"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 soapwort 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.