Mammoth Hunters by Jean M. Auel Page A

back with his hands and savored a long slow taste. She shuddered, half sat up, cried out, and he felt himself surge anew. He loved to Pleasure her, to feel her response to his skill. It was like drawing a fine blade out of a piece of flint. It gave him a special feeling of joy to know he had been the first to give her Pleasure. She had only known force and pain before he had evoked in her the Gift of Pleasure which the Great Earth Mother had given to Her children.
    He explored her tenderly, knowing where her pleasurable sensations lay, teasing them with his tongue, and with his skilled hands, reaching inside. She began to move against him, crying out and tossing her head, and he knew she was ready. He found the hard bump, began to work it, while her breath came fast, his own thrusting manhood eager for her. Then she cried out, he felt a wetness, as she reached for him.
    “Jondalar … ahhh … Jondalar!”
    She was beyond herself, beyond any knowing except him. She wanted him, wanted to feel his fullness inside her. He was on her, she was helping him, guiding him, then he was sliding in, and felt a surge that brought him to that inexpressible peak. It backed off, and he plunged in again, deep; she embraced him all.
    He pulled out, and then pushed in again, and again, andagain. He wanted to draw it out, make it last. He wanted it never to end, and yet he couldn’t wait for it. With each powerful push, he felt closer. Sweat glistened on their bodies in the flickering light as they matched their timing, found their stride, and moved with the rhythm of life.
    Breathing hard, they strained to meet at each stroke, reaching, pulsing, all will, all thought, all feeling concentrated. Then, almost unexpectedly, the intensity peaked. In a burst beyond them both, they reached the crest, and broke through with a spasm of joy. They held for a moment, as though trying to become one with each other, and then let go.
    They lay unmoving, catching their breaths. The lamp sputtered, dimmed, flared up again, then went out. After a while Jondalar rolled over and lay beside her, feeling in a twilight state between sleeping and waking. But Ayla was still wide awake, her eyes open in the dark, listening, for the first time in years, to sounds of people.
    The murmur of low voices, a man’s and a woman’s, came from the bed nearby, and a little beyond it, the shallow rasping breath of the sleeping shaman. She could hear a man snoring at the next hearth, and from the first hearth, the unmistakable rhythmic grunts and cries of Talut and Nezzie sharing Pleasures. From the other direction, a baby cried. Someone made comforting sounds until the crying stopped abruptly. Ayla smiled, no doubt a breast had been offered. Farther away voices of restrained anger rose in an outburst, then hushed, and still farther a hacking cough could be heard.
    Nights had always been the worst time during her lonely years in the valley. During the day she could find something to do to keep busy, but at night the stark emptiness of her cave had pressed heavily. In the beginning, hearing only the sound of her own breath, she even had trouble sleeping. With the Clan, there was always someone around at night—the worst punishment that could be inflicted was to be set apart, alone; avoidance, ostracism, the death curse.
    She knew only too well that it was, indeed, a terrible punishment. She knew it even more at that moment. Lying in the dark, hearing the sounds of life around her, feeling the warmth of Jondalar beside her, for the first time since she met these people, whom she called Others, she felt at home.
    “Jondalar?” she said softly.
    “Hmmmm.”
    “Are you sleeping?”
    “Not yet,” he mumbled.
    “These are nice people. You were right, I did need to come and get to know them.”
    His brain cleared quickly. He had hoped, once she met her own kind of people and they were no longer so unknown, they would not seem so fearful to her. He had been gone many years,