THE SHELTERS OF STONE

He, too, was feeling the heat rise inside himself and his tumescent manhood. He moved lower, settled himself between her thighs, and, opening her folds, bent down for his first sample. She was still wet from the water, and he reveled in the cold and the wet and the warmth and the salt and the familiar taste of Ayla, his Ayla. He wanted all of her, all at once, and reached up for her nipples as he found her hard, pulsing nodule.

She moaned and cried out, arching up to him as he suckled and manipulated her with his tongue. She was not thinking, just feeling. Then, before she knew it, she was there, feeling the surge grow and expand until suddenly it washed over her, as he felt the wetness. Then she was reaching for him, making little cries of need, wanting to feel him inside her. He rose up, found her opening, and pushed himself in, then pulled his manhood out and pushed in again.

She was meeting him, pushing closer and pulling back, arching and turning her body to feel him just where she needed him. His urge was there, but not quite as demanding as it sometimes was. Rather than having to control, he just let it build, rocking with her, moving with her, feeling the tension grow, plunging deeply with joy and abandon. She was calling out, and her wordless sounds gained in pitch and intensity. Then it reached the peak, and with words and sounds increasing they felt a great release swell up and gush forth. They held for a moment, then pushed in and pulled out a few more times, and lay still, panting to catch their breath.

As she lay there with her eyes closed, Ayla heard the wind soughing through the trees and a bird calling to its mate, felt the cool breeze and the delicious feeling of his weight on her, smelled horse from the blanket, and the scent of their Pleasures, and remembered the taste of his skin and his kisses. When he finally pulled himself up and looked at her, she was smiling, a dreamy, half-dozing, warm smile of contentment.

When they finally got up, Ayla went back into the pond to clean herself as Iza had taught her long ago. Jondalar did, too. It seemed to him that if she did, he ought to, though it hadn't been his habit until he met her. He really didn't like cold water. As he was rinsing off, however, he thought if there were many more days like today, he could learn to like it.

On the way back to the South Holding of the Twenty-ninth Cave, Ayla found she was not looking forward to seeing the neighbors, which seemed somewhat inimical. Though she felt accepted by Jondalar's kin and the members of the Ninth Cave, she realized she wasn't especially eager to see them, either. As much as she had wanted their Journey to come to an end, and to have the company of other people around her, she had grown used to the patterns she and Jondalar had established while they were traveling, and she missed them. When they were with the Cave, there was always someone who wanted to talk to either Jondalar or her, or both. They were both glad for the close warmth of the people, but sometimes young lovers wanted to be alone.

In their sleeping rolls in the family tent that night, with everyone much closer together, Ayla was reminded of the sleeping arrangements within the Mamutoi earthlodge and found herself thinking about them. When she first saw it, she had been amazed at the semi-subterranean longhouse the Lion Camp had constructed. They used mammoth bones to support the thick walls of sod and thatch, covered by clay, which kept out the intense wind and winter cold of the midcontinental periglacial regions. She remembered thinking that it was as if they had built their own cave. In a sense they had, since there were no habitable caves in their region, and she was right to be amazed; it was a remarkable feat.

Though the families that lived in the longhouse of the Lion Camp had had separate living areas around hearths aligned in a row down the center, and drapes to close off their sleeping platforms, everyone shared the same shelter. They lived less than an arm's length away from the next family and had to pass through each other's living spaces to come and go. In order to live in such a confined space, they practiced a tacit courtesy that allowed privacy, and was learned as they grew up. Ayla hadn't thought the earthlodge was small when she lived there, only since she had begun sleeping in the Ninth Cave's huge shelter. She recalled that each family of the Clan had had separate hearths, too, but there were no walls, only a few stones to indicate boundaries. The people of the Clan also learned early to avoid looking into another family's living space. To them, privacy was a matter of convention and consideration.