She nodded. 'He was good to me, at least at first. He taught me how to survive the streets, taught me how to control and use my gifts.'
Pain swirled around him, a gossamer veil he could almost touch. 'When did it all change?' Though he could see the answer in her thoughts clearly enough, he wanted her to talk about it. Maybe then she would see that Tommy wasn't the savior she thought him to be. The bastard had done little more than take advantage of a frightened young girl.
'When I turned fifteen.' She shuddered, and he had to resist the urge to hold her close and caress all the hurt away. 'Everything changed. He became possessive, never letting me out of his sight. Sometimes it felt as if he was in my mind, governing my thoughts, my actions.'
If Tommy's telepathy had been as strong as she seemed to think, then that was probably just what he'd been doing. Fifteen years old and barely in control of her gifts, she would have had little resistance when it came to subtle mind merging. He clenched his fingers again, then slowly straightened them out. Tommy was dead, and there was nothing he could do about the past—other than help her through the pain of it.
'When did this extend to trying to control your gifts?'
Her gaze jerked to his. 'How did you know?'
He grimaced. 'It wasn't hard to guess, given your reaction to our link.'
Her gaze skittered away, but her thoughts were clear enough. She still wasn't comfortable with the link, still wasn't comfortable with him. Maybe she'd never be. Attraction or not, it was only the thought of Jasper invading her mind that kept her on the bed with him, kept her talking.
At least he had something to thank Jasper for.
'What happened?' he asked softly.
Fear shimmered through the link. 'Tommy gave me a ring for my next birthday. He told me he loved me.' She hesitated and swallowed. 'What did I know of love? He was my world, all that I had left since my parents' death. But maybe he could see the doubts, because he asked me to prove what I felt for him.'
'How?' The question came out more abruptly than he'd intended, and she looked up quickly. He forced a smile, though it was the last thing he felt like doing. 'What did he ask you to do?'
'Merge minds. Even though I sometimes feared him, and what he could do, I saw no harm in it. It was something we'd been practicing for a while.' She shuddered. 'Only this time it was deeper. This time it was complete.'
He could see the chaotic results in her mind. Her gifts, controlled by Tommy, had been used in violence.
No wonder she now feared any sort of mind-link.
'What did you do?'
'What could I do?' Her question was almost a plea. For an instant she was very much a confused and frightened teenager, not a twenty-five-year-old woman. 'I was sixteen years old and had no one I could turn to for help. Not that Tommy would have let me run. He knew my thoughts, and he could stop me, make me do things…' She paused, and a tear ran down her cheek.
The first crack in the wall, Michael thought, resisting the urge to wipe the drop away. It wasn't over yet.
She had to face up to the destruction she'd unwillingly caused.
'What sort of things?'
She wouldn't look at him. He placed a finger under her chin and gently tilted her face upwards. 'What did you do, Nikki?' he said, closing his heart to the pain in her eyes and her thoughts.
'Tommy pulled a bank robbery, but it went wrong.' She jerked away from his touch and dashed the tears from her eyes. 'I'd refused to take part, and for some reason, Tommy hadn't been able to make me. Instead, I waited a block away with a getaway car. But the police had received a tip and were waiting.'
Which didn't explain the pain he could almost taste. 'What happened, Nikki?'
'Tommy escaped, and the police and security guards chased him. He came straight back to me. He used my gifts to… to…'
She hesitated again, and more tears glimmered on her cheeks. He made no move, though he ached to hold her.
She took a deep breath. 'He used my kinetic abilities to destroy several police cars. One of the security guards he threw through a store window. The falling glass cut the guard's throat. Another was thrown into a wall and now lives in a wheelchair. I couldn't stop him, Michael. I fought so hard, but I just couldn't stop him.'
That was why she'd made him vow never to make her do anything against her will. A sob escaped her control, and he drew her into his arms and let her cry. At least she was finally letting go of the pain she'd held in check for so long. But it wasn't over yet. 'How did you escape the police?'
She laughed, a bitter, brittle sound that made him wince. 'I didn't. Tommy escaped. They told me later that I'd been lucky he hadn't grabbed me as a hostage. They never knew it was me who killed that guard…'
'If one man uses a gun to kill another, you blame the man who pulled the trigger, not the weapon, Nikki.' And that's all she'd been, a weapon. She sniffed, but wasn't ready to let go of the past just yet.
'How did he die?'
'The streets caught up with him. His violence had made him a lot of enemies, and in the end, it came back to him.'
Then why did she feel so guilty about his death?
She shifted in his arms, resting her cheek against his shoulder. The warmth of her skin burned into him.
He fleetingly wished they could just stay here, on this bed, and forget about everything but each other.
'Because I dreamed it was going to happen,' she whispered. 'And I didn't tell him.'
She was reading his thoughts as clearly as he was reading hers. Link or not, she shouldn't have been able to. 'Why not?' he asked, knowing that in the same situation, he would have wished the fiend to hell and laughed as he died.
But Nikki didn't have three hundred years of weariness behind her.
' Oh God…' She hesitated, and her hand clenched against his. 'I told him that I hated him. I told him he could burn in hell for all I cared. Ten hours later he was dead. I felt his soul leave his body, Michael. I felt it encased in the fires of Hell. I could have stopped it, but I didn't. Just as I didn't stop my parents' death.
They all died because of me.'
If she'd seen her parents' death, why hadn't she warned them? Surely not out of hate—she had loved them, that much was clear. 'His soul was cursed long before you came along, Nikki. You did nothing more than trust the wrong man.'
'But he was good to me. He cared for me.'
He was pretty sure the only person Tommy had cared about was himself. But she wasn't ready yet to face that. 'He only wanted to make you trust him, make you need him. Where Jasper has tried force and drugs to subvert your will, Tommy used your emotions.'
'But I loved him.'
Yet even as she whispered the words, there was doubt in her thoughts. For the first time in years, she was looking past her fear and truly seeing the man Tommy had been.
'But he didn't die because of that love, Nikki.' He hesitated, the added, 'He was a vicious thug who got what he deserved.'
'Maybe. But there's still my parents.'
Three hours ago she wouldn't have confided this much. And yet he sensed it wasn't so much trust as the need to finally purge her demons. Perhaps she saw the necessity as much as he. 'Want to tell me about it?'
'No.' She took a deep, somewhat shuddery breath. 'They were going away without me, taking a second honeymoon and leaving me in the care of a nanny. I was so furious with them. When I had the dream, I didn't tell them.'
'You were a kid, Nikki. All kids do horrible things at one time or another.'
'Not all kids watch their parents die. Not all kids feel the caress of their mother's soul as she passes away.'
Which was surely punishment enough for her childish rush of spitefulness. 'Would your parents have
