Plains of Passage (36 page)

She probed the end with her exploring tongue, then made rapid circles around it, and he began to want her with more urgency. She reached down to take the soft pouch below his member in her hand, and gently—he had told her to always be gentle there—felt the two mysterious, soft, round pebbles within. She wondered about them, what they were for, and felt they were important in some way. As her warm hands cupped his tender sac, he felt a different sensation, pleasurable but with a touch of concern for this sensitive place, which seemed to stimulate him in another way.

She pulled away then and looked at him. His intense pleasure in her and what she was doing showed on his face and in his eyes as he smiled at her, encouraging her. She was enjoying the process of Pleasuring
him. It stimulated her in a different, but deep and exciting way, and she understood a little why he so loved to Pleasure her. She kissed him then, a long lingering kiss, then pulled back and put her leg over him, straddling him, facing his feet.

Sitting on his chest, she bent over and took his hard throbbing member in her two hands, one above the other. Though he was hard, extended, his skin felt soft, and when she held it in her mouth, he felt smooth and warm. She made her soft nibbling kisses down its length. When she reached the base, she reached farther down for his pouch, and took it gently in her mouth, feeling the firm roundnesses inside.

He shuddered as jolts of unexpected Pleasure eddied through him. It was almost too much. Not only the tumultuous sensations he was feeling, but the sight of her. She had lifted up to reach him, and with her legs straddling him, he could see her moist, deep pink petals and folds, and even her delicious opening. She let go of his pouch and moved back to take his exciting, throbbing manhood into her mouth to suckle again, when she suddenly felt him move her back a little farther. Then, with an unexpected shock of excitement, his tongue had found her folds, and the place of her Pleasures.

He explored her eagerly, completely, using his hands and his mouth, suckling, manipulating, feeling the joy of Pleasuring her, and at the same time, the excitement she caused within him as she rubbed him back and forth while she suckled him.

She was ready quickly and could not hold back, but he was trying to, straining not to let go just yet. He could easily have given in, but he wanted more, so when she stopped as her charging senses overcame her, arching back and crying out, he was glad. He felt her wetness, then gritted his teeth as he struggled for control. Without their earlier Pleasures, he was sure he would not have been able to, but he held back and reached a plateau just before he peaked.

“Ayla, move around the other way! I want all of you,” he said.

She nodded, understanding. And, wanting all of him, too, she backed off and then straddled him the other way. Lifting up, she eased his fullness into herself, and then lowered down. He moaned and called her name, over and over, feeling her deep warm well receive him. She felt pressures in sensitive different places as she moved up and down, guiding the direction of the hard fullness inside her.

At the plateau he had reached, his need was not quite as urgent. He could take a little time. She leaned forward, in yet another, slightly different position. He pulled her closer so he could reach her enticing breasts, held one to his mouth, and suckled hard; then he reached for the other, and finally, holding them together, both at the same time. As
always, when he suckled her breasts, he felt the quivering excitement deep and low inside her.

She could feel herself building again as she moved up and down and back and forth on him. He was rising above the plateau, feeling his stronger urges coming over him again, and when she sat back, he grasped her hips and helped guide her movements, pushing up and pulling down. He felt a surge as she lifted up, and then, suddenly, he was there. She moved down on him again, and he cried out with the quaking tremor that rose from deep in his loins in a towering eruption, as she moaned and shuddered with the burst that roared within her.

Jondalar guided her up and down a few more times, then pulled her down on him and kissed her nipples. Ayla quivered once more, then collapsed on him. They lay still, breathing hard, trying to catch their breaths.

Ayla was just beginning to breathe easy when she felt something wet on her cheek. For a moment she thought it was Jondalar, but it was cold as well as wet, and there was a different, though not unfamiliar, smell. She opened her eyes and looked into the grinning teeth of a wolf. He nosed at her again, and then between them.

“Wolf! Get away from here!” she said, pushing his cold nose and wolfish breath away, then rolled over on her side beside the man. She reached up and grabbed Wolf’s ruff and pulled her fingers through his fur. “But I am glad to see you. Where have you been all day? I was getting a little worried.” She sat up and held his head in her two hands and put her forehead down on his, then turned toward the man. “I wonder how long he’s been back.”

“Well, I’m glad you taught him not to bother us. If he had interrupted us in the middle of that one, I’m not sure what I would have done to him,” Jondalar said.

He got up, then helped her up. Taking her in his arms, he looked down at her. “Ayla, that was … what can I say? I don’t begin to have the words to tell you.”

She saw such a look of love and adoration in his eyes, she had to blink back tears. “Jondalar, I wish I had words, but I don’t even know any Clan signs that would show you what I feel. I don’t know if there are any.”

“You just did show me, Ayla, in much more than words. You show me every day, in so many ways.” Suddenly he pulled her to him and held her close, feeling his throat constrict. “My woman, my Ayla. If I ever lost you…”

Ayla felt a quiver of fear at his words, but she only held him tighter.

———

“Jondalar, how do you always know what I really want?” Ayla asked. They were sitting in the golden glow of the fire, sipping tea, watching sparks from the pitchy pine wood pop and send showers of sparks up into the night air.

Jondalar was feeling more rested, contented, and at ease than he had for some time. They had fished in the afternoon—Ayla showed him how she tickled a fish out of the water by hand—then she found soap-wort and they had bathed and washed their hair. He had just finished a wonderful meal of some of the fish, plus the slightly fishy-tasting eggs of marsh birds, a variety of vegetables, a doughy cattail biscuit cooked on hot rocks, and a few sweet berries.

He smiled at her. “I just pay attention to what you tell me,” he said.

“But, Jondalar, the first time, I thought I wanted to make it last, but you knew better than I what I really wanted. And then later, you knew I wanted to Pleasure you, and you let me, until I was ready for you again. And you knew when I was ready for you. I didn’t tell you.”

“Yes, you did. Just not with words. You taught me how to speak like the Clan does, with signs and motions, not words. I just try to understand your other signs.”

“But I didn’t teach you any signs like that. I don’t really know any. And you knew how to give me Pleasures before you ever learned how to speak in the language of the Clan.” She was frowning with seriousness in trying to understand, which brought a smile to his face.

“That’s true. But there is an unspoken language among people who speak, much more than they may realize.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” Ayla said, thinking how much she was able to understand about people they met just by paying attention to the signs they made without knowing it.

“And sometimes you learn how to … do some things just because you want to, so you pay attention,” he said.

She had been looking into his eyes, seeing in them the love he felt for her and the delight he seemed to be taking in her questions, and she noticed the unfocused look that came over him when he spoke. He stared into space as though he were seeing something far away for a moment, and she knew he was thinking of someone else.

“Especially when the one person you want to learn from is willing to teach you,” she said. “Zolena taught you well.”

He flushed, stared at her with shocked surprise, then looked away, disturbed.

“I’ve learned much from you, too,” she added, knowing her remark had troubled him.

He seemed unable to look directly at her. When he finally did, his forehead was knotted in a frown. “Ayla, how did you know what I was
thinking?” he asked. “I mean, I know you have some special Gifts. That’s why the Mamut took you into the Mammoth Hearth when you were adopted, but sometimes you seem to know my thoughts. Did you take those thoughts from my head?”

She was sensing his concern and something more distressing, almost a fear of her. She had encountered a similar fear from some of the Mamutoi at the Summer Meeting when they thought she had some uncanny abilities, but most of it was misunderstanding. Like thinking she had some special control over animals, when all she did was find them when they were babies and raise them as her own.

But ever since the Clan Gathering, something had changed. She hadn’t meant to drink any of the special root mixture that she made for the mog-urs, but she couldn’t help it, and she hadn’t meant to go into that cave and find the mog-urs, it just happened. When she saw them all sitting in a circle in that alcove deep in the cave and … fell into the black void that was inside her, she thought she was lost forever and would never find her way back. Then, somehow, Creb had reached inside her and had spoken to her. Since then, there had been times when she did seem to know things that she couldn’t explain. Just like when Mamut took her with him when he Searched, and she felt herself rise up and follow him across the steppes. But as she looked at Jondalar and saw the strange way he was looking at her, a fear welled up inside her, a fear that she could lose him.

She looked at him in the light of the fire, then looked down. There could be no untruths … no lying between them. Not that she could deliberately say something that wasn’t true, anyway, but not even the understood “refraining from speaking” that the Clan allowed for the sake of privacy, could come between them now. Even at the risk of losing him if she told him the truth, she had to tell him and try to find out what was troubling him. She looked directly at him then, trying to find words to begin.

“I did not know your thoughts, Jondalar, but I could guess them. Weren’t we just talking about the unspoken signs that are made by people who speak with words? You make them, too, you know, and I … I look for them, and many times I know what they mean. Maybe because I love you so much and want to know you, I pay attention to you all the time.” She looked away for a moment, and added, “That’s what women of the Clan are trained to do.”

She looked at him. There was some relief in his expression, and curiosity, as she continued. “It’s not just you. I wasn’t raised with … my kind of people, and I’m used to seeing meaning in the signs people make. It’s helped me to learn about people I meet, though it was very confusing at first because people who talk with words often say one
thing, but their unspoken signs mean something else. When I finally learned that, I began to understand more than the words people said. That’s why Crozie wouldn’t wager with me any more when we played the Knucklebone games. I always knew which of her hands she was holding the marked bone in by the way she held them.”

“I wondered about that. She was considered very good at the game.”

“She was.”

“But how did you know … how could you know I was thinking about Zolena? She’s Zelandoni now. That’s usually how I think of her, not the name she had when she was young.”

“I was watching you, and your eyes were saying that you loved me, and that you were happy with me, and I was feeling wonderful. But when you talked about wanting to learn certain things, for a moment, you didn’t see me. It was like you were looking far away. You told me about Zolena before, about the woman who taught you … your gift … the way you can make a woman feel. We had just been talking about that, too, so I knew that’s who you must have been thinking about.”

“Ayla, that’s remarkable!” he said with a big, relieved grin. “Remind me never to try to keep a secret from you. Maybe you can’t take thoughts from someone’s head, but you can certainly do the next thing to it.”

“There is something else you should know, though,” she said.

Jondalar’s frown returned. “What?”

“Sometimes I think I may have … some kind of Gift. Something happened to me when I was at the Clan Gathering, the time I went with Bran’s clan, when Durc was a baby. I did something I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t mean to, but I drank the liquid I made for the mog-urs, and then happened to find them in the cave. I wasn’t looking for them. I don’t even know how I got in that cave. They were…” She got a chill and couldn’t finish. “Something happened to me. I got lost in the darkness. Not in the cave, the darkness inside. I thought I was going to die, but Creb helped me. He put his thoughts inside my head…”

“He what?”

“I don’t know how else to explain it. He put his thoughts inside my head, and ever since then … sometimes … it’s like he changed something in me. Sometimes I think I might have some kind of … Gift. Things happen that I don’t understand, and can’t explain. I think Mamut knew.”

Jondalar was quiet for a while. “So he was right to adopt you to the Mammoth Hearth, then, for more than just your healing skills.”

She nodded. “Maybe. I think so.”

“But you didn’t know my thoughts just now?”

“No. The Gift is not like that, exactly. It’s more like going with Mamut when he Searched. Or, like going to deep places, and far places.”

“Spirit worlds?”

“I don’t know.”

Jondalar looked into the air over her head, considering the implications. Then he shook his head, looked at her with a grim smile. “I think it must be the Mother’s joke on me,” he said. “The first woman I loved was called to Serve Her, and I didn’t think I’d ever love again. And now when I have found a woman to love, she turns out to be destined to Serve Her. Will I lose you, too?”

“Why should you lose me? I don’t know if I’m destined to Serve Her. I don’t want to Serve anyone. I just want to be with you, and share your hearth, and have your babies,” Ayla objected vociferously.