All characters in this story are full and consenting adults.
*****
You squat at the edge of the lake with a hand on one knee while the other hand reaches out to pat the water and send your spirit self shivering and wrinkling away. Then you let the water calm until she returns, only to do it again. The russet tangles of your hair hide your face, but there is much else to see. Hunched down that way, your rump fills and tightens the patchy fur skirt across it, and your breasts hang free and sway and jiggle when you splash the water spirit away. They are smaller than the breasts of some of the other women, but fine and beautiful, and your rump is a match for any of them.
You swat your spirit self again and laugh as she disappears, and that laugh is why I am here. That laugh is what makes you the one, even though your breasts are small and the other hunters ask where my young are supposed to suckle if I take you for mine. I will slay boars and my spawn can drink blood, and I will nourish myself on that laugh.
I move closer, and though my steps could catch the boar or the deer unwary, you hear and jump up and spin.
Seeing me, you grunt dismissively and raise that proud chin. But I see that your shoulders have softened from the tight clench they had before you knew it was me. I walk up to you. You are very small, but your hands on your hips say that if you want to defy me, you will not fear to do it. I stare down at you and you stare back, with those eyes halfway between green and brown. I breathe deep. Your smell is as fierce and defiant as the rest of you.
Your chin lifts again, demanding to know what I want. But you know.
I play your game, though, and grab you and pull you to me, both hands sweeping around you to your bottom to lift and pull you against my crotch so you can feel my desire and intention.
You grin. Your fingers twine into my beard. You pull my face down to press our lips together. I taste the tang of berries and last night's venison in your mouth when I put my tongue there.
Your hands leave my beard and you turn your head aside from mine and one of your hands tugs at my wrist while the other points at the knot that holds up your skirt. But I do not release you. It is not to be here. I have planned.
Instead, I heave you up and over my shoulder, where you squeal and smack the broad muscled plain of my back, then growl and let yourself dangle. I feel your breasts graze my flesh. With one hand firmly clasping your haunch, I set out away from the lake, toward the cliffs.
It is the space of a few songs to reach the spot I have prepared. But we do not sing. I only listen to you breathing and feel your hands slide here and there at my back and my waist. Every once in a while, you find a spot you especially like and make a murmuring hum in your throat.
At the cliffs, I take us to the place. It is a notch in the face of the high stone, wide enough for a man to lie across, deep enough for two to lie head to toe. Across the front of it, I have placed a dense tangle of thorny brush, staked into place with lengths of wood. I set you down so that I can move the barrier. You peer at me with narrow eyes.
Then I have it loose, and shift it, and your gaze shifts too.
At the very center of the rocky hollow lies the bear, my spear jutting straight up from its great corpse. I grin at your wide eyes and put my hand in the center of your back and push you toward it. Then I pull the thorn barrier back into place behind us, and we are sealed in the den I have made for this moment.
You move toward the bear with your shoulders low and your hands spread wide. Then you look at me, the brown tufts of your eyebrows bunched together. You point to the bear, your eyes questioning, and you bring the hand around to point again, this time directly into the hollow between your breasts. I nod.
It is for you.
Pleased with myself, I step toward the bear, a hand out, reaching for my spear, meaning to pluck it loose. But you put yourself between me and the beast I have hunted for you, lured here for you, killed for you. I stop.
You let your spine sway loosely like the snake that means to strike, your hips and shoulders and arms rocking like the waves from when you splashed the surface of the lake. Your head is tilted down, but your eyes are up and at me and your smile is sharp. You reach for the knot of your skirt, and now I do not stop you.
It is loose, the hide cast off. You stand bare before me, brown hair downy on your legs and dense where your belly curves down to the birthing hole that I mean to fill up. I step forward again, but you put a hand up and let those eyes flare.