so callously under his breath. She would never forget the threatening resonance in his voice, not the gently spoken words of love and devotion she would have heard from Kakarrot had he survived.


When the disastrous rite concluded and the overseer of the union granted 'man' allowance to kiss his 'wife,' she had turned a cold cheek to him just in time to avoid his affection; she had wanted none of it.


"If we are quite done, I believe I would like to retire to my chambers."


She had not been asking for permission then, merely alerting him to her intentions. That must have been when he ordered the servant to accompany her, because here she was, in her lovely gown, with her loosely curled tresses and no other jewels adorning her skin other than that of the plain gold band suffocating her finger.


Gazing down at the ring encircling her shaky digit, she felt a rush of tears overflow from her eyes as she realized exactly what the small symbol meant, "He might as well have branded 'Vegeta's property' on my forehead." She grabbed the vanity that housed all of her superficial possessions and violently thrust it down to the ground, "Damn it!" She released a string of curses as she sobbingly began pacing her room, breaking, throwing and overturning any item she could get her hands on.


Her voice cracked as she screamed a hoarse cry at the top of her lungs. Lost for objects to destroy, she started ripping at her dress, stripping it from her body as though it had been drenched with poison. She wanted none of it. She did not want his ring, his dress, his damn room; she did not want any part of him! Throwing her ring to the ground atop of the pile of her discarded garments, she ran to her closet and pulled out a long silken white nightgown. A garment she owned, that was solely hers and not tainted with the debt of a man she wanted nothing to do with.

My husband...


It sounded so wrong, but horrifyingly it was true. She was bound to a man she did not love, who did not love her in return. She had partaken in what she had feared most, an emotionless marriage.


Struck by the awesomeness of her state of being, Bulma dazedly glided over to her bed, pulling back the covers and crawling under them for comfort. Fully protected by the warmth enclosing her, she reached out and slowly traced the center of the pillow next to her, where there should have been an indentation of a man's head, her husband's head, Kakarrot.


But no, Kakarrot was not her husband. By some cruel twist of fate her existence was now the extension of his brother; a man who had wronged her was now her husband, her husband! Retracting her fingers from the pillow beside her, she felt a moment of relief. Things could have been worse after all. Now that they were joined he could easily come into her chambers, demanding his rights and she would be powerless to stop him. Not that she would have forfeited a damn good fight. She would not lie back and simply accept as she had last time.


Last time...


The memory crept into her mind like an agile thief in the night. She had not wanted to remember, she never wanted to remember, but closing her eyes she could not help but see him. Her husband's finely chiseled torso descending upon hers, preparing to teach her things she had no right to learn. That night, in exchange for knowledge, he had taken her greatest possession, a possession he had no right to take.


"Well, I suppose there is one benefit to marrying Vegeta," a bone-chilling chuckle escaped her lips before the line between conscious and unconscious finally skewed into an uncontrolled bombardment of recollection, "I do not have to explain to him why I am unchaste."

~*~

She was nervous. The moment her back touched his silk sheets, a terrible sense of dread filled her. What had she been thinking, agreeing to this? Ah, now, there was the rub. She was not thinking. Her body had been set aflame the moment she walked into his ominous room. And as uninformed as she was about mating, her body told her very clearly that this throbbing she felt would only subside under his attentions, Vegeta's attentions.


A long time friend, well, perhaps friend was too optimistic a title, Vegeta was never the most gentlemanly of men when it came to her. He had teased, insulted, and on more than one occasion embarrassed her, mocking her youth or inexperience. A part of her always hoped he had done so to shake some reality into her fearless mentality, but she knew better. A part of Vegeta was perpetually broken, the part of him that once had been goodness in him. She had seen it happen after the death of their fathers.


It had been no surprise when she began to hear of the more ghastly methods of warfare he had begun to implement. So enraged over her father's death, a part of her savored the thought that those who had aided in the murder were now paying the same humiliation, but as the sting of his death slowly wore off, her sense of morality returned, unlike with Vegeta, who experienced no visible rebound. He continued to sink deeper and deeper into his obsessive pursuit of revenge, damning anyone who dared get in his way during the process.


But tonight he seemed receptive, finally willing to embrace something that did not have to be ruled by hate. He asked her to lay with him, how could she refuse a drowning man a lifeline? Perhaps if she could just help him reawaken the good man she knew lay dormant inside him, a little piece of the innocent boy who died along with his parents could be resurrected.


It was a strange sensation to kiss Vegeta. It had not been her first time touching lips with a man, of course. She and Kakarrot had experimented with one another, their curiosity getting the best of them. But Kakarrot's kisses had been nothing like this. Vegeta was not nearly as inexperienced as his brother. His touch, it was so much more schooled, as if he knew every curve of her body that desired to feel his hands gliding over her.


"Mmm... That feels nice," she was surprised to admit as her back arched under a power of its own. Gradually losing herself to his ministrations, she almost missed his chuckled response.


"Nice? Nice is what you call a kiss upon her your hand by an acquaintance. This, Bulma, is what you call passion." She shuddered as he grasped the thin straps to her nightdress and gradually began pulling them down her shoulders. Aghast, she moved her arms to push the straps back into place. However, her embarrassment seemed only to amuse him, "Do not look so shocked, my lady; did you honestly believe I could teach you the ways of a man and a woman without removing all unnatural barriers?"


He was right of course; she did not know what she had been thinking when he made the offer, perhaps a hope that they would experiment as innocently as she and Kakarrot had. But of course, she was wrong. This was Vegeta, and nothing about him was innocent. "Vegeta, perhaps this is not such a good id-" he covered her lips with his, silencing her protests. His kiss had been so mind numbing that she barely registered his soft fingertips returning to her shoulders. He grasped the straps once more and unthreateningly completed his original pursuit. He was so slow, so gentle, he made her feel safe.


Rolling them to the side, he pushed the gown completely down her body. She kicked the thin garment away as he rolled back atop of her. His eyes devoured her. She had had nothing on underneath her nightgown, but now she wished she had. Every inch of her was exposed to him; she had never wanted to cover herself as much as she did at that moment. "Beautiful," he complimented huskily as he allowed his fingers free reign over her nude body.


Vegeta, she moaned nervously. She was not sure what was happening to her body. It was growing hot and uncomfortable, her irritation beginning to centralize between her thighs. She knew it had to be wrong, what they were doing, but she could not bring herself to voice it, especially not as he bombarded her senses with the consuming presence of his own powerful body.


"You are already beginning to flow for me," she had no idea what that meant, but the sudden feel of a warm liquid emerging from her center and cascading out of her nether regions made her feel even more self-conscious. What was happening to her? "It's natural," he spoke as if he could read her mind. Pressing a hand flat against her stomach, he eased her tense body calmly against the bed, "Allow me to show you."


The last visual she imagined his offering was the stiff shaft she had wrongly clenched in his pants earlier, but his pants were no longer present. He was kneeling over her, as nude as she was, as he reached out to grasp her hands. "Feel this," he guided her fingers over his silky hardness, a creamy liquid was leaking out of the tip of his sexual organ as it had hers. She had never been more perplexed by a sight before her. She had known men and women were built differently, but she never imagined this.


"What are these?" she reached down to the crux of his length, and then twisted her hands around to cup two hefty sacks that accompanied his firmness. With a slightly too tight squeeze, she quickly received her answer.


"Be gentle with those," he nearly choked out the command as he rested one hand on each of her shoulders as if he needed support. "They are extremely sensitive. They house the seed that will infuse a woman with child."


In a frantic horror, Bulma ended her investigation and crawled away from him, grabbing a blanket to shield her body from his probing eyes. "No, Vegeta, I-Oh god, I am too young to have a child. Please, cover yourself, this was a mistake."


With a stifled groan, Vegeta crawled over his covered bedmate, his look, one of irritation. "You can not conceive a child merely by touching me; I would have to penetrate you first." Her expression must have been one of bewilderment, because he pulled the covers away from her body and guided her onto her back. "Feel," he ordered as something suddenly slid inside her body. It was too short to be what he had been hiding in his pants, but, oh by the gods, it felt good. It was hitting ever crevice of her inner sanctum that could elicit a cry of mindless pleasure. And then, when she thought the feeling could be no more intense, the instrument inside her widened; one, then two times-his fingers.


Oh yes, that was it. She glanced between her heaving mounds, her legs spread wide for him as he paid heed to her most intimate of parts. "Vegeta," she moaned his name breathlessly as she threw an arm over her head, covering her eyes, wanting no visual of the devilish things he was doing to her. Good things, things she should never have been feeling. "Please, Vegeta, I can not bear it anymore," the blissful pain aching through her stomach, past her womb and throbbing most potently between her thighs was becoming too much to bear. At this rate, she was going to explode.


"Now you know how I feel," his teeth must have been clenched as he said so, because it came out roughly. "My pain," he pressed his body flush atop hers, or as flush as two people can get with a throbbing erection piercing one of the party's' pelvis. "I am suffering with you, princess. I had no idea it would be like this..."


"Vegeta," her breaths were labored, her heart was racing, she could not think, she could barely voice a coherent thought as he wrapped her legs around his waist, matching their most sacred treasures against one another.


It was then she should have known, perhaps not precisely what was to come next, but she should have known. After that night, she would be an innocent no more...

~*~

"No!" Bulma awoke in a heated sweat as she fiercely wiped the tears from her eyes. She could see no more, she was not ready to face any more, to retrogress to the past, having to fight off the shame, the humiliation. She could not handle experiencing the nightmares all over again. No, more than nightmares, memories, memories of a night she had never forgotten.


Throwing the covers away from her body, Bulma rushed out of her room, not really focusing on where she was going, simply going; away from the memories, away from the occurrences that night, of how it changed her life.


It seemed such a cruel twist of fate that now, once she had found some sense of routine, consistency in her existence, it had to be up heaved by the man she had been strategically cutting out of her life. Of course she had expected an imminent encounter with him, no doubt at her wedding with Kakarrot, but to have to face him now, fresh from facing the truth of her lover's death, scorning his memory, binding herself to his brother. The weight of the circumstances were simply too much to bear.


Grasping her chest, she tried to calm her labored breathing as she picked up her pace. She was no longer walking, she was running, as if her physical movement could protect her from her psychological dangers.


It could not.


"Kakarrot," she called for the only man she had ever turned to in the face of fear. He had always been the person she could go to when her life became too great a challenge to face. He had always been her rock, her best friend, but now he was gone, taken from her, just as her father had been when she needed him the most.


"I am completely alone."


The realization stopped her cold in her tracks. Kakarrot, her father, this war, her marriage-Vegeta; it was all wrong. Her entire life had spun out of control. "Oh gods," she whispered as the overload to her senses finally caught up to her and her body began to sink towards the ground. Losing her fight for consciousness, she failed to register the strong arms that encircled her body before she could hit the ground, or the soft, atypically genuine, voice that whispered his concern as he carried her to comfort.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~