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