A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch （Glimmer Falls, #2(88)

“Sex?”

“No. I mean, yes, I haven’t done that in a while either.” She gestured between them. “I don’t do this.”

His forehead furrowed, and she could see him trying to work through her confusing words. “I need a bit more than that to go on,” he said.

“Ugh.” She blew out a breath, puffing stray hairs out of her face. “The whole emotional shit.” She squirmed, uncomfortable even saying it. “Not that it’s . . . yeah. No.”

She was making less sense than ever, but Astaroth seemed to catch on, because his brow cleared. “Ah. You don’t like feeling vulnerable.”

“I’m not vulnerable,” she replied instantly.

“I don’t like being vulnerable either,” he said, ignoring her rebuttal. “It’s dashed uncomfortable.”

Humor was easier to manage than emotional honesty, so Calladia tried to make light of the situation. “There you go, sounding like a Jane Austen character again. Next I’ll find out you have a country estate and a fondness for waltzing.”

“When was the last time you were vulnerable?” Astaroth asked.

He cut to the core of the issue as deftly as if he’d sliced through her bullshit with a sword. Calladia thought about making a run for it, but it was cold and wet outside, and she’d have to face him eventually. “If I don’t answer, what are the odds you’ll let it go?”

“Zero.”

She smiled despite herself. “A gentleman wouldn’t pry.”

His long lashes swept his cheekbones as he smiled at her. “Good thing I’m a villain, then.”

Despite herself, Calladia found herself wanting to share the story, as foolish and weak as it made her seem. “I had a boyfriend in college,” she blurted out. “Though maybe it’s weird to call him that, since he was fifteen years older than me.”

“Taylor Swift would call that a problematic age gap,” Astaroth said.

“Yeah, well, I would, too. Now, anyway.” She took a deep breath, letting herself pick at the scab that barely covered this hurt, even years later. “He was my professor, actually, at Crabtree College a few hours from Glimmer Falls. He taught a general education class I took freshman year.”

“Freshman year?” Astaroth asked, brows rising. “You would have been very young.”

“Eighteen, yeah. Though he didn’t ask me out until the next fall, when I was nineteen.” She remembered the shock of it—his earnest declaration that he’d been thinking about her all summer, that she was so mature for her age, that he admired her sharp mind and strident opinions.

“So he would have been thirty-four.” Astaroth scowled. “I don’t like that. What’s his name?”

“Sam,” she said. “Sam Templeton.” He’d seemed so sophisticated to her back then. Someone had finally seen the worth in troublemaker tomboy Calladia, and it was a handsome, tenured professor who wore suits and had the ear of every person of influence in a hundred miles. The kind of man her mother respected.

He’d asked her to keep their relationship on the down-low on campus, of course. At the time, it had felt like a thrilling secret.

“We dated the entire time I was in college,” Calladia continued. “My mother adored him, of course. He came from East Coast money and had a job she respected, and I guess she thought he was a civilizing influence on me.”

Astaroth scoffed. “Bloody nonsense.”

“Not according to my mother.” Calladia picked at a stray thread from the blanket. “She didn’t know how bad it got though. She just saw me dressing nicely and spending less time at the gym and figured I was finally growing up. Becoming a proper woman, as she called it.” And Calladia, sick with the need for validation, had clung to that shred of approval. She’d gotten her ears pierced, started wearing pearls, even invested in a cream-colored pantsuit that Mariel and Themmie had helped her burn when the whole mess was over.

Astaroth made a low, angry sound. “What did he do, Calladia?”

“He didn’t hit me or anything.” Maybe if he had she’d have recognized his true nature earlier. “He just wanted me to be someone I wasn’t.” She bit her lip, despising how thinking about that time still hurt, when she was sure Sam never gave a second thought to the young women left in his wake. “It started small. He said I was too loud, that I swore too much. So I toned it down. Then he thought my fashion sense was childish and wanted me to look more grown-up. For my own good, of course,” she said sarcastically. “He said he wanted other people to respect me the way he did, and he didn’t like hearing them make fun of me behind my back.” Now she doubted those people had existed outside of Sam’s manipulative fantasies.

“If he wanted to date someone more grown-up,” Astaroth said tightly, “he could have chosen someone his own age.”

“Exactly.” She smiled crookedly at the demon. “But my youth was the point. He’d dated at least one undergrad before me, I found out, and after we broke up and before I blocked him on social media, I saw his new girlfriend on Pixtagram, and she looked so young. Even though I was the one to break up with him, it felt like he’d replaced me with someone younger and prettier.”

“I’d like to point out that no one is prettier than you,” Astaroth said, running his hand in soothing strokes over her side, “though I acknowledge that’s not the point.”