Without being aware that she moved, Ayla was in his arms, feeling his strong embrace and his warm and eager mouth on hers. There was certainly no lack of Pleasures in her life; they shared that Gift of the Mother regularly, with great enjoyment, but this moment was exceptional. Perhaps it was the excitement of the setting, but she felt a heightened awareness of every sensation. Every place she felt the pressure of his body on hers, a tingling coursed through her; his hands on her back, his arms around her, his thighs against hers. The bulge in his groin, felt through the thicknesses of fur-lined winter parkas, seemed warm, and his lips on hers gave her an indescribable sense of wanting him never to stop.

The instant he released her and stepped back enough to unfasten the closures of her outer garment, her body ached with the desire and expectation of his touch. She could hardly wait, yet she did not want him to hurry. When he reached under her tunic to cup her breast, she was glad his hands were cold for the contrasting shock to the heat she felt inside. She gasped when he squeezed a hard nipple, feeling fires that raised goosebumps as they raced through her to the place deep inside that burned with wanting more.

Jondalar sensed her powerful reactions and felt a corresponding increase in his own heat. His member surged erect and pulsed with its fullness. He felt her smooth warm tongue reaching inside his mouth and suckled it. Then he released it to seek the soft warmth of hers, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to taste the warm salt and feel the moist folds of her other opening, but he did not want to stop kissing her. He wished he could have all of her all at once. He took both breasts in his hands, played with both nipples, squeezing, rubbing, then lifted her tunic and took one in his mouth and suckled hard, feeling her push against him and hearing her moan with pleasure.

He felt a throbbing and imagined his full manhood being inside her. They kissed again and she felt the strength of her need and her wanting grow. She was hungry for his touch, his hands, his body, his mouth, his manhood.

He was pushing her parka off, and she shrugged out of it, delighting in the cold wind that felt hot with his mouth on hers and his hands on her body. He untied the drawstring of her leggings; she felt them being pulled down, and off. Then they were both down on her parka, and his hands were caressing her hips, and her stomach, and the inside of her thighs. She opened to his touch.

He moved down between her legs, and the warmth of his tongue as he tasted her shot spikes of excitement through her. She was so sensitive, her reactions so powerful, it was almost unbearable, unbearably stimulating.

He sensed her strong and immediate response to his light touch. Jondalar had been trained as a flint knapper, a maker of stone tools and hunting weapons, and was among the most skilled because he was sensitive to the stone with its fine and subtle variations. Women responded to his perception and sensitive handling the way a fine piece of flint did, and both brought out the best in him. He sincerely loved to see a fine tool emerge from a good piece of flint under his deft touch, or to feel a woman aroused to her full potential, and he had spent a great deal of time practicing both.

With his natural inclination and genuine desire to he aware of a woman's feelings, particularly Ayla's, at that most intimate of moments, he knew that a featherlight touch would arouse her more, at that moment, though a different technique might be suitable later.

He kissed the inside of her thigh, then ran his tongue up and noticed that chill bumps appeared. In the cold wind, he felt her shiver, and though she had her eyes closed and did not object, he could see she was covered with gooseflesh. He got up and took off his own parka to cover her but left her bare below the waist.

Although she hadn't minded, his fur-lined outer garment, still warm from his body and filled with his masculine scent, felt wonderful. The contrast of the cold wind blowing across the skin of her thighs, wet from his tongue, made her shiver with delight. She felt the warm wetness moisten her folds, and the instant shiver from the cold filled her with a fierce heat. With a moan, she arched up to him.

With both hands, he held her folds apart, admired the beautiful pink flower of her feminine self and, unable to restrain himself, warmed the cooling petals with his wet tongue, savoring the taste of her. She felt the warmth, then the cold, and quivered in response. This was a new feeling, not something he had done before. He was using the very air of the mountaintop as a means to bring her Pleasure, and at some inner level she marveled.

But as he continued, the air was forgotten. With stronger pressure and the familiar provocation of his mouth and hands, stimulating, encouraging, inciting her senses to respond, she lost all sense of where she was. She felt only his mouth sucking, his tongue licking and prodding her place of Pleasure, his knowing fingers reaching inside, and then only the rising tide within her reaching a crest, and washing over her, while she reached for his manhood and guided it to her well. She pushed up as he filled it.

He sunk his shaft deeply, closing his eyes as he felt her warm, moist embrace. He waited a moment, then pulled back and felt the caress of her deep tunnel, and pushed in again. He plunged in, retracted, each stroke bringing him closer, the pressure inside him building. He heard her moan, felt her rise to him, and then he was there, and he exploded with the release of wave after wave of Pleasure.

In the silence, only the wind spoke. The horses had waited patiently; the wolf had watched with interest, but had learned to contain his more active curiosity. Finally Jondalar lifted himself, rested on his arms, and looked down at the woman he loved.

"Ayla, what if we started a baby?" he asked.

"Don't worry, Jondalar. I don't think we did." She was grateful she had found more of her contraceptive plants, and she was tempted to tell him, as she had told Tholie. But Tholie had been so shocked at first, even though she was a woman, that Ayla didn't dare mention it. "I'm not certain, but I don't think this would be a time when I could get pregnant," she said, and it was true she wasn't absolutely certain.

Iza did have a daughter, eventually, even though she had taken the contraceptive tea for years. Perhaps the special plants lost their effectiveness after long use, Ayla thought, or maybe Iza forgot to take it, though that was unlikely. Ayla wondered what would happen if she stopped drinking her morning tea.

Jondalar hoped she was right, although a small part of him wished she wasn't. He wondered if there would ever be a child at his hearth, a child born of his spirit, or perhaps, of his own essence.

It was a few days before they reached the next ridge, which was lower, not much above the timberline, but from it they had their first sight of the broad western steppes. It was a crisp clear day, though it had snowed earlier, and in the far distance they glimpsed another, higher range of ice-encrusted mountains. On the plains below they saw a river flowing south into what appeared to be a great swollen lake.

"Is that the Great Mother River?" Ayla asked.

"No. That's the Sister, and we have to cross her. I'm afraid it will be the hardest crossing of our whole Journey," Jondalar explained. "See over there, toward the south? Where the water is all spread out so that it looks like a lake? That's the Mother, or rather where the Sister joins her – or tries to. She backs up and overflows, and the currents are treacherous. We won't try our crossing there, but Carlono said she's a turbulent river even upstream."

As it turned out, the day they looked down toward the west from the second ridge was the last clear day. They woke the following morning to a brooding, overcast sky that drooped so low it merged with fog rising from depressions and hollows. Mist hung palpably in the air and gathered into miniature droplets on hair and fur. The landscape was draped with an insubstantial shroud that allowed trees and rocks to materialize out of indistinct shapes only as they drew near.