Earth's Children 3 - The Mammoth Hunters (v5.0) by Jean Auel

Author:Jean Auel
Language: eng
Format: epub

Ay­la's eyes were open, but she lay still and didn't move. It was dark ex­cept for the dim night­light of banked fires. Jon­dalar was just climb­ing in­to bed, try­ing to make as lit­tle dis­tur­bance as pos­si­ble as he moved around her. She had thought of mov­ing to the in­side once, but de­cid­ed against it. She didn't want to make it easy for him to slip qui­et­ly in and out of bed. He rolled up in his sep­arate furs and lay on his side, fac­ing the wall, un­mov­ing. She knew he did not go to sleep quick­ly, and she ached to reach over and touch him, but she'd been re­buffed be­fore and didn't want to chance it again. It had hurt when he said he was tired or pre­tend­ed to be asleep, or did not re­spond to her.

Jon­dalar wait­ed un­til the sound of her breath­ing in­di­cat­ed that she had fi­nal­ly fall­en off to sleep. Then he qui­et­ly rolled over, got up on an el­bow and filled his eyes with the sight of her. Her tou­sled hair was strewn across the furs, and one arm was flung out­side the cov­ers, bar­ing a breast. A warmth em­anat­ed from her and a faint wom­an-​scent. He could feel him­self shak­ing with want­ing to touch her, but he felt cer­tain she wouldn't want him both­er­ing her when she was sleep­ing. Af­ter his con­fused and an­gry re­ac­tion to her night with Ranec, he feared she didn't want him any more. Late­ly, ev­ery time they ac­ci­den­tal­ly brushed to­geth­er, she flinched back. Sev­er­al times he'd con­sid­ered mov­ing to a dif­fer­ent bed, even a dif­fer­ent hearth, but as dif­fi­cult as it was to sleep be­side her, it would be far worse to sleep away from her.

A wispy ten­dril of hair lay across her face and moved with each breath she took. He reached over and gen­tly moved it aside, then care­ful­ly low­ered him­self back down to the bed, and al­lowed him­self to re­lax. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of her breath­ing.

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