by Love, Amy
But maybe she could still…
“You don’t have to hate me,” she whispered.
Kane started to speak but simply sighed. Silently, he ran the cool cloth down her face. His fingers just grazed her cheeks, and Angeline welcomed any return of his touch. Still, she needed his voice. She loved listening to the ragged lilt. As hard as he tried, sometimes he sounded like the little boy who had run away from home instead of the biker that brought her to new heights. It was hard to reconcile the two, but Angeline knew that his heart was somewhere in the middle.
“I could never hate you,” Kane said slowly.
And there it was.
Angeline’s heart came to a quiet rest. He had seemed so cold, so brutal when they met in the moonlight. She was sure that he would curse her memory and run so far away that she could never hope to hold him again.
Now, even in her dazed state, she took a chance.
“Thank you,” Angeline whispered. She ran her hands through his wild hair, and her heart flipped when she thought she saw him smile at the return of her hands. The feel of him throbbing inside her was one thing, nearly the best of things. But the quiet moments after, when she could linger around other parts of him, had brought her the most joy. Sometimes she fought to stay awake just to watch him sleep. If he stayed in the place of a blissful dream, Angeline delighted at that sight. Every so often he bolted awake, in the throes of some terror. And she was grateful to be there, ready to hold him. Smoothing her hands down his broad back, Angeline would bring a whisper to his ear and assure him that he was safe.
“I… I kind of missed this,” Kane said.
Hoping that he would remember more, give her a chance to talk without rushing away, she strained toward his lips. Kane nearly let her meet his mouth, when he turned his head from her eyes.
He was already on his feet, starting towards the door.
“Kane… wait.”
Angeline grew more and more awake at the sight of him slipping away. If she let him out the door, Kane would collect Terri, probably ask her to see that she made it home okay, and the last words she would ever hear from him would be his want to never see her again.
“Kane!”
The knob of the cracked door was in his hand, but Kane still turned to face her. Frantically scanning his eyes for something to hold onto, Kane’s stare was simply sad, and Angeline worked fast.
“I did it,” she confessed. “I… I was with Noel.”
For a solid second, Kane gave her no indication of the hurt that had to be hitting his heart. But she had to explain. She just needed one more—
“At least you’re still kind of honest,” Kane said, sadness surrounding his voice. Gathering her strength, Angeline crawled to the edge of the bed and reached for him. He was nearly under her hands when Kane flinched.
“Don’t go,” she said, her head still spinning. “I just have to—”
“Angeline…”
Still not Angel. Would she ever be his Angel again?
“Look,” Kane said. “Don’t try to spin it. Noel told me.”
Angeline had a pretty good idea of what Noel must have said. She had needed it, wanted it. But there was always more to the story.
“So let me just get your… your friend, and let’s call it—”
“I thought that that I had lost you,” she muttered. “Forever.”
Looking into his eyes, she saw his gaze shift into a mix of confusion and, possibly, hope on the wind of her words.
“He… Noel said that you were never coming back,” Angeline continued. “And I… I don’t know.”
“Yes you do,” Kane said.
Angeline held her tongue as he stepped back to the bed. Tentatively, he sat on the edge, just inches from her touch, and she ducked her head.
“Angel?”
At the sound of that, she glanced up. Kane’s eyes were fixed on her face, intense. Yet she relaxed for the first time in years around his stare.
“Why did you think that?” Kane asked.
Angeline drifted back to place where Noel had given her the worst news imaginable. And in that moment, she couldn’t feel anything. Not even Noel’s hands.
“Why, Angel?”
It sounded better the second time around, and Angeline grew bolder.
“He said that you’d were dead to me,” Angeline managed. “I never thought that he would lie about that. And I… I…”
Kane’s eyes were full of fury, but somehow she continued.
“I was not unfaithful,” she said.
“Why the hell would Noel—?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe it was to punish me. Or to keep you in line. But…”
Rape. She had told Noel as much, and there was no other word for it. He had taken her on the back of a lie, and the thought of it infuriated her.
“But he said that you were never coming back,” she said.
Kane struggled around the truth and didn’t seem to believe it.
“Why would he—?”
“You tell me?” she asked.
Kane bristled at her tone and started to shift away from her. She should have reached for him, but he was still locked in the lie. Only her words would make him understand.
If he believed them…
“You tell me why your fucking friend told me that I was never going to see you again?” she asked. “I… I cried when he said that. I didn’t know where the hell I was or what I was doing.”
“I…”
He was struggling to make sense of it. In another life, she might have stretched forward to calm him, soothe the bad thoughts away from his tense back. But now, seeing him on the verge of believing her, Angeline just kept talking.
“So I let him take me,” she said. “And I…”
Biting on her lip, she tried hard not to cry. It was a battle that she knew she was losing, and a part of her thought that he would accuse her of trying to soften his heart.
But she had to tell him everything before he went back.
“And I hated it while it was happening,” she said. “I hated myself even more when it was done. But do you really think…?”
She couldn’t go on. He had to get the picture now. And if he didn’t, if he still believed in Noel above all else, then—
Kane gathered her in his arms. His eyes were firm but warm as he stroked her cheek.
“And that’s the only reason?” he asked.
Angeline fought to speak as she saw the tenderness that she had missed return to his face.
“Do you… I never would have let him touch me if I thought that you… That you…”
She couldn’t finish the thought. Noel had made him dead, and now he was here.
“No,” Kane finally said.
He was holding her, caressing her. Five years. So long. Too long. Maybe she should have hit Noel then, rushed to the prison in spite of Kane’s order and seen for herself. Kane deserved better, and she choked on the thought that she might lose him all over—
“You… you had to be really scared, right?”
And he finally understood.
Exhausted by the day and her memory of the night, Angeline rested her weary head against his broad chest and sighed, the scent of his sweet sweat seeping into her veins.
“Terrified,” she whispered. “I tried to say no, but…”
Her voice trailed off at the memory of Noel’s rough hands ripping her blouse from her anguished body. And then the words, the words that she was too weak to resist. Angeline was still new to Kane’s world, his code, and maybe it was expected. Maybe she was supposed to serve his brother, his mentor once the love of her life was seemingly lost.
“But what?” Kane asked.
Snapping out of her reverie, Angeline slowly looked into his dark eyes, suddenly brimming with a lethal cocktail of sorrow and rage, and she was tempted to spin some story that might keep Kane safe. She could say that Noel had seemed kind, that she wanted and even enjoyed his comfort. But now, seeing Kane resurrected,
feeling his hands tracing tender lines down her back even as his jaw clenched, Angeline could be nothing but totally, brutally honest.
“He said that it was what you would want,” Angeline said. “So I… So I didn’t fight him.”
Unable to face the prospect of how her words might hit his ears, Angeline slammed her lids shut and waited. Kane’s hands stopped moving about her body. When she could stand the silence and the stillness no longer, Angeline started to look.
But not before she felt him slipping away.
“Kane, please don’t—”
He turned in the doorway, cutting her off, and Angeline moved back to the edge of the bed. As she reached for him, Kane held up his palm, freezing her where she knelt.
“It should never have happened,” he said.
Angeline started to nod, when he pounded his fist into his hand.
“So now I have to deal with it.”
She waited less than a second before bolting from the bed, catching his arm on the landing. She could see Terri and his family looking up with a mixture of shock and scorn as she desperately tried to wrestle him back to the room.
“No,” she begged. “We’re together. It doesn’t matter now.”
“How the hell can you say that?”
Kane’s strength was too much for her to contain. As Kane broke away, he started running down the stairs. Angeline chased him to main floor, pleading the entire way.
“Angie! You okay?” Terri asked.
Not hearing her, trying to ignore the derision in Jeremy’s eyes, Angeline forced her way to his side just in time to see him mounting his bike.
“Kane!” she screamed. “Don’t go! Don’t leave me again!”
But before she could touch him again, his motor revved up and he peeled off into the night, leaving her standing, shaking, as exhaust fumes swirled all around her.
CHAPTER TEN
Thundering though the streets, Kane ignored every stop sign, every red light. He could see nothing but Angeline as she must have looked when Noel poured the cruelest lie into her ears. Devastated, broken, trembling when he forced her to submit to his strange whim. He remembered the times when Noel had looked her up and down, his eyes lingering too long of her small, soft breasts. Had he been a smarter man, he would have raised his fists then, friend or not. But it was Noel, his savior, and Angeline was beautiful. So men would always look at her. But Kane had her, body and soul. Nothing would ever change that.
Nothing but Noel.
Screeching to a halt before the familiar graffiti, Kane’s feet barely hit the ground when he burst through the doors. He saw Waldo and Ben enjoying lap dances from some of the local talent that moonlighted when the neon lights bearing their stage names went cold. All eyes turned to him, and Kane wiped his frothing mouth with the back of his hand as he barreled forward.
“Yo, man!” Ben said, standing to stop him. “Thought you was with your brother tonight. Want to party?”
Ben’s girl of the hour, blonde and smiling with one gold tooth under bright pink lips, beckoned him close with a curling finger.
“I’m game,” she said. The blonde placed her hands on his tight shoulders.
“So tense!” she said. “Bet I can help you out with—”
Moving past the girl, she stumbled in her clear heels and cried out. The sound of her tiny scream turned Kane’s head, and even as his stomach was churning in fury, he was relieved to see Ben catch her before she fell.
“What the hell?” the girl asked.
“Yeah, man,” Ben said. “What you got against Sandi?”
Seeing that Sandi was fine as she lit a cigarette and paced the room, Kane returned all of his attention to the task at hand and started to move through walls of tape.
“K Man! Hold up!”
Ben was at his heels when Kane found Noel, on his ass as another girl sucked him off. For a split second, Kane saw his face fixed in a satisfied mask. In another life, Kane would have backed away. Or if he was in a joking mood, he would have whistled and pumped his fist at the sight of Noel getting his rocks off. But now, the only thing that he could see was Angeline’s violation. Had Noel worn that same face when he took her with a lie?
“Noel!”
Kane slammed his fist into the wall, and Noel’s eyes focused on him with a smile.
“Not the best time, Kid,” Noel said as he tried to catch his breath. He pushed the kneeling girl’s mouth closer to his cock and lazily stroked her hair. Angeline hadn’t given him every detail; he didn’t stop to listen. But had he done this to her, too? Had he used her like a common whore? The girl’s red hair morphed into Angeline’s brown curls, and Kane felt as if he travelled back in time, that he was actually seeing his Angel forced into acts that she would never have agreed to were it not for the lie. Angeline had never used the word. Maybe she was too scared to speak it, think it. But there was no other term for what Noel had done.
Rape.
“Party’s over!” Kane bellowed. His harsh voice and harsher hands eased the girl away from Noel. Somehow still thinking that it was actually Angeline, Kane was stunned to see the sunken cheeks and dark eyes of a stranger. Twisting his head back to the present moment, Kane started to speak when Noel’s girl slapped his face.
“You owe me fifty bucks!” she hissed.
Furious and confused, Kane started to reach into his pocket when Noel’s laughter pierced his brain.
“And someone owes me a hummer,” Noel smirked as he stood and hitched up his jeans. Waving a bill in the air, he nearly handed it to the redhead when he offered the bill to Kane.
“Or did all that time in the joint turn you into some kind of a fag?” Noel asked.
Seeing only Angeline, Kane formed a fist and smashed it into Noel’s smug face.
“Yo! What the fuck?”
As Noel fell back against his desk amidst the red head’s shrieks, Kane heard nothing, saw nothing as he rained blow after blow on Noel’s face. On the third strike, Noel’s lip split open, and Kane felt his former friend’s blood trickling though his fingers. Fighting past the slick warmth, Kane tried to land another punch when Noel sprang to sudden life.
“Garbage eating piece of shit!” Noel screamed.
Before Kane could spit out a comeback, Noel drove him through the filmy door, and Kane was on the ground.
“Knock it off, Noel,” Ben said. “He’s just blowing off steam and—”
“Is that right?” Noel asked. “Is that why you’re making like a bitch?”
Kane struggled to catch his breath as Noel hovered over him. Lowering his eyes, Kane’s eyes went cold, ready for the kill.
“I saw Angeline tonight,” Kane muttered.
Through a narrow gaze, Kane watched the words sink in. Almost thinking that he saw worry on his mentor’s face, Kane lifted his body on his elbows and waited for Noel’s side of the story. Maybe Noel was right all along. Could he really trust her?
“Yeah?” Noel challenged. “Well I saw her earlier. She came sniffing around here. For me.”
Noel took his denim clad cock in his hands and laughed.
“What kind of shit she spilling into your brain?”
Noel held out his hand. Trembling, wishing that he wasn’t, Kane accepted the gesture and found himself back on his feet.
“Well?” Noel asked.
“Did you… Did you tell her that I was like dead?”
Noel appeared to consider the question before shaking his head.
“Kid,” he started. “Sure.”
That was all Kane needed to hear.
“You fucking asshole!”
Sweeping his leg, Kane watched Noel fall to the ground. Again he was on top of him, pounding his fists into his sides. Kane spat in his face as he struck him.
“Why would you do that—?”
“Kane!”
Ben was at his back, trying to pry Kane from Noel’s side. The redhead took off, and Kane wrapped his hands around Noel’s neck.
“Why did you lie—?”
Kane thought that he nearly had the air from his lungs when Noel surprised him with a swift knee to the groin. Doubling back, Ben trying to catch him. Kane was barely back on his feet when Noel grabbed his hair and dragged Kane towards his desk.