Her chest felt tight at the thought of leaving him.
Oh, no.
Calladia was officially emotionally compromised.
She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t casual for me either.” Saying it made her feel vulnerable, so she focused on the dip of his collarbone so she didn’t have to see whatever was in his eyes. Calladia didn’t do emotional openness, hadn’t tried since she’d been burned for it. And now she was trying it with a demon?
Astaroth’s fingers brushed her chin, tipping it up. His expression was as soft as she’d ever seen it. “Well,” he said, “we’ve certainly complicated things for ourselves, haven’t we?”
Calladia inexplicably teared up. She wiped her eyes, chuckling uneasily. “Please ignore me.”
Astaroth’s hand moved under the blanket to settle on her hip. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
One brow crept up. “Have you sprung a leak, then?”
“I never cry.” Another tear slipped out. “Damn it.”
“Are you crying because you only had three orgasms? I’ll happily give you more.”
Ridiculous demon. She rolled her eyes. “Never let it be said you lack ambition.”
His fingers flexed on her hip. “Calladia,” he said in a cajoling tone. “Why are you crying?”
She wasn’t entirely sure. “I don’t know. It’s just . . . I don’t do this, you know?”
“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.