Disclaimer: Don't own the anime, please review!! It'll help me know whether to continue the story:)
CHAPTER 2: TENSIONS
Anzu winced as she felt the pain of collision all throughout her body. She found it hard to believe she had run straight into a man instead of a statue. It certainly felt like she had been crushed by a piece of exquisite, ancient marble. Looking at the mess of limbs she had created, she felt a hand steady her instantly and then as quickly as the feather-light touch had grazed her, it had disappeared. Wondering why the beautiful hands she had gotten only a glimpse of would have been so quickly offended, she glanced up, confused, ready to apologize until comprehension dawned on her and she realized she was staring into the clear, unfazed, jewel blue eyes of none other than Seto Kaiba.
"Well, hello there," Anzu offered softly, never breaking eye contact with the tall, dark, ruggedly handsome sculpture in front of her, standing up as straight as she could possibly muster. She summoned all of her strength to appear surprised, but only very slightly. She couldn't let him catch on to the fact that her brain and body were both racing, confused, and literally ringing from the contact with this man in front of her. It would be too bold, give him too much of an upper hand. And after all this was the Seto Kaiba, the man of many calculated actions and gestures that never betrayed a single intention.
The man in front of her betrayed no surprise or emotion except for a gentle, preposterous smirk that played gently at the corner of his mouth. To those who hadn't spent enough time with him, it would have been virtually unnoticeable. But then again, she was no ordinary woman. It was the very first thing she noticed about that face, apart from how much it had grown into the face of a young man.
Anzu realized it had been several seconds since either of them had spoken, and as she snapped back into reality, she broke the eye contact that had been hanging on a wire and looked around to see the crowd around her, pretending to speak to one another as they glanced her way every few seconds. She wondered what had caused the attention until she realized that Kaiba had somehow managed to accumulate a right hand full of glass shards. She must have broken the crystal vial in her collision, and without her even noticing, he had picked up every last shard nonchalantly and was now placing them in the trash and walking away.
Confused beyond words could describe, she found herself gliding against her will in his direction, stopping behind his seat at a deserted open bar whose bartender was spending more time shining the glasses than mixing drinks, watching him sip delicately at a honey-colored liquid. By the smell of it, scotch on the rocks, her bitter caramelized drink of choice. Wondering whether she should announce her presence or walk away and never think of this moment again, she moved a breath forward and decided to order a scotch on the rocks when--
"Bartender is already bringing you Jack on the rocks," a deep voice interrupted, never looking at her, continuing to sip his drink.
Anzu blanched, not caring how he was somehow able to read her thoughts. Probably a perk of his genius.
"So I suppose the question of what you are doing here is pointless anyways," she mustered, realizing that she was staring. She had to admit that he was wantonly handsome, a kind of handsome that made even her, with her solid (yet currently failing) composure, feel a stirring deep inside. Thanking the bartender for his drink with a smile, she sipped vigorously at the liquid that was failing to give her the steely courage she usually had.
She realized he was smirking openly into his glass.
"Yes, and I hear these days you are not one to waste your time asking about the pointless, so let's move on to next step of this interaction, shall we?" Seto countered flawlessly, never changing the smooth, bored, yet eloquent intonations of his voice.
Anzu smiled slightly to herself. He had certainly mellowed, even though his words still bit raw, the smirk told her he was being melancholy for show, and was sure her presence had seriously amused him. "Then I won't waste your time. Thank you for covering for my little dazed slip-up back there. I have to admit, I have been sipping on an awful lot of champagne tonight. Perhaps my faculties are not as intact as I have thought them to be. So are you in town for long?" She chatted politely, never moving her peripheral gaze from his quivering smile.
And then he shattered all of her expectations with one well-formed sentence. His eyes glittered fiercely as her turned to her and looked pointedly into her eyes.
"Mazaki, I think we are both beyond the point of speaking to each other like we have profoundly large poles up our arses so can we please try not to talk like we are assessing each other's estate value. And while we are at it, let's also not pretend you have an estate to assess." He smirked openly at her as he finished and took a large glorious sip from his glass in mock salute to her.
And against her last nerve and will, she couldn't help but laugh inside. A man with a pole the size of an oak tree up his ass, and he was telling her to cut the shit? She had to hand it to him, the man was indeed funny.
"Well then, boy genius, what would you like to chat about? My career? Relationships? Feelings? What would the great Seto Kaiba want to discuss with my estate lacking self?" Anzu knew she sounded childish and idiotic the minute she finished, yet she also somehow knew he would smile once again.
He did smile, he smiled his beautiful, sinfully sexy megawatt smile and continued drinking.
She was tingling with infuriation and something else she couldn't quite place. But she kept her composure.
"No seriously, I would definitely like to know. You and I have never so much as exchanged a full sentence, I know so much about you it frankly makes me a little nauseous, yet you don't know me from the slightest, so where would you even begin? I have to admit, that I am slightly curious as to what a man like you would want to know about a woman like me. " Anzu felt herself rapidly becoming more interested in why he was still sitting motionless at his seat, his watch glimmering in the light of the crystal chandelier as she prodded him. Rolex, she noted with a breath. Simple, elegant, and exquisitely beautiful. Like him.
Seto Kaiba set down his drink with conviction and turned a 180 to face her. His irritatingly beautiful smirk was getting more irresistible by the second, his deep pools of blue seething into hers, and she felt herself heat up ever so slightly. Refusing to respond to the tactic that he was employing, she steeled herself, her beautiful azure eyes staring widely and even more deeply into his sapphires, her head tilted upwards. Beautiful amber wisps dripped gently into her face as the two stared down. Like a reflex he reached up and brushed the annoyance out of her face. It was by no means sweet. He was ridding himself of an annoyance. And she knew this better than anyone, but at that very second that fact was even sexier than any sweet, generous action would have been.
And then he spoke. And she responded honestly and breathlessly.
"Relationships?"
"Nothing longer than a few weeks."
"Why not?"
"I'm looking for the kind of raw passion that makes me never want to leave his lips. I never found it. The alternative is not worth wasting my time on."
"Friends?"
"Hard to make friends in a business in which you must screw them over to have a chance. To let somebody foreign in is to give them the chance to hurt you. This is the real world, not Domino. There are hundreds waiting to watch me fall."
"Career?"
"Remains to be seen."
"Home?"
She paused, quizzical. The rapid fire Q&A that had just taken place had made sense until now. And then she understood what he meant.
"Is nothing like this place. Nobody seems to understand that once you leave, not only can you not really go back home, but you can't really tie yourself to the place you have left it for either. So, forever floating."
And then the nerve of him, he nodded. In understanding. The cold, beautiful bastard just nodded at her in understanding. She felt like shivering. Of course he would know. Multibiilionaire at the age of 16. And yet he slept nights in the mansion of the man who pretended to the rest of the world that he deserved the name "stepfather".
He inched closer still to her, standing up and draining his glass as he did so, but never breaking the eye contact that had built to the point of utmost tension. The thread that was keeping their eyes locked was stretched so taut that any breath might have broken it. When stood to his full height, his figure was majestic and intimidating. Muscles rippled gently through Armani sleeves, and the sleeves tightened visibly when he flexed.
"Dance?" He half asked, half stated, all the while maintaining his sinful smirk.
She couldn't believe her own ears when she heard herself respond with a short, decisive yes.
