Free White Lies (Blood Brothers MC Book 1) by Amy Love

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