(March 29, 2011)
(Sadly, we say goodbye to Kate during this part, at least for a while)

The red, white, and blue MD500 light helicopter touched down smoothly amongst the trees that surrounded Kate's home with Jon in Lewistown, Montana. The downwash from the rotor blades threw albero limbs into a frenzy.
Jon heard the whomp whomp of the rotors and came outside. Kate pawed at the door latch, trying to get it open. After about ten o so secondi of that, she got it and jumped through the open door.
"Jon!" she cried. She leaped into his waiting arms and he caught her.
"I missed you, Kate," he detto warmly. Jon hugged Kate tightly and then looked at me. His piercing blue eyes drilled right into mine and he seemed to guess what I was thinking.
"Someone tried to mess with Kate." It wasn't a question, but a statement.
I nodded.
"Who?" he asked.
In answer, I turned to look at Garth. His eyes followed my gaze and widened.
"Garth?" he detto incredulously. I nodded again. "What did he do?"
I sighed.
"He was talking to Lilly and he was crying, which is why I remember it so vividly. Lilly detto that she loved Brandon now, and that she couldn't go back with us. Kate detto his name and was still talking when he lunged at her. I drew the puledro, colt and put one an inch from his paw."
Jon shook his head.
"That Garth..."
"I'm glad I left him for you," detto Kate. Jon smiled.
"I'm glad te did too."
I cleared my throat.
"Uh, Jon?"
He looked over at me and his eyes caught on the puledro, colt that I was extending to him.
He slowly reached for it and took it.
"Thanks," he detto distractedly.
I made my goodbyes and a promise to get them all together again soon and went back to the bird.
A slight pull on the collective was all that was needed to lift the MD500 into the sky, balanced on a column of air.
Kate and Jon waved bye at us, which we responded to happily.
The helicopter spun to heading 270 and we flew for home.

3 hours later, I finally made contact with the Colville ATC center and gotten my clearance to land. The skids hit the ground and I killed the turbine.
"Garth, I'd fly te home, but I'm tired of flying for today. te can use the guest bedroom if te want. I keep a letto for Scar out here on the patio if you'd prefer to sleep under the stars," I said. I kept it out there for the same purpose with which I kept a lawn chair for me. "But watch out for Sushi if te stay indoors. She'll cuddle right up to anyone."
He opted to take the inside quarters, probably because it was still blazing hot outside, despite the fact that the sun had gone down.
I showed him where the room was, plus the bathroom, and told him to use the intercom if he needed anything. He thanked me and grinned as he finally saw Sushi. The little Shiba Inu was wagging her tail wildly, overjoyed to have a new friend. She hopped up on the letto with Garth and immediately curled up and was fast asleep.
Garth and I exchanged looks that said, "See what I mean?"
I bid our guest good night and Scar and I made our way to the master bedroom.
I dimmed the lights. The moon shone in through the picture windows and laid striped shadows across the bed. Scar leaped up onto the king size letto and settled in. I climbed in successivo to her. As she curled up successivo to me, I could feel a distinct tension in her muscles.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She sighed.
"I feel so bad for Kate and Garth," she said. "They Amore Lilly with everything that they've got and she was taken from them. Not only that, she won't go back with them."

Acutely aware that she needed comforting, I wrapped my free arm around her shoulders. She was different from anyone that I had ever known, with puzzling depths and dark secrets, and it seemed to me that I might never know what truly made her who she was. I felt as though I were an astronaut making a first contact with an alien from another world, overwhelmed da appreciation for the bond between us, afraid to proceed lest the initial communication be misunderstood. Therefore I found myself unable to respond at all, unable to act.
I told myself that I must say something, anything, before she took offense-
-and then she kissed me.
She pressed her mouth to mine and it opened to me, and I returned her baciare with a passion that I had never experienced before, our tongues seeking and melting together until I could not tell hers from mine.
I pressed both hands into her luxurious mane of fur-a reddish-brown mix in daylight but an almost black shade now-and let it run through my fingers. It felt the way spun moonlight might feel if it could be fashioned into a cool and silken thread.
I slid a hand lower, down her spine, caressing it.
From the moment she had leaned against me, seeking comfort, she had been shivering. Whether from desire, o from some other arcane means, I sensed that they were evidence of uncertainty, awkwardness, shyness, and fear of rejection not dissimilar to my own thoughts.
"Oh, hell," she said, pulling away from me.
"What?" I asked, confused.
"Why cant.."
"What?"
...two individuals..."
"What?"
Tears streamed down her face now. Her voice quavered: "...just reach out to each other and push aside that barrier..."
"Shut up," I detto as gently and lovingly as I had ever detto two words and I took hold of her and kissed her again.
We kissed and caressed with rapidly increasing fervor, but with a determination to savor this first exploration. Although we must have lain there on the letto for no più than five o ten minutes, it seemed that whole days had passed unheeded. When she again started to pull away, I started to protest. But she said,"Hush," in such a way that I knew I should be silent. She stood and revealed herself. Even at night, she seemed to be the daughter of the sun, for moonglow was nothing più than a reflection solar light, and now every beam of that secondhand sunshine appeared to find its way to her. The rays of the moon highlighted every strand of her pelliccia and and accentuated the exquisitely sensuous curves and planes, convexities and concavities, of her faultless body. Eros in a fluid interfolding of black and silver: milky light, snowy light, platinum light shone upon-and seemingly from within-her elegant, smooth shoulders, traced the delicate outline of her stomach, and licked along the fragile shape that was her ear.
She descended like some celestial entity, as from a great height, with slow grace, and spread herself out upon the thick, soft down comforter.
I undressed.
I made lover to her with hands, with lips, with tongue, and before I had even considered entering her, I had twice brought her to climax. I was no great lover, but I could sense what was wanted, what would please.
Then, as she lay sprawled on that sheet of down, I parted her sleek thighs and moved between them. The initial moment of penetration was the usual and unremarkable anatomical mechanics, but as we joined, the experience ceased to be usual, ceased to be unremarkable, was elevated from mechanics to mysticism, and we became not merely innamorati but a single organism, instinctively and mindlessly pursuing some half-glimpsed, mysterious, but desperately needed apotheosis of both spirit and body. Her responsiveness to me seemed as psychic as mine to her. As she clung to me, she never moved in disruptive opposition, o murmured the wrong word, o in any way disturbed the deeply satisfying and astonishingly complex rhythms of our passion, but matched each flex and counterflex, each thrust and counterthrust, each shuddering pause, each throb and stroke, until we had achieved and then surpassed flawless harmony. The world receded. We were one, we were all; we were the only.
We proceeded thus for well over half an hour, until I felt the eruption building inside of me. I began to withdraw, thought better of it, and continued my rhythm. A moment later, I felt her shaken da another orgasm, and she arched her bidy against me, tremors racking her, and suddenly I was unknotted and untied, and long fluid ribbons of sperm spooled out of me, unraveled within her.

We were a long time regaining a sense of the world around us and even longer parting. But at last we lay side da side, on our backs, staring out the window at the night sky, holding hands. We were silent because, for now, all that needed to be detto had already been detto without resorting to words.
Perhaps five long, warm minuti passed before she said, "Who are you, Colby Browning?"
"Just me."
"Somebody special."
"Are te kidding? Special..."
"Don't," she detto softly. "Don't bring it down like that. Don't pretend it wasn't the most natural, the most exciting... the most most te ever knew. Because it was. It was."
We lay there in silence for several più minutes, until Scar started to shiver again, not from erotic pleasure, but because I had the ceiling fan on and she was cold. Both of us wriggled under the sheets and held each other. Within moments, both of us were fast asleep.