Aaaaye~ I humbly apologize for the long absence, life decided to kick my butt six ways from Sunday in the past months so I was kind of busy letting all them bruises heal -laughs- Basically, I had to make some grand decisions and ultimately moved outta my parents' house, and living on my own for the first time in my life has been one incredibly tough journey but also a very educational experience.

There's been tears and laughter, happy moments and depressing moments, moments where I wanted to jump off a random bridge and moments where I couldn't have been more grateful to be alive, so overall I feel I've grown a lot as a person through that time. In the end I'm rather happy I went through all of it and managed to settle down in my new environment at long last.

Now, finally, I can go back to writing as well, albeit I can't guarantee any regularity with updates on any of my stories. Things have calmed down for me to a greater extent, but the balance is still all kinds of wobbly so stabilizing the foundation further bit by bit still requires extensive, continuous effort on my part.

Frankly, I had to familiarize myself with my own stories and the plot behind this one all over again first, too, and I thank everybody who had commented on this fiction, going through your comments helped immensely to tip the scale in favor of the idea to keep working on this one. I'm very happy so many people enjoyed the ride so far and I would love to finish this story eventually, so please continue lending my Muses and I your strength and support! In turn, we'll try to keep delighting you with our writing.

Now, without further ado, off goes:

Sorrow of the Deceiver

Chapter 4

Conquest

The door of the grand bedroom was pushed open, a stately figure passing through with a lightweight burden on their arms, putting one foot to good use and nudging the door shut again with the tip of it. It fell softly into frame, a firm gait bringing him and the slender figure he carried towards the bed. The moon was high in the skies by now and it was the only source of light, plunging the sleeping chamber into a comfortable mix of darkness and soft, cobalt glow.

The floor was covered by an expensive carpet muffling the steps taken upon it against its fluffy fibres, a huge walk-in closet hiding off to the right side. A couple of exquisite paintings on the walls, the door to the en-suit master bathroom open and allowing a peek into the noble furnishing of it. A row of full-length windows lined up to the left of the entrance, one of them also the exit onto the balcony presenting a magnificent view out onto the nightly city skyline that went ignored right now.

There wasn't much more in the spacious room aside the beside tables and the grand four poster bed they belonged to. The satin, deep-blue bedspread covering it crumbled up under the featherweight of Anzu's lithe body being lowered onto the downy mattress, Seto's figure following track while she shifted a bit further and a few inches up to rest her clever head on one of the numerous pillows.

The young CEO watched those pretty eyes shimmer nervously in the sparse light flowing through the windows, moving in over Anzu's feline body embedded on the sheets. His lips were swift to claim her sweet pair in a strong kiss, her heart giving a fierce pound and causing her breath to hitch near painfully in its frail cage of ribs. His hands were resolute in their endeavour of plucking open one button after another until he could part the hems of her blouse and slip a warm palm onto her shapely, irregularly heaving bosom, causing the first quiet moan to spill from her appealing mouth as he squeezed at supple flesh yet enwrapped in the protection of her bra. The second hand didn't stay idle either, gliding over the smooth skin of her thigh and rolling up the short skirt that she wore until it exposed the flimsy material of her panties.

He seemed to know his way around a woman's body all too well, one long leg slipping in between her own and pressing down in just the right spot between that slender pair so that the tiniest movement of his limb would cause friction of a kind which forced her entire abdomen to spasm with waves of hot, salacious tingles. The slickness of his tongue in her mouth and their breaths melting together, Anzu's head was spinning worse than if she were trying to hold on to the rails of a rollercoaster without the safety of a seatbelt.

And he could feel it. In her every sweet tremble, her every honeyed gasp and every shy whimper, in each of her jagged breaths and her embarrassed, desperately suppressed moans. In terms of sexual pleasure women weren't too different from intricate computer codes, some harder and some easier to crack but Seto had yet to find a female cryptogram he couldn't decipher. Their bodies were the keyboards and their minds the hard drive translating the commands you typed, and if you were good you could make anyone else pale compared to you in her perception. And Seto Kaiba was good, because he would never allow himself not to be. There yet had to be a woman that didn't think he was a stud in bed after having gone for a roll in the sheets with him, and he'd be damned if he didn't continue living up to the image.

His confidence was ever-present in his motions, like he knew exactly what he was doing, which made it that incredibly much easier for Anzu to trust him in this. Even though in all her life, she would have never thought that out of everybody Seto Kaiba would be the first man to ever touch her like this... There was a small voice in the back of her head that kept questioning whether she really wanted to do this, whether she was really willing to allow him to do this to her. Did she really want to give her virginity up to him, of all people? This was absolutely not how she had imagined it to be, her first time... She had thought it would be with somebody she loved and who loved her back, butterflies in her stomach, nervous but fond touches, candlelight, breathy confessions of love and-

His lips near her delicate ear, he nipped at the outer shell of it and it resonated with a shudder of her body, while his husky voice spoke up carrying the airiest note of amusement in it: "You can close your eyes and picture him, if you want to. Though I doubt he could ever hold a candle to my skills."

Anzu's eyes flew open not a moment later, and she gave his stout shoulder a rough shove which he surprisingly didn't resist. "Screw him," she hissed, suddenly and earnestly angry. "And screw you, too." What the hell... why was she even putting up with this? Putting up with him and his, his, his... everything! Sitting up curtly, she tried to pull her blouse shut with jittery hands, in full intention to get off the bed again, feeling too vividly the indignation that boiled her blood together with the awoken yearnings underneath. "My emotions are not a goddamn piñata for either of you to swing at!"

She didn't get far when a strong arm snapped around her shoulders from behind, pulling her back against his stately torso with careful but resolute force, his second limb snaking around her partly bared, slim waistline. Her skin felt feverish where it touched to his and there was a nervous flutter in her stomach especially when the arm around it squeezed gently as he pressed her even closer.

"Then don't expose them so foolishly," composed words spoken matter-of-factly at her ear, her lashes fluttering semi-shut in resignation and surrender both. "A blind man could have seen how you felt about him, or how he had truly felt about you. And yet none of your precious friends had ever bothered to even give you as much as a heads up." Seto had always been able to see it. Her admiring, devotional stares and Atem's resolute tries to pretend it was all a very deep-running friendship. What foolish kids... the entire bunch of them...

Anzu swallowed, the emotions his words stirred up trying to suffocate her, causing her voice to come out trembling and faint: "Neither did you..." If he'd seen... if everyone had seen... why let her run at that knife and skewer herself on it?

His response war a dark chuckle, drowning out the honest sparkle of sympathy that reflected in his ice-colored gaze so thoughtfully hidden from her. "That's what you and the rest of you airheads still fail to understand." A shudder wrecked her body when those devious lips touched to the sensitive spot right beneath her pierced earlobe. "I'm not your friend." It was not on him to be helping any of them with anything, except he really wanted to. Would she have even listened? Most likely not. She had to see this folly of hers with her own eyes, her puppy love had to fall apart in front of her because she would have never believed the futility of it otherwise. Especially if the words of sober observation had come from somebody like him, whom her entire posse held in such contempt.

Seto's hand tilted Anzu's head back and his mouth captured her own, her helpless whimper getting drowned in that demanding over-the-shoulder kiss. His free appendage slid but a bit lower and to the side, agile fingers finding her skirt's zipper snuggled to her hip, pulling it down with a mild, sharp sound of metal parting metal. The dark-blue material was soon pushed down her slender legs and forgotten somewhere atop the mattress, his hands were warm and slow as they gripped the hems of her blouse next and lifted it off her shoulders, a flick of his strong wrist sending the piece of habiliment off into the room to leave her in just her lacy undergarments, the heat returning abruptly and tinting the pale complexion of her skin in a delicate, rosy color.

She wanted to get away yet the craving to stay was far greater. There was just something about the way he held her; his grip not hard enough to make her feel restricted or threatened, but firm enough to make her feel comfy and secure, something she would have never imagined experiencing in this particular man's presence. How did he do it? Was it how he really was, or was it just a front, a show he put up to keep her hopelessly entangled in this clever web he'd spun around her? She couldn't know and at the moment she didn't care, raising a gently trembling hand to feather her very fingertips over his smooth cheek. With what purpose exactly she couldn't tell, she just wanted to touch him.

A desire she didn't resist anymore when she found herself on her back atop the mattress once again, allowing her dainty hands to wander and chart the plain of his outstanding physique. Her fingers shook but they slid his classy coat off his stout shoulders all the same, letting him go for the few seconds he needed to sit up and discard his black long-sleeve by gripping it at the scruff of the neck and pulling it off over his smart head, his chestnut strands bouncing lightly in their perfect style as the material brushed past them before it was flung away in a fleeting gesture. She had never quite notice the fluent elegance in his motions, he made the simplest actions seem so easy and yet... graceful.

He dived back down along her outstretched body, touching the softest and yet most arousing kissed along her belly and the dip of her chest while his hands snaked all too easily between the mattress and her slender back, pinching the clasp of her bra and setting her blessed assets free from that female contraption, her slinky back rising off the mattress with a surprisingly loud sound spilling from her throat when warm lips and wet tongue found a perky nipple to tease. Her face heated up even more at her own lustful voice, but her arms wrapped readily around him when that wicked mouth arrived at her own to plunge them into another one of those hot, mind-wrecking kisses.

Her hands were soon back at wandering, feeling up the plain of his tough skin and admiring the sculptured build of his torso. She had never quite noticed what he kept hidden under all those layers of stylish clothing either; fair skin and firm muscles the natural flex of which she could feel beneath her curious touch. Her sense flew out of the metaphorical window, making space for something far more carnal and intrinsic, the desire for a man's body, for his strength to press her close tightly and his warmth to engulf her wholly, the fervent wish for his power to sweep her up and away to the shore of hitherto unknown sensations. Suddenly she cared nothing at all for her shattered emotions and her broken heart, Atem's image but a blur in the background of her meddled thoughts, Seto's presence overtaking every last fiber of her being. How did he do it...? What did she care...? She just wanted... wanted... him... this... Now.

He truly was like a warm blizzard swallowing her up, she barely noticed how and when the rest of their clothes got gone, also because he was entirely too skilled in putting his mouth on all the right places, leaving her a breathless, quivering mess atop the sheets, burning up so hot she could almost imagine real flames licking their way across her flushed body. She held her voice back no longer, it was a relief to express her rapture in sensual sounds, catching a drift that he seemed to like hearing it, too, at some point she even imagined a shiver trickling along the heat of his skin at an especially sweet, high note her vocal cords let loose.

When he settled what felt rightfully between her dancer's legs, it was almost an instinct to hook one of them around his sturdy hip, her heart so rushed and loud in her ears she feared it might burst, all the more so when she felt a distinct hardness press up to epicenter of moist heat that clenched in eager wait for him. Her breaths were hot and heavy as they poured past her kiss-swollen lips, filigree hands clutching at his well-crafted upper arms, neatly made fingernails digging into those chiseled biceps.

Warm, exhaled air brushed over her opened mouth, the velvety dark melody of his lowered, smoky voice a thrill as it resounded into the sweltering intimacy between them. "Open your eyes." It was not a request yet it was neither an order, it was something in between: soft but compelling, and thus she complied without any discomfort experienced, her long lashes fluttering sweetly in a grand effort to slip apart.

"I want you to look at me."

And she did, heavy-lidded and bedazzled she stared up into that much darker seeming blue of Seto's unreadable, enigmatic eyes, her own dewed with a feverish gloss as they tried to stay open. He moved, a smooth roll of firm hips that let his fair-sized member push past an eager ring of muscles and into her, her entire body quaked by a hefty shudder that overflowed in a heavy moan tearing from her pressured chest, feeling his arousal slip into her in a maddeningly paced intrusion and somehow, trying not to look away or close her eyes again made this entire moment seem all the more blissfully tormenting. Oh, she could barely stand it, clutching at him with all the strength her distressed, lithe little figure could muster up.

"S-Se..." She felt him, she felt him, with every cell of her oversensitive body she felt him. "Set-..." Air, she needed air and yet he robbed her off it in such a beautifully excruciating way. "S-Seto..." Oh, please... could he not torture her so any longer...?

Anzu could almost taste the soft smirk on those devilish lips as they caught against her own with captivating force while he pushed the rest of the way in with one abrupt motion, causing her to cry out into the lock of their mouths. If there was any pain she could not be bothered to notice, filled up with him so promptly and suddenly, for the first time in her life understanding what it might be that made people so utterly addicted to this feeling. The feeling of two bodies joining, sex; the exhilaration that it brought... And why sometimes, even if there was no love... you could still experience and find something so amazing in another person's presence if they knew what they were doing...

And oh, he knew what he was doing, that was certain. Even here, his actions were ever-underlined by the same sentiments, power and confidence in the way he moved, not crude or careless enough to hurt but dynamic and forceful enough to make her feel like she was going to break - in the best way imaginable. He tapped against the deepest parts of her, over and over and over again, and each impact pulled candied sounds from her throat, her moans and cries and whimpers dripping like diamonds from her cherry-red lips while her mind was crumbling away piece by piece.

His lips were like scorching fire incarnate along the sweat-salty plain of her collarbones and neck, and his voice was haunting and predatory, it imprinted itself in goose bumps on her skin and committed itself deep into her memory without her permission as it crawled into the innermost parts of her the moment he rose it in a smoky, slightly shaky timbre at her ear:

"Let me hear you... call out to me..."

And his hand slithered southwards, sliding along her thigh and hooking underneath one of her supple buttocks to pull her into his next thrust with rough and paradoxically gentle force, slamming them together in the most delightful way possible. She had not fathomed that he could have reached even deeper, tapping against that one knot of nerves that brought stars to dance in front of her eyes, her entire body bending itself into him with sharp, vigorous grace. So hear her he would, loud and clear as she called out to him, called for him, her endearing voice wrapping those two syllables of his name into the devastating bliss that poured out onto her senses like oil onto hungry flames, every single, glorious time that he dived into her trembling, desperately writhing body which tried to bend every of its muscles into impossible shapes just to get a handle on the sensations that he hounded into her system with every powerful, jerky, splendidly destructive motion of his hips.

One of her slender arms had a vice grip around him, digging fingernails into his shoulder while the other one shot up, blindly reaching, gripping for something and finding the wood of the headrest to claw into, inexplicably taken with the feel of their touching skin slicked with sweat and the wet slaps of colliding flesh. Beneath the magnificent aria of her own erotic sounds she heard him, too, the stagger of his breaths and the dark growls and grunts of his pleasure, just as inexplicably enraptured with those jerky notes of his enjoyments. The world seemed non-existent and yet Anzu had never felt more alive - or ecstatic to be so.

She was skirting her limits, her world spinning and tumbling around her, halfway delirious. So good... it was so good and yet so unbearable, she felt ready to cry at how she could barely stand it and how desperately she did not want it to end at the very same time. But end it did, with a flash of blinding white that eclipsed everything inside her head and heart, she might have forgotten her own name in that one moment but his was still on her lips as she screamed it out, uncaring at either the tone or the volume. The orgasm was vast and all-encompassing, seemingly bending every bone in her body outward as she tensed up all over, clamping up around him inside and out while the waves of her climax drowned all of her consciousness in them.

Seto's breath caught in the sturdiness of his chest just then, continuing in a few haphazard and hard thrusts through the sheer force of her euphoria which made her so blindingly tight around him. It felt amazing, the spasming wet confines of her heat, and so did the wake of his own end as it overturned his limits as well. He took a sharp breath, held in the confines of his chest as climax washed over him, before he let the air loose again in a dark, sensual growl together with thick, white essence that spilled into her.

It was a fluent motion in which he let himself fall to the side as to avoid having to drop the whole of his weight straight atop her, listening to the heavy, rough staccato of her completely messed up breathing while working on resetting his own to a steady, normal rhythm again. Minutes passed them by in silence filled with nothing but the inhale and exhale of air, up to the point where Seto's voice lazily broke same silence again.

"You're on the pill, right?"

Too spent and still floating somewhere between cloud eight and nine, Anzu didn't even find the strength or incentive to feel awkward about the posed question. "Mh-hm...", she murmured in affirmation. "But shouldn't it be a question you ask before...?" You know. Sexing somebody up.

If his body weren't so reluctant to move the wonderfully relaxed muscles, he would have shrugged, instead the intention reflected in the nonchalant tone of his voice. "There's that wonderful thing called the morning-after pill."

Anzu pushed a short breath out of her nose that suggested a huff of sorts. "Let me guess... you have some in your drawer?" It wouldn't surprise her, really, so neither did his reply.

"Don't hold it against me when I make you take one tomorrow." They weren't in his drawer per se, but yes, he did have some. Somewhere... He felt too idle to remember just now.

The young girl beside him suppressed the urge to shake her head. Or more like... didn't really feel like it. It was amazing how you could feel like boneless jelly after such an activity, and enjoy it so much. "Do you treat all the ladies you bring into bed to such a thoughtful breakfast afterwards...?"

He chuckled. "Of course. Didn't your mother teach you not take every stranger's word at face value?" Especially the words of women. There were entirely too many who would have loved to pin a kid on him by all and any means possible, although Anzu was among the very few he trusted to not be capable of even thinking of it.

"I don't know, did yours?" She counter questioned meanwhile, and snapped her eyes open not a second later. "Sorry..." It was an inconsiderate retort to give to an orphan. Which somehow made her wonder what had happened to his parents...

"It doesn't bother me." Which it truly didn't. He'd learnt from a very young age to not let people exploit that one fact in order to try and hurt him in any way. "Not knowing your parents at all is much better than remember having lost them."

She put some effort into turning onto her side, coming to see his stately silhouette in the moonlit darkness. "I didn't mean to-"

"Save it. I don't care." He waved off leisurely. Seto couldn't stand people getting sentimental on his behalf, much less would he stand for anybody pitying him for anything. His life was good, with or without parents. He still had Mokuba, and that was more than enough.

Anzu sighed, resisting the sudden weird urge to reach out and touch him. He probably wasn't the type to cuddle in bed after sex anyway. Or cuddle at all. "You can be such an asshole... Maybe I should teach you how to be nice."

That earned her a snicker. "Maybe I should teach you how to be an asshole." She would surely benefit from that much more than he ever would from a lecture about kindness, friendship and compassion. Gods knew Yugi and the boy's Power Rangers squad had tried his patience way too many times with silly speeches in that regard.

"Yeah... Maybe..." Anzu murmured in turn. "Sometimes it does seem like hurting people is better than getting hurt yourself..." She paused, as if mulling her words over in her drowsy head. "Is that why you love antagonizing everybody...?"

Aaaaand there we go. Seto frowned. "Did anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?" He was so not up for this kind of conversation, de facto he felt positively spent and exhausted, and definitely ready for a good night's rest.

"Sorry..."

Turning onto his side as well, now with his back to her, he suppressed a yawn, giving his offhanded response: "Just shut your mouth and go to sleep."

She fell silent then, and he closed his eyes. A few minutes passed by and his mind began drifting off into that pleasant daze that befell you mere minutes before your consciousness would slip away into Morpheus' realm, until he felt something small and warm pressing up to him from behind. For a moment he was wide awake again, Anzu's semi-slumbering form inching another bit closer to cuddle up against his flipside all the more before he perceived the softness of her breaths brushing along his back in a drowsy murmur:

"Good night... Seto..."

He neither moved nor raised his voice in reply, belatedly realizing that he had tensed up and consciously relaxing his tautened muscles again. Sweet, stupid girl... Was she even aware of what she was getting herself into? Are you...?, a small voice in the back of his head questioned in supplement, fleetingly ignored as he shut his eyes a bit more tightly and forced all and any thoughts out of his head.

In another couple of minutes both of them were fast asleep, watched over by the gentle, cobalt gaze of the moon high up in the nightly skies.