"The lovey dovey, touching and petting him and calling your own children monkeys." He stopped and pointed in her face. "That was the teller."
"Oh please." She jerked out of his hold and crossed her arms.
"Look at you. Just like another stubborn human girl, aren't you?"
She looked at him with a happy light in those clear blue eyes. "That wasn't a damn compliment!"
Her brows crimped and she looked down and stayed that way for several seconds. Then she did it. She used those damn human tear ducts. She had them wide open. Great. And why should he be moved the least? She wasn't human.
She let out a very real human-sounding sob and it jerked Toren's insides. "Stop it. Please. Quit that." He looked around like a guilty bully.
She shook her head and wiped her eyes but they continued to pour. "I just…I thought sure you would like…"
"I liked you the way you were."
"And how was I?" she wailed.
Toren felt like demon fodder. "You were perfect."
"I wasn't anything. I could never decide what I wanted to be. And when we came to Earth, I suddenly knew what I wanted. To be human. A human girl. Like…like Sam."
The stabbing grief in her stole his breath and he pulled her into his arms. "You didn't need to do that," he said softly, stroking her head.
"I wanted to. I see how much you love her. I just wanted to make you happy," she sobbed into his chest.
A strange emotion tugged in his heart for her. "I'm sorry I made you cry. You forgive me?"
She nodded against him.
"I'm just worried about you. And Kassie. I feel like I'm losing…control of everything. And it's not the best feeling."
She nodded again, sniffling.
Toren sighed. "I'll go in the purifier with you. Okay?"
"Okay," she whispered.
"And I do very much like you this way. I think I'm just worried."
She looked up, hopeful.
"Maybe you made yourself too pretty. I don't want human males to…hurt you."
She gave him a huge smile and wiped her eyes. "Hurt me?"
"It's different here, Peggy. The pain they could bring you isn't anything you could fight. It's in here." He tapped her chest. "I don't want you to ever hurt that way."
She smiled and grinned up at him. "You're acting like those amazing men I see on the pretend moving pictures."
He wondered what she meant. "Morons?"
She giggled and shook her head. "They call them…fathers."
That emotion he'd felt earlier returned and tugged with a vengeance. Father. Was he really feeling that? A father's instinct? He smiled. She certainly qualified as his daughter conceptually. But having her in this form sort of brought it into concrete existence. All at once.
"Yes. I guess I do feel a lot like that."
"You do?" A brilliant hope filled her face, making him long for things strange to him.
Toren suddenly realized something about her that he hadn't before. Maybe a key into the mystery of her past. She needed the love of family. A father even. Toren smiled and stroked his thumb along her cheek, then held her chin. "Of course I do. Does that mean I can spank you if you don't listen now?"
She giggled, thrilled. "I would never disobey." She threw her arms around him and hugged him tight. Toren closed his eyes, feeling the new sensation. God. Felt…so damn right. He pressed his lips into her head, his mercury hot enough to go through the roof. Is this what Kassern felt for Francis? Dorn, for Maxwell? The ruby warrior didn't show it if he did. Nor Dorn.
"Come on. Time to get you all clean."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Francis stared at the girl through the window. It made perfect sense that he would learn just a bit more about her before a personal encounter. Any and every detail would help. But now that only ten feet stood between him and her, he wasn't so sure.
Why was he so nervous? She was just a girl. A human. A weak one, at that. Well, maybe not weak, but with a different form of strength than he was accustomed to seeing. Anyone who lived the life she did and managed to remain relatively intact couldn't be considered truly weak. But she couldn't hurt him in any way that he could think. And he'd certainly thought a lot about it. But just to be certain, he'd even changed his physique.
After looking at himself in the mirror, he realized he looked like a young teenager and kind of scrawny. Not exactly the best image for the role he intended to play. So, with amazingly little effort, he thought mass onto his frame until he resembled his father. Then he'd pulled back when he resembled Kassern too much. It didn't seem right to look so much like the most amazing Archangel alive.
He'd finally found a happy medium of a human male of around nineteen, at least. Now all he had to manage was the maturity to match. Surely he could do that.