With a feeling of joy that she was as ready as he was, he knelt between her warm thighs and guided his eager member into her deep well. Her moist warmth enveloped him, caressing his fullness as he entered her depths with a moaning sigh of pleasure.

Ayla felt him inside her, penetrating deeply, bringing him closer to the core of her being. She let herself forget everything except the warmth of him filling her as she arched to reach him. She felt him pulling back, caressing her from within, and then he filled her again. She cried out her welcome and delight as his long shaft withdrew and penetrated again, in just the right position so that each time he entered, his manhood rubbed against her small center of pleasure, sending shocks of excitement through her.

Jondalar was building quickly; for a moment he feared it was too quickly – but he could not have held back if he'd tried, and this time he didn't try. He let himself advance and retreat as his need directed, sensing her willingness in the rhythm of her motion matching his as he moved steadily faster. Suddenly, overpoweringly, he was there.

With an intensity that met his, she was ready for him. She whispered, "Now, oh now," as she strained to meet him. Her encouragement was a surprise. She had not done it before, but it had an immediate effect. With the next stroke, his building force reached an explosive rush and burst through in an eruption of release and pleasure. She was only a step behind, and, with a cry of exquisite delight, she reached her peak a moment later. A few more strokes and they both lay still.

Though it was over quickly, the moment had been so intense that it took the woman a while to come down from the culminating summit. When Jondalar, feeling his weight on her was becoming too much, rolled over and disengaged, she felt an inexplicable sense of loss and wished they could stay linked together longer. Somehow he completed her, and the full realization of how much she had feared for him, and missed his presence struck her with such poignancy that she felt tears sting her eyes.

Jondalar saw a transparent bead of water fall from the outside corner of her eye and run down the side of her face to her ear. He raised himself up and looked at her. "What's wrong, Ayla?"

"I'm just so happy to be with you," she said, as another tear welled up and quivered at the edge of her eye before it spilled over.

Jondalar reached for it with a finger and brought the salty drop to his mouth. "If you are happy, why are you crying?" he said, though he knew.

She shook her head, unable to speak at that moment. He smiled with the knowledge that she shared his powerful feelings of relief and gratitude that they were together again. He bent down to kiss her eyes, and her cheek, and finally her beautiful smiling mouth. "I love you, too," he whispered in her ear.

He felt a faint stirring in his manhood, and he wished they could start all over again, but this was not the time. Epadoa was certain to be trailing them, and sooner or later she would find them.

"There is a stream nearby," Ayla said. "I need to wash, and I might as well fill the waterbags."

"I'll go with you," the man said, partly because he still wanted to be close to her, and partly because he felt protective.

They picked up their lower garments and boots, then the waterbags, and walked to a fairly wide stream, nearly closed over with ice, leaving only a small section in the middle still flowing. He shivered with the shock of freezing water and knew he washed himself only because she did. He would have been content to let himself dry off in the warmth of his clothes, but if she had any opportunity at all, even in the coldest water, she always cleaned herself. He knew it was a ritual her Clan stepmother had taught her, although now she invoked the Mother with mumbled words spoken in Mamutoi.

They filled up the waterbags, and, as they walked back to their campsite, Ayla recalled the scene she had witnessed just before his lacings had been cut the first time.

"Why didn't you couple with Attaroa?" she asked. "You damaged her pride in front of her people."

"I have pride, too. No one is going to force me to share the Mother's Gift. And it wouldn't have made any difference. I'm sure it was her intention all along to make a target out of me. But now, I think you are the one who has to be careful. 'Discourteous and inhospitable'…" He chuckled; then he became more serious. "She hates you, you know. She'll kill us both, if she gets the chance."

30

As Ayla and Jondalar settled down for the night, both were wary of every sound they heard. The horses were staked nearby, and Ayla kept Wolf beside her bedroll, knowing he would warn her of anything unusual that he sensed, but she still slept poorly. Her dreams felt threatening, but amorphous and disorganized, with no messages or warnings that she could define, except that Wolf kept appearing in them.

She awoke as the first glimmerings of day broke through the bare branches of willow and birch to the east, near the stream. It was still dark in the rest of their secluded glen, but as she watched, she began to see thick-needled spruce and the longer needle-shafts of stone pine defined in the growing light. A fine powdering of dry snow had sprinkled down during the night, dusting evergreens, tangled brush, dry grass, and bedrolls with white, but Ayla was cozily warm.

She had almost forgotten how good it felt to have Jondalar sleeping beside her, and she stayed still for a while, just enjoying his nearness. But her mind would not stay still. She kept worrying about the day ahead and thinking over what she was going to make for the feast. She finally decided to get up, but when she tried to slip out of the furs, she felt Jondalar's arm tightening around her, holding her back.

"Do you have to get up? It's been so long since I've felt you beside me, I hate to let you go," Jondalar said, nuzzling her neck.

She settled back into his warmth. "I don't want to get up either. It's cold, and I'd like to stay here in the furs with you, but I need to start cooking something for Attaroa's 'feast,' and make your morning meal. Aren't you hungry?"

"Now that you mention it, I think I could eat a horse!" Jondalar said, eying the two nearby exaggeratedly.

"Jondalar!" Ayla said, looking shocked.

He grinned at her. "Not one of ours, but that is what I've been eating lately – when I've had anything at all. If I hadn't been so hungry, I don't think I would have eaten horsemeat, but when there is nothing else, you eat what you can get. And there's nothing wrong with it."

"I know, but you don't have to eat it any more. We have other food," she said. They snuggled together for a moment longer, then Ayla pulled back the fur. "The fire has gone out. If you start a new one, I'll make our morning tea. We'll need a hot fire today, and a lot of wood."

For their meal the evening before, Ayla had prepared a larger than usual amount of a hearty soup from dried bison meat and dried roots, adding a few pine nuts from the cones of the stone pines, but Jondalar had not been able to eat as much as he thought. After she put the rest aside, she had taken out a basket of small whole apples, hardly bigger than cherries, which she had found while trailing Jondalar. They had frozen but were still clinging to a dwarfed clump of leafless trees on the south face of a hillside. She had cut the hard little apples in half, seeded them, then boiled them for a while with dried rose hips. She left the result overnight near the fire. By morning it had cooled and thickened from the natural pectin to a sauce of a jellylike consistency with bits of chewy apple skin.

Before she made their morning tea, Ayla added a little water to the soup that was left and put extra cooking stones in the fire to heat it for their breakfast. She also tasted the thickened apple mixture. Freezing had moderated the usual tart sourness of the hard apples and adding rose hips had imparted a reddish tinge and a tangy sweet flavor. She served a bowl to Jondalar along with his soup.