Page 45 of Kane

Once a heavy sleeper par excellence, Kane now slept lightly. In part it was down to the irregular shift patterns, and in part also down to the stresses that came with the dangerous nature of the job itself. Kane knew of some colleagues who had even sought counselling to try and cure themselves of their sleep issues.

It wasn’t as bad for Kane as it was for some of his fellow firefighters though. Kane felt real empathy for his fellow buddies who could barely go an hour or two without waking up ready for action. So, while his sleep was far from perfect, Kane was able to manage.

Either way you cut it, Kane was now likely to wake up from the sound of a pin dropping, let alone a full-blown alarm call.

Even if he’d been letting his hair down and partying all night, come dawn he was almost guaranteed to wake up.

Fully alert.

Ready to go.

Many in the fire service said that it was the curse of being a fire fighter. But it wasn’tallbad. Waking up so early meant that Kane was always able to fit in his hacking exploits around his work.

That morning was no different.

As Cassie slept soundly in bed, Kane crept out of the bedroom and made his way into the kitchen.

‘Espresso time,’ Kane said, before pausing to check himself. ‘Is it crazy I literally say that out loud, to myself, every damned morning?’

Kane shrugged.

He was a creature of habit, that was for sure.

Things might change the longer Cassie was living there. Hell, Cassie might even pick up a taste for espresso herself. Anything had to be better than craving those luridly colored juice boxes.

Well, that was Kane’s take anyhow.

They’d only been living together a very short while, all told. But the signs were good.

It felt as if Kane was able to learn from Cassie.

And vice versa.

This was the very definition of a positive co-habitation situation.

With his piping hot double espresso, he wandered over toward his huge computer set-up. It looked as intense as ever. To the untrained eye it would almost certainly have appeared a total mess.

But not to Kane.

There was method in the madness.

He was ona mission.

A mission to retrieve the data and files from Cassie’s hard drives. It felt good to expand his knowledge base too. Moving into the more practical side of computers would only help his hacking skills, and that was undoubtedly a good thing.

As Kane loaded up his own computer, he cast his mind back to the previous night.

The sex had been hot.

Really fucking good.

The best Kane had ever had, and it wasn’t even close.

The way that his and Cassie’s bodies seemed so in tune with one another was something else. It was the kind of natural connection that you can’t manufacture.

It’s either there or it’s not.

And in their case, it absolutelywasthere in spades.