Chapter 10

Well, I didn’t get raped.

God, I was sure I was going to be. And it was my own damn fault. When I saw Hugo start weeping after it finally sank in that everything and everyone he ever knew was gone for millennia I just went over to give him comfort. And then he hugged me, and I smelled that lovely smell of his again and, well ... I kissed him. Right on the mouth.

Then he grabbed me really hard—he’s terribly strong—and started groping my crotch.

I did the only thing I could think of, I jerked away as much as I could and slapped him across the face.

For the moment it stopped him; he kind of pushed me away and I fell back into the chair. But then he started stripping as fast as he could until he was buck naked and I knew it wasn’t going to go well.

Or I thought I knew. I looked away from him so I wouldn’t have to see it coming, and I remember thinking that this was what I deserved for trying to play good Samaritan to a damn caveman. But nothing happened, he didn’t come for me, and when I looked back I’ll be damned if he wasn’t taking off the bandage on his chest.

When he went for his own clothes, his furs, my first reaction was that I was safe. He wasn’t going to do it. I was so focused on my relief that it wasn’t until he picked up the bag of spears that I registered what he was doing.

He was leaving! He’d taken off all the stuff I’d given him and he was going with only his own things.

Into that mess of snow and ice, dressed like that.

My God, it came to me, he’s feeling like he’s abused my hospitality or something. He must have thought I was coming on to him, and he just responded, and then...

I couldn’t let him go out like that. He’d die, there’s nowhere for him to go. It was my fault, not his, and he was a true gentleman about it when I let him know.

Words wouldn’t be enough. I leaped out of the chair and got to the door just before him, and blocked it with my body. “Stop!” I said; it’s one of the words he knows. Dammit, I could have just said that before and not reacted like a frantic virgin.

I persuaded him to come back to his chair with me, and sat him down and undid his vest and took it off him. Then I picked up the bandage where he’d dropped it and carefully started re-binding him.

“Look, Hugo, I don’t want you to leave,” I told him gently. “You can stay. You need to stay, and I want you to stay. I just don’t want to sleep with you. Anyhow, you’re still hurt, this isn’t—”

I heard myself and suddenly stopped talking. I was standing really close and reaching around him with the bandage and there was that damn smell again. Impulsively I leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, partly to show him it was all right and I forgave him, but I guess a little because, well, I wanted to.

Tonight he didn’t eat very well. I guess he’s still feeling bad about what happened. Shit, I feel bad about it too, he was just responding to what I guess he thought was an invitation.

He tried to say something to me about what happened after dinner. All he could get out was phrases—”I do great wrong,” “wish make better,” “thank you” several times over—but I got the sense. I didn’t let him go on like that too long, hell, he thought I was hitting on him! Christ, what a misunderstanding!

I’m in bed now—alone!—but sleep is a long way off yet. It’s been, to say the least, one hell of a day. I can’t believe I’m in the same house with a real live caveman, a fossil from God knows how many tens of thousands of years ago.

After I got him situated in the spare room I got back on the ‘Net for a little while. Modern man—Cro-Magnon, they call it, after some valley in France where they first found skeletons—evolved maybe forty or fifty thousand years ago. Such a short damn time when you think about it! Agrarian civilization started maybe ten or twelve thousand years ago.

So somewhere in between, it has to be; I’ve been thinking thirty thousand, and that’s as good a guess as any. Aurochs were still around then, before they got domesticated and bred down in size; so were mammoths. And Cro-Magnons hunted both of them, some of the sources say they hunted them into extinction.

And Hugo was one of the hunters!

I wish I knew more about how they lived. One thing, I guess they liked rough sex, Hugo really grabbed me hard today and my snatch is still a little sore from when he groped me. I’m going to have to teach him some things about slow and gentle if—

What the hell am I thinking? Since when am I into the me-Tarzan-you-Jane kind of thing? OK, he smells good—looks pretty good, too, including bare naked, I remember—but this is out of control.

But what am I going to do with him?