NOTE:
This story is a direct sequel to "The Shadow of A Starless Night" and "The Glow of a Starlit Dawn".

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Prologue

They spent the whole of the next day in bed together. Well, they were both exhausted after their barely-successful mission, but that was by no means why, and they didn't exactly spend the whole time sleeping.

Pete Wisdom had suffered more than a few hunger pangs throughout the day, true. It was probably the longest he'd gone without a drink -- of alcohol, that is, water and such didn't count in his worldview -- in twenty-four hours in years, and he'd ruthlessly suppressed his cravings for the few cigarettes in the pack in his jacket pocket, all because he hadn't wanted to risk ruining what was happening. The former Black Air agent had finally admitted, to himself and to Kitty both, that he'd been falling in love with her ever since he'd first come to Muir and to Excalibur. Now he had what he'd never before allowed himself to even dream of -- Kitty with him, in his (ok, *her*) bed.

Even more important, she'd finally opened up to him, telling him why she'd been behaving so strangely all the time he'd known her -- warm and friendly one minute, icing up and pulling away the next. She'd taken a huge risk, telling him about her failed relationship years ago when she'd been a young teen, the physical incompatibility and the emotional vacuum, and about the unborn baby she'd lost. He desperately wanted to prove to her that none of that had been *her* fault, and he knew that one way to help her was to show her that love and sex could be wonderfully satisfying for *both* partners... over and over, by repeated demonstration, until her subconscious overwrote those old fears with new and better memories. That wouldn't fix everything, of course, but anything more would take much longer. Pete was enough of an emotional cripple himself that he was desperately afraid he might not be able to help the beautiful, outwardly strong, secretly fragile girl snuggled so cozily against him heal herself completely... but he knew he had to try.

Lying there next to his warm, nude body with their legs entwined and his arms holding her close, Kitty Pryde would have laughed more than a bit hysterically if she'd known her new lover was worried about having enough sensitivity to properly care for her. The slender young brunette was, quite simply, in heaven. Sex with the rude, crude Brit had been great -- nothing like her past experience, everything she'd ever read about how it should be... and so much more.

But the spiritual intimacy was even more overwhelming. Pete had opened up to her completely after her awkward, stumbling confession of her past during their botched mission, allowing her to see a side of him she'd just caught brief, tantalizing glimpses of while they'd been infiltrating Black Air's Dream Nails base together. And Kitty was still stunned that the man now so close to her actually *wanted* to cuddle, to talk, to kiss... to *listen* to her... to forgive her past mistakes, and to accept what she had to offer and offer whatever she asked for.

The brand-new couple stayed so engrossed in each other -- laughing, talking, kissing, loving -- that neither of them had a thought left to spare for the others on Moira's island base. And neither guessed that Betsy and Meggan were periodically scanning them lightly, and reassuring the others that everything was, indeed, just fine.

Continued in Part 1...