This is a tie-in to my fic The Art of War. Enjoy!

Vegeta knew that human noses were pathetic, but their vast inferiority became abundantly clear the more time he spent on Earth.

All of his senses were better than the humans', but they seemed entirely incapable of gathering the least bit of information through their noses apart from what they wanted to eat. It was incomprehensible.

Especially when he could smell desire on the woman.

He ached with restraint. Vegeta pressed her against the wall, his fingers grazing her throat, and tried to think how he could ever touch her the way he was desperate to touch her. He leaned in, cheek against her jaw, and he could smell everything from the coffee she'd had earlier that day to the oil and grease of her work to the sharper, primal scent of her need for him. It baffled him. For months now he had been smelling it on her skin as they moved in and out of each other's daily lives, this terrifying and intoxicating - hunger.

He couldn't touch her. It was driving him slowly and inexorably insane.

Her fingers twisted, weak and barely noticeable, in the front of his battlesuit. She lifted her chin and glared at him with far more defiance than she had any right to show to him. He could break her with a single finger, and yet she refused to be afraid of him. Instead she stood there, contemptuous before him, and demanded his attention, his focus, his - desire.

He wanted her every way he could have her, but he knew nothing of how to take it.

She knew everything of her own desire. She took him into her bed and ordered him onto his back, and for a moment he remembered the sharp-smiled, aggressive women of Vejiitasei that he was too young to appreciate before they, along with his home, were gone.

He was so completely beyond his realm of experience, so entirely out of his depth, that he was nearly frozen. He watched her, mesmerized and terrified, as she divested him of the last of his clothing. He knew he should be doing something. He tried to recall the boasts of Nappa and Raditz so many years ago as they traded stories of their conquests that he'd had no interest in at the time. Just as soon as he started to move, though, she placed her hand on his chest and held him still.

"No," she said. She closed her mouth around him, and he realized there was no taking with her; he would have nothing that she did not give.

He made a study of her. Vegeta was not beneath learning; he had dedicated his life to bettering himself. There was no reason the same principles could not be - applied - to a new arena. So when she curved a smug, satisfied smile at him after pleasuring him with her mouth, he decided to begin with one of the most basic tenets of training: mimicry.

Her skin was impossibly soft, especially here where she spread her thighs for him. Her scent was overwhelming. It flooded his senses, and he knew this was the fulfillment of all the promises made by the desire that whispered on her skin. He tasted her and felt her writhe beneath him.

She was not his teacher, but his trainer. Her body was a battleground that he was learning every weakness of, and he mapped each opening of attack with his lips and his tongue. Every tremble of her muscles was a victory, and nothing tasted so sweet as the human curses that fell from her lips as he slowly but surely conquered her. Just the sound of her was already leaving him hard against the bed once more, an ache that he had to fight the urge to grind against the bed and relieve. When he finally felt the the shudder of her release, he lifted his gaze to her face with victory in his eyes.

"I trust you," she said, and he wanted to scream. The foolish, idiotic woman. She took his hands and pressed them to her body as if she had no reason to be afraid. As if it would have taken any effort for him to break her.

Killing her would be no effort at all. Controlling himself, containing himself, finding the space to touch her without crushing her while she took every conceivable action to strip his control away - that required a sort of effort he had never experienced. She used his body and manipulated his response in a way that he had to admire: in those moments, she was almost Saiya-jin.

Afterwards, he watched her.

She was easy and casual with her naked body, slipping from the bed and walking across the room without any care to cover herself. The glaring light of the bathroom drew the fascinating imperfections of her form into sharp contrast. He knew she was trim enough by Earth standards, but all he could see was the softness of her. He could see a fingerprint's bruise at her hip where she had urged him harder, faster, more.

He turned over in the bed and stared at the wall. It had been a long time since he had felt this terrified.

He couldn't stay away from her. Having made a study of her body, he found himself tracking her around the compound, catching whiffs of her scent or hints of her footfalls. He found the way she would jump out of her skin when he slid up behind her to be hilarious. And he found the way her heart began to hammer when he set his hands on her to be - tantalizing.

But for every new humanoid coupling technique Bulma eagerly taught him, he felt a restless, unsated drive burning at his core. Her very touch was dangerous, and he was pathetically susceptible to it. He had work to do. Her miserable planet needed the strength and power she was purposefully distracting him from pursuing.

Every minute of his life, he had dedicated to honing himself into perfection.

He had never shared anything with this. He could not begin now.

He awoke, bruised and battered and bandaged. He turned his head and saw her sleeping, head pillowed in her arms on the desk she had clearly been working at.

The faintest glimpse of confusion touched his brow in a light furrow. Anywhere else would have been more productive for her. He could think of nothing more pointless than her sitting at his bedside and watching him sleep.

He turned his head to look up at the ceiling. Soon she would awake, screaming and furious. He had never understood her, but he knew something of what they were doing had been broken.

Pregnant.

He sneered and smirked at her. He didn't know what else to do.

He watched her face crumple in a kind of fury that almost startled him into wariness.

He watched her leave.

Pregnant.

Vegeta's hands hovered over the controls. There was nothing for him here except distraction and weakness.

He ran. He escaped.

He took whatever was left between them and snapped it between his fingers as easily as he could have snapped her.

He was done.

Months later, she was in front of him with a tiny bundle in her arms that was soft and weak and nothing to him.

Nothing.