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The first time anyone took her to bed, there was no approximation of a bed, only a knit blanket laid out in a hollow of stone, and she was not taken so much as led with gentle hands and whispering kisses. She would follow this boy anywhere, Yennefer thought.
Istredd had academic leave to roam normally forbidden areas of Thanned, and his excuses to allow her here seemed so obvious and ridiculous to her at first, saying yes, I need Yennefer’s assistance with a project, yes, yes, it has to be Yennefer. She has the neatest hand-writing. Which was a lie that made her wheeze with laughter when he told her. Yennefer had not known how to read or write when she arrived at Aretuza, and her handwriting still resembled a young child's.
But it was a time-honored and respected tradition, he told her as they lay together in the quiet caverns that twisted below Tor Lara. Boys from Ban Ard whisking away girls from the other schools for romantic excursions under academic pretenses. As long as her classwork did not suffer for it, no harm done.
“Romantic?” Yennefer asked, and he laughed and kissed her until she squirmed.
He looked at her with no pity, nothing but admiration, and her fingers shook as she touched his short-cropped curls haloed in torchlight. He was a marvel, bright-eyed and so very gentle, and Yennefer wished to give him everything.
They had kissed in all manner of ways, touched each other above the clothes in increasingly heated but tender displays, but tonight, the hope was for more, as much as could be shared between a man and a woman, though she knew both of them fell far shy of either. Istredd was not a man. He was so much softer and more understanding, nothing like any man that had been in her life. Men were creatures of cruelty and brutality, looking aside as she suffered or endeavoring to worsen it.
Istredd would never hurt her.
The ground and walls hummed with power, and when she caught herself sleepily humming in return, Istredd laughed against her breast and echoed her, a warm thrum against her bare sternum. They had stripped nude together in tandem, Yennefer blushing as her legs caught in her stockings and hobbled her, fumbling. But Istredd had simply slid easily to his knees and held her waist to help her step from them, kissing the insides of her bare legs in ways that nearly brought her down beside him.
Sprawled out and pressed close together, Yennefer did not feel self-conscious, and she ignored the ache of her twisted back to hold herself as upright as she could to watch him kiss down the softness of her belly.
His eyes met hers, and a warm spark of heat coiled in her stomach.
She had been nervous about this, being seen so clearly, the torchlight in their stone hollow hiding nothing from him, but he had coaxed her with muttered praises and platitudes, saying he had been with several girls before with all manner of different bodies. Hers was no different. She had asked to do this in the dark, but he had quieted her fears.
About this act, she had been especially nervous, the request he whispered into her ear, to taste her. When she learned where, she had flushed bright red despite herself. There? Yennefer had not even heard of such a thing, found the idea strange and vulnerable. She had heard of the opposite act of course, a woman’s mouth on a man’s genitals, an obscene thing reserved for whores. Surely, either way, it would taste foul and do nothing for the one enacting it.
When she had voiced those concerns, Istredd laughed and laughed, saying he forgot sometimes that she knew so little of the world. She knew plenty, she had told him with a cuff about the head, and he laughed louder and longer. He had convinced her that, yes, he enjoys the act, that it does not taste foul if one has any semblance of hygiene, that both acts of oral intercourse are common and widespread far beyond brothels, that perhaps he could guide her through how to return the favor in time.
It took more convincing than that, but at last, Yennefer had allowed it, not wholly assured or comfortable but trusting this boy not to lead her astray. If he claimed to enjoy it, she would allow him to show her.
His breath stirred the dark trail of hair on her belly as he settled between her legs. Yennefer knew that she had darker and thicker body hair than other girls, a trait passed down from her mother. Her true father’s blood had perhaps made the hair more fine than her mother’s but not more sparse, dark along her legs and arms and belly, stretching down each thigh from the dense curls between her legs, even wisping in a faint trail up the base of her spine from the cleft of her backside, errant hairs curling around her small nipples and some dusted above her upper lip.
She had been mocked for it as a younger girl as her hair began to darken, of course she had, just one more undesirable trait that marked her as more beast than girl, but here with Istredd, it seemed such a minor thing. Istredd had never touched her body or looked at her with revulsion or hesitation, so she did not even think to worry.
He kissed her at the crux of her legs, and Yennefer shivered, the feeling strange and warm. His tongue touched her, and she gasped sharply. However, he soon drew away, the absence of his lips leaving her feeling cool air against overheated skin.
She should have thought to worry.
“Hmm,” he hummed, and she realized with alarm that he was plucking hair from his mouth. “Perhaps we’ll try something else.”
Mortification twisted in her belly, deep and violent, and though he was sweet and gentle the rest of the night, caressing her body and kissing her skin, some amount of that humiliation did not wane.
He did not repeat the request, not that night or the years after, and Yennefer would have refused him anyway, could not endure the thought of lying so open and exposed before a man, being seen at her most vulnerable as he controlled her pleasure. She would rather take what she wanted from a man, leaning above him, coaxing and prodding and ordering him where she wanted him.
It was easier that way, she told herself, did not ache through the curve in her spine and did not burn with mortification elsewhere.
In time, she learned from the other girls how to prune and groom her unruly hairs, plucking the ones at her nipples and brow, waxing her upper lip and trimming neat between her legs. There were incantations and potions and creams for the problem as well, any number of methods to keep a woman smooth and soft and desirable.
The enchantments at a young mage’s ascension could be designed to leave the perfect dusting of hair in just the right places, a vision of beauty well-crafted to appease any court, but Yennefer had had other concerns, her decisions made in haste, furious at the boy who had proved himself no different from any other man. She did not bid the enchanter tame her dark curls of hair, kept her scars, kept her violet eyes. Let them see her as she was. Let them look at her.
And no other through her many longer years looked at her, no king or man or lover, the way that the Witcher did.
From their very first meeting, Geralt never coaxed or pried, asked nothing of her at all. She guided him where he was wanted, and he gave to her, not seeming to want anything for himself. Their moments together were rushed and stolen, Yennefer demanding and Geralt supplicating himself before her, allowing anything.
He looked at her in awe and with a softness that threw into doubt every fairytale about his kind, and the more frequently they entangled themselves, the more the candor with which he spoke with her grew, for all his attempts at walled off gruffness, offering these soft morsels of himself one after the other like a stray cat bringing its master scraps.
So, it hurt all the more when his inevitable betrayal came on the brink of a dragon-swept summit, when he proved himself just as much an ordinary man as any other.
It took years to trickle back to one another, years of searching, praying, suffering. Trials that shrank their earlier concerns to inconsequential nothings, that steadily made Yennefer’s fears of openness feel all the more misplaced and unnecessary. It was her deep love for her adopted daughter that had brought her strength and power that could not be matched. It was her willingness to trust Geralt that brought the three of them through it all unscathed, a strange but well-suited family of choice.
And so, when she found herself curled with Geralt in a bed that was hers as well as his, on an estate that was theirs, she could find no reason any longer to keep her walls shored up against him.
It was an ordinary afternoon, the sun spilling into their bedchamber, long past anything approaching a sensible hour to still be languishing in bed, but Geralt’s breaths came low and easy as he curled around her, nearly purring as she stroked the soft, white hair that spilled across the breast it was pillowed against. She could not bring herself to disturb him and did not feel any urgent need to rise from bed herself.
His fingers splayed across her soft belly, as he hummed low in his throat. Not seeking anything from her, simply touching. Geralt had always been tactile but did not always allow himself to touch so freely, restraining his touch unless he was asked. Now, his fingers trailed absently through the dark hair that thickened below her navel, teasing along the edge of curls.
She had long given up on careful grooming, other concerns taking priority, but remembered her girlhood anxieties now as he touched her, the ways she had changed herself to appease men even long after she had claimed to reject their shallow opinions of her.
She allowed herself to think of that first, aborted act with Istredd and now saw the ways he had been unfair to her. He had only been a boy, but he had pushed when she was reluctant, all his brazen forwardness not charm but the self-assured confidence of a boy who had always gotten exactly what he wanted without compromise. That it had affected the ways she would accept pleasure for so long was not truly his fault, but she had allowed it to have power over her all the same.
There was no sense in allowing that moment to continue to control her. Geralt had given all that he could for her and then some, surrendering every vulnerability and fear and doubt. She was confident enough now to give him the same.
“Geralt,” she said, and he lifted his head from her chest and kissed her breastbone, humming in question, and she cupped the swell of his jaw in her hand. “Will you kiss me?”
“I am kissing you,” he said, with a gleam of amusement in his amber eyes, pressing his mouth to the round of her breast. The long, dark hairs that softened around the brown of her nipple tickled the pale skin of his cheekbone. As his smile softened and he began to lean up to meet her lips, she stopped him with both hands on his shoulders.
“Not there,” she said and pushed against him.
She knew the moment that he realized what she wanted by the widening of his eyes and darkening of his pupils. He had never asked her why she did not wish to be pleasured in that way but knew from glimpses of his thoughts that he had long craved it.
He was a sensory creature, attuned to the scents and sounds and touch of her body, and she knew there was no more sensory act she could offer than this. He enjoyed the act for how it enveloped and overwhelmed him, taking him outside of his body. The taste and feel of the slick heat, the heady scents with nose pressed close, the muffled clasp of trembling thighs, the knowledge that his very breath could be stolen from him and that for all that his body was wrong-made and his words woefully ineloquent more often than not, that he could inspire pleasure here with his lips and tongue, that he could offer all that he was, all his effort and worship, and feel reward enough in the noises his partner made, in the trembling of their body.
Yennefer pressed him down with one hand against his shoulder and the other scratching gently against his scalp. She wondered if he had ever felt self-conscious over his down of soft body hair, white as the strands she gripped on his head. A reminder of the ways he was different, the beast the world had made him.
She spread her legs so that the bulk of Geralt’s shoulders could fit between them as he wriggled flat onto his belly before her, both hands stroking along the inner planes of her thighs. The dark hair was thickest between her legs but spread down and back as well, curly and soft. There he paused, his gaze tipped up to her. A ghost of apprehension coiled within her.
He could hurt her here so easily in ways that would be irreparable.
“You sure?” he breathed in a gust that stirred the hair there, and no, Yennefer did not think she was sure, fought against every instinct to neatly roll them and seek something familiar. His fingers traced absently back and forth along the insides of her thigh, teasing the hair. He could not know what her real insecurity was, did not seem to realize that that open, easy touch was the very thing she feared.
She knew he would not hurt her, not on purpose, had to trust that he would not.
“Yes,” she said and urged him down with the hand pressed into his hair, “I’m certain.”
She tensed at the first touch of his mouth, wet and warm against her sensitive skin. She had long ago found she was most sensitive when the hair between her legs was allowed to grow freely, the thick curls cushioning the delicate nerves.
Geralt felt her tension and lapped gently with broad strokes of his tongue, his gaze lifting to hers as he did so. He asked the question again with a wrinkle of his brow even as his lips brushed against her. Is this ok? She ran her fingers through his hair in reassurance and released a faltering exhale to relax her muscles and open to him as best she could. There was no reason to hide here. Nothing to fear from Geralt’s touch.
Emboldened, he slid rough-skinned but careful fingers into the slickness between her legs and parted her folds, teasing the hooded nub of her clitoris with the edge of his knuckles and then his mouth, and oh.
His nose dipped into the thickest thatch of her curls and breathed deep, almost nuzzling, and she realized as warm shocks of surprising pleasure rose from where he touched her with fingers and lips and tongue that he was opening himself to vulnerability here as well.
He did pause from time to time to pluck a stray length of hear from his mouth, but each time, he pressed back again with eagerness, the apprehension that gripped her easing more and more until she laughed when his sharp nose tickled her inner thigh and clamped her heels into his back to urge him on and groaned without inhibition, arching against him and panting as he brought her to shuddering climax more times than her body could quite stand.
In the end, she went lax and quivering, undone, and still, he offered little kitten licks against her oversensitive flesh as though unwilling to move from the warmth at the part of her legs, as though he would like nothing more than to spend another few hours breathing against her, soaked down the chin and tasting nothing but her, smelling nothing but her, wanting nothing but her pleasure, her happiness.
Someday, maybe, such a thing could be arranged, but for now, his stubble had scraped her raw and even his little touches ached more than pleased her, even though she too wanted more of him, more of his fawning adoration, and more of what they could willingly give to each other.
She pulled at his hair until he shifted back from her and then tugged more insistently until he clambered over her body and met her in a kiss.
Yennefer could taste herself on his wet mouth and deepened the kiss for more of it, marvelling at how completely she had seeped into every part of him, how he had pulled her in eagerly. She clung to him tightly, wishing she could convey the true depth of the feeling that rose behind her ribcage, so vast and steady she felt it would swallow and drown every inch of her. He would buoy her up, she knew, and she longed to sink into him and do the same, longed to make him feel loved in the ways he did for her.
“Would you like a kiss?” she asked against his mouth, and his lips twitched with a smile against hers.
“We’re already kissing, Yen,” he said, though he must know just what she meant.
They rolled together on the sizeable mattress until he was the one flat on his back, and Yennefer shuffled down to kiss the raised slivers of scars on his abdomen, to toy with the white hair that trailed down from his chest to carpet his low belly.
There, she paused with her lips pressed against his marred skin and pale hair and looked up to meet his eyes. The open love and trust she saw there made her turn aside or risk being overwhelmed, pressing her cheek where the plush of his inner thigh was softest. She did not mind the musky, male scent of him, though she had only tolerated it in other men, had gone through the motions here as a means to an end, as a way to extract other things that she wanted.
She breathed deep as he had, and though her senses were not as advanced as his, she allowed his familiar scent to wash over her, the sweat and heat and masculine sharpness. It overwhelmed her, the ways that he felt familiar.
That she could open her mouth against the tender place at the crook of his thigh, over the soft give of his testicles, in the wiry, white hair at the base of his erection and not feel as if anything was expected of her here, not feel exposed and unmoored, not wish it to be over quickly.
She wished to fill herself with him in every sense, every detail. She wished to know him in fullness and offer the same in return, to understand this warm and feathered thing he had coaxed into spreading its wings in her breast.
She pressed her lips to the head of his erection and held there, humming.
Yennefer did not have to follow this man anywhere or drag him along behind her.
The two of them walked abreast and equal, giving and receiving in turn.