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"I am ready for you."
"Just let me get these off," he said. He unfastened his belt, then pulled his tunic up his back and over his head. Ayla saw the straining bulge, caressed it, and then began untying his drawstring, while he loosened hers. They both stepped out of their leggings and reached for each other, standing close in a long, slow, sensuous kiss. Jondalar quickly scanned the clearing, looking for a place, but Ayla dropped down to her hands and knees, then looked back up at him with a playful smile.
"Your fur may be yellow, and not light brown, but you are the one I choose," she said.
He smiled back and dropped down behind her. "And your hair isn't deep red, it's the color of ripe hay, but it holds something that is, something like a red flower with many petals. But I don't have a furry trunk to reach you. I'll have to use something else," he said.
He pushed her forward slightly, separated her cheeks to expose her moist, female opening, then bent down to taste her warm salt. He reached his tongue forward and found her hard nodule buried deep in her folds. She gasped and moved to give him easier access, while he prodded and nuzzled, then dipped deep into her inviting opening to taste and explore. He always loved to taste of her.
Ayla was moving on a wave of sensations, hardly aware of anything except the hot pulses of feeling coursing through her. She was more than usually sensitive, and every place he touched or kissed burned its way through her to the ultimate spot deep within that tingled with fire and yearning. She didn't hear her own breath coming faster, or the cries of pleasure she made, but Jondalar did.
He straightened up behind her, moved in closer, and found her deep well with his eager straining manhood. As he started penetrating, she rocked back, pushing herself on him until she took all of him in. He cried out at her unbelievably warm welcome, then, holding her hips, pulled back a ways. He reached around with his hand and found her small hard node of pleasure and stroked it as she pushed back in. His sensation nearly found its peak. He pulled back once more and, sensing her readiness, stroked faster and harder, as he penetrated fully. She cried out her release, and his own voice cried out with hers.
Ayla was lying stretched out, face down in the grass, the pleasant weight of Jondalar on top of her, and felt his breath on the left side of her back. She opened her eyes and, without any desire to move, watched an ant crawling on the ground around a single stem. She felt the man stir and then roll over, keeping his arm around her waist.
"Jondalar, you are an unbelievable man. Do you have any idea how remarkable you are?" Ayla said.
"Haven't I heard those words before? Seems to me I said them to you," he said.
"But they're true for you. How do you know me so well? I get lost inside my own self, just feeling what you do to me."
"I think you were ready."
"That's true. It's always wonderful, but this time, I don't know. Maybe it was the mammoths. I've been thinking about that pretty red mammoth, and her wonderful big bull—and you—all day."
"Well, maybe we'll have to play at being mammoths again," he said, with a big smile, as he rolled over on his back.
Ayla sat up. "All right, but right now I'm going to go play in the river before it gets dark"—she bent down and kissed him and tasted herself on him—"after I check on the food."
She ran to the fireplace, turned the bison roast again, took out the cooking stones and added a couple more from the dying fire that were still hot, put a few pieces of wood in the flames, and ran toward the river. It was cold when she splashed in, but she didn't mind. She was used to cold water. Jondalar soon joined her, carrying a large, soft buckskin hide. He put it down and entered more carefully, finally taking a deep breath and plunging in. He came up pushing his hair out of his eyes.
"That's cold!" he said.
She came up beside him and, with a mischievous smile, splashed him. He splashed her back, and a noisy water fight ensued. With one last splash, Ayla bounded out of the water, grabbed the soft hide, and began to dry herself. She handed it to Jondalar when he emerged from the river, then hurried back to the campsite and quickly dressed. She was ladling the soup into their personal bowls as Jondalar walked up from the river.
5
The last rays of the summer sun gleamed through the branches of the trees as it dropped over the edge of the high ground to the west. Smiling at Jondalar with contentment, Ayla reached into her bowl for the last ripe raspberry and popped it in her mouth. Then she got up to clean up and arrange things for a quick and easy departure in the morning.
She gave Wolf the leftovers from their bowls and put cracked and parched grains—the wild wheat, barley, and goosefoot seeds that Nezzie had given her when they left—into the warm soup and left it at the edge of the firepit. The cooked bison roast and tongue from their meal were put into a rawhide parfleche in which she stored food. She folded the large envelope of stiff leather together, tied it with sturdy cords, and suspended it from the center of a tripod of long poles, to keep it out of the reach of night prowlers.
The tapering poles were made from whole trees, tall, thin, straight ones with the branches and bark stripped off, and Ayla carried them in special holders sticking up from the back of Whinney's two pack baskets, just as Jondalar carried the shorter tent poles. The lengthy poles were also used on occasion to make a travois that could be dragged behind the horses to transport heavy or bulky loads. They took the long wooden poles along with them because trees that would make suitable replacements were so rare on the open steppes. Even near rivers there was often little more than tangled brush.
As the twilight deepened, Jondalar added more wood to the fire, then got the slab of ivory with the map scratched on it and brought it back to study it by the firelight. When Ayla finished and sat beside him, he seemed distracted and had that look of anxious concern that she'd often noticed the past few days. She watched him for a while, then put some stones in the fire to boil water for the evening tea it was her custom to make, but instead of the flavorful but innocuous herbs she generally used, she took some packets out of her otter-skin medicine bag. Something calming might be helpful, maybe feverfew or columbine root, in a woodruff tea, she thought, though she wished she knew what the problem was. She wanted to ask him but wasn't sure if she should. Finally she made a decision.
"Jondalar, do you remember last winter when you weren't sure how I felt, and I wasn't sure how you felt?" she said.
He had been so deeply immersed in his thoughts that it took a few moments before he comprehended her question. "Of course I remember. You don't have any doubts how much I love you, do you? I don't have any doubts about your feelings for me."
"No, I don't have any doubts about that, but misunderstandings can be about many things, not just if you love me, or if I love you, and I don't want to let anything like last winter ever happen again. I don't think I could stand to have any more problems just because we didn't talk about it. Before we left the Summer Meeting, you promised to tell me if anything was bothering you. Jondalar, something is bothering you, and I wish you would tell me what it is."
"It's nothing, Ayla. Nothing you have to worry about."
"But it's something you have to worry about? If something is worrying you, don't you think I should know about it?" she said. She took two small tea holders, each woven out of split reeds into a fine mesh, out of a wicker container in which she kept various bowls and utensils. She paused for a moment, considering, then selected the dried leaves of feverfew and woodruff, added to chamomile for Jondalar, and just the chamomile for herself, and filled the tea holders. "If it concerns you, it must concern me, too. Aren't we traveling together?"
"Well, yes, but I'm the one who made the decision, and I don't want to upset you unnecessarily," Jondalar said, getting up for the waterbag, which was hanging from a pole near the entrance to the tent that was set back a few paces from the fireplace. He poured a quantity of liquid into a small cooking bowl and added the hot stones.
"I don't know if it's necessary or not, but you are already upsetting me. Why not tell me the reason?" She put the tea holders into their individual wooden cups, poured steaming water over them, and put them aside to steep.
