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Her hands slide over his shoulders, and trace lightly his shoulder blades with her nails. He swallows his fear and she greedily chases its taste off his lips, running her tongue over his teeth. His fingers shift restlessly against her bare hips, palms clammy with nervous sweat.
"Relax," she whispers, a smirk teasing at the corner of her mouth.
He doesn't know how much of it is the magic curling round her sultry command, but he inhales deeply, and allows the tension to seep slowly from his frame. She hums appreciatively.
"Do you want to fuck me?" she asks, biting her lip to hide her smile.
His breath catches, his hands twitching involuntarily over her skin. He's out of his depth, being so uncertain, but this is more than casual sex with the barmaid. He has to be careful; not only because he fears her, but because he cares for her.
"Or perhaps I could fuck you?" she grins.
Jaskier flushes, opening his mouth to answer indignantly but closing it upon the realisation that she'll only mock him further.
"No," she decides, tilting her head. "It's not me that you want."
He frowns.
"I'm no witcher," she smiles thinly.
"Yennefer," he hisses, wounded, with shame heating his skin. "That's not fair."
She tries to school her expression into mocking, but he sees it, the shudder of pleasure at his pain. She takes him in hand and he clenches his fists in the blankets, trying not to cant his hips in involuntary plea.
"You never did this with Geralt," she muses. Her striking eyes glitter with amusement. "But you wanted to."
Yennefer delights in detailing every forbidden fantasy that ever he entertained, idly or amain.
Her words encase him in a flood of unchecked desire, and she brings him further to the edge with her expert touch. For once, he is speechless. Need washes over him in suffocating waves, a storm with Geralt at the heart of it. All he can do is gasp out Yen's name as he comes, sensitive under her continued, teasing ministrations until he can't take it any more, and he grabs her by the wrist.
The evidence is wiped clean by inappropriate and unnecessary use of magic. Yennefer looks down at him, unable to hide her lazy, satisfied smile.
He feels some kind of overwhelming adoration course through his whole body, leaving him pliant and content in her proximity. And yet he also fears what she's done through opening doors that should remain locked forever, if only for the sake of his sanity.
"You miss him," she observes.
"Nope. Not at all. Without a shadow of a doubt, absolutely not."
He feels the heat of her disbelieving gaze burning through him, as well as the discomfort of a lie rolling so surely off his tongue. It forces him to fold. "...Sometimes," he grudgingly assents.
"He misses you too, my darling," she tells him, reaching out to card her fingers lovingly through his hair. "Sweet and faithful bard. Don't you want to go back to him?"
He huffs, propping himself up on his arms to look at her. "No. I don't. He has no respect, no care for me. After everything I do for him- every time he soaked my clothes with his blood, every time I listened to his stupid grunting while slathering his body with salve like some common serf- chasing after him, singing songs that meant for the first time his reputation preceded him for good- after all of that, he turns round and blames everything on me. I hate him, I hate him-"
"Jaskier," she chides.
Her tone is so sharp that it stops him in his tracks.
His anger dissipates and he rolls onto his back in defeat, settling into the blankets with a deep sigh. After a moment, while tears well unexpectedly, her hand finds his. He squeezes it, closing his eyes.
"I'm in love," he whispers. It was supposed to sound self-deprecating, humorous, but it misses the mark completely. He sounds desperate. He sounds broken.
It's not Geralt that he hates. It's being the latest in a long line of transient lovers; and his extraordinary idiocy in falling for someone openly incapable of returning his feelings.
"There isn't pain like it," Yennefer remarks. The forced nonchalance does not disguise the weight behind the words.
Sorrow in sympathy rises up in his chest, and he leans over to kiss her, hands asking silent permission to touch. She sighs into it, cupping his face in one hand, and using the other to guide his hand between her legs. They both vow to live in this moment.
He was so absorbed in his own pain, he forgot that he isn't the first, nor the last. Yennefer is the closest thing to Geralt, and he feels a strange pang of possessive pride in knowing that she's here for the same reason. They search for pieces of their shared love within each other's hearts, broken in the same pattern of fracture.