The valley of horses_ a novel - Jean M. Auel [271]
“Ayla! What took you so long?”
She was taken aback by his peremptory tone. “I’ve been scouting for herds. You know that.”
“But it’s after dark!”
“I know. It was almost dark before I started back. I think I’ve found the place, a herd of bison southeast …”
“It was nearly dark and you were still chasing bison! You can’t see a bison in the dark!”
Ayla couldn’t understand why he was so excited, or his demanding questions. “I wasn’t looking at bison in the dark, and why do you want to stand here talking?”
With a high-pitched nicker, the colt appeared in the circle of light from the torch and butted up against his dam. Whinney responded, and before Ayla could dismount, the young horse was nuzzling under the mare’s hind legs. It occurred to Jondalar then that he had been acting as if he had some right to question Ayla, and he turned away from the torchlight, grateful for the dark that hid his red face. He followed behind while she plodded up the path, so embarrassed that he didn’t notice her weary exhaustion.
She grabbed a sleeping fur and, wrapping it around her, hunkered near the fire. “I forgot how cold it gets at night,” she said. “I should have taken a warm wrap, but I didn’t think I’d be gone this long.”
Jondalar saw her shiver and was more chagrined. “You’re cold. Let me get you something hot to drink.” He poured some hot broth into a cup for her.
Ayla hadn’t been paying very close attention to him either—she had been too eager to get to the fire, but when she looked up to take the cup, she nearly dropped it.
“What happened to your face?” she said with equal parts of shock and concern.
“What do you mean?” he asked, worried.
“Your beard … it’s gone!”
The shock which had mirrored hers gave way to a smile. “I shaved it off.”
“Shaved?”
“Cut it off. Close to the skin. I usually do it in summer. It gets itchy when I’m hot and sweaty.”
Ayla couldn’t resist. She reached for his face to feel the smoothness of his cheek, then, rubbing against the grain, an incipient roughness; scratchy, like a lion’s tongue. She recalled he had no beard when she first found him, but after it grew in she forgot about it. He seemed so young without a beard, appealing in a childlike way, but not as a man. She wasn’t accustomed to full-grown men without beards. She ran her finger along his strong jaw and the slight cleft of his firm chin.
Her touch held him motionless. He couldn’t pull away. He felt the light tracery of her fingertips with every nerve. Though she had intended no erotic implications, just gentle curiosity, his response was from a deeper source. The insistent, straining throbbing in his groin was so immediate, so powerful, that it caught him by surprise.
The way his eyes looked at her compelled a rush of desire to know him as a man, in spite of his almost too youthful appearance. He moved to reach for her hand, to hold it to his face, but with an effort, she pulled it away, picked up the cup, and drank without tasting. It was more than being self-conscious about touching him. She had a sudden vivid memory of the last time they had sat face to face near the fire and that look had come into his eyes. And this time she had been touching him. She was afraid to look at him, afraid she’d see that horrible, degrading look again. But her fingertips remembered his smooth-rough face, and tingled.
Jondalar was distressed at his instant, almost violent reaction to her gentle touch. He couldn’t keep his eyes away from her though she avoided his look. Looking down like that, she seemed so shy, so fragile, yet he knew the strength at her core. He thought of her as a beautiful blade of flint, perfect as it fell from the stone, its thin edges delicate and translucent, yet so hard and sharp that it could cut the toughest leather in one clean stroke.
O Mother, she is so beautiful, he thought. O Doni, Great Earth Mother, I want that woman. I want her so much …
Suddenly he jumped up. He couldn’t stand just looking at her. Then he remembered the meal