A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch
: Chapter 26

Calladia staggered back toward the tent after doing her business. Her knees were wobbly, and her mouth was stuck in a goofy smile. Three orgasms would do that to a person.

When she ducked under the tent flap, her smile widened at the sight of Astaroth lying where she’d left him. His arm was flung over his eyes, and his breathing was slow and even. Asleep?

“Don’t suppose you can demanifest a condom,” he said, his normally crisp accent turned slow and lazy.

Not asleep. Calladia knelt next to him, eyeing the condom still attached to his softening cock. “You might want to remove it first,” she said. “Just in case.”

He lifted his arm and squinted at her. “Is my penis in danger?”

Maybe of being excessively fondled. Calladia shook her head. “Not at present.”

He grunted, then tugged off the condom and knotted it. Calladia yanked out another hair from her scalp and tied the knots to reverse the summoning. She sent the condom to a dumpster they’d passed near the trailhead.

Astaroth started to sit up, then groaned and collapsed onto the sleeping bag. “Witch, you’ve killed me.”

She lay down next to him, pulling a blanket over them. Later, she’d put on pajamas, but right now skin to skin was nice. She hooked an arm over him and nuzzled her nose into the crook of his neck. “So,” she said. “How did the sex rank?”

“What?”

“You’re a legendary fuckboy, right?” she teased. “I’m curious how I stack up against Lucrezia Borgia.” She was joking, but part of her did wonder. He’d been with so many people; this probably hadn’t meant anything to him besides an opportunity to get off.

The idea made her feel ill.

Astaroth sank his fingers into her hair and pulled her head back to look her in the eye. His expression was uncharacteristically solemn. “Calladia, there’s no comparison.”

“Oh. Right.” Lucrezia had been notorious for her hedonism, while Calladia had only had a handful of partners. Of course there was no comparison. Embarrassment heated her cheeks. “Never mind.”

“Wait.” Astaroth shifted onto his side, pillowing his head on his bicep as he faced her. “I don’t think you took that the right way.”

She shrugged, even though she was feeling smaller with every moment. Sam had thought her performance was mediocre, too. You just need to practice, he’d told her, guiding her head to his crotch. You’ll get better eventually. “I’m a big girl,” she said. “My ego’s not that fragile.”

Her ego was that fragile, but she’d be damned before she admitted it.

Astaroth pursed his lips and blew a raspberry, startling her. “Calladia, that was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

She blinked. “What? There’s no way.”

He looked earnest though. “It’s true.”

“But we only did one position.”

“And what a position it was.” His sigh sounded blissful. “Having you ride me was practically a religious experience.”

She flicked his shoulder. “Shut up.”

“I mean it.” He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “That wasn’t just a bit of casual fun. Not for me anyway.”

There had been a minuscule pause before the last sentence, and although he was smiling, there was something wary about his expression.

Was he also worried she’d seen this as nothing but a quick, meaningless fuck?

It should have been a quick, meaningless fuck. There was no world in which the two of them started a relationship. He had his immortality and position on the demon council to worry about. After he recovered his memories, there would be no reason for him to stay, and Calladia had her own future to focus on.

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 replace 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.”

She laughed awkwardly. “You may need your eyes checked, but thank you.”

He frowned. “I’ve noticed you don’t like compliments.”

“I don’t get a lot of them.” She knew how to react to a challenge or insult—hit back—but she’d never quite known what to do with praise.

“Then clearly I need to compliment you all the time.” Astaroth ducked his head and pressed a kiss to her bicep. “Tell me more about this Sam wanker.”

Calladia sighed. “He didn’t like me working out. He thought it made me look too masculine for his tastes.” A sentiment her mother had echoed, so a younger Calladia had let them convince her that was a bad thing. “So I stopped working out, stopped speaking up, stopped swearing. Then he wanted me to lose weight. I made myself small and quiet and biddable, and it was never enough.” The critiques had grown crueler, until she’d dreaded the sound of his footsteps outside the apartment in the evening.

“It never would be,” Astaroth said. “Some bastards want power but don’t know how to get it without tearing other people down. If they can’t earn respect on their own merits, they’ll create a victim with no choice in the matter.”

His eyes held the weight of ages, and Calladia was struck by the vast difference between them. Astaroth looked young, and he could be as funny and petty and ridiculous as any human, but he was very, very old. “If Sam was problematic at fifteen years older than me, then what is this?” she asked, gesturing between them.

“The problematic part is when an older partner specifically chooses someone young and naive to take advantage of or demean,” Astaroth said. “I’m interested in you for who you are, exactly as you are. And you’re fully capable of . . . what did you threaten me with again? Exploding my testicles if I try any funny business.”

Who you are, exactly as you are. Flustered by the praise, Calladia scrambled for a joke. “It helps that you’re a very immature six hundred.”

“Precisely,” Astaroth agreed. “I’m fairly sure I haven’t experienced emotional growth since the Thirty Years’ War.”

That blatantly wasn’t true—because what had the last few days been, if not emotional growth?—but Calladia appreciated the attempt at humor. It made it easier for her to finish the story.

“Anyway,” she said, “I finally came to my senses, thanks to Mariel.” Mariel had staged a few interventions over the years, but Calladia had been too blinded by love to listen—and later, too browbeaten. “She wasn’t getting results reasoning with me, so she did something tricky after Sam proposed. She invited me to come hiking with her back in Glimmer Falls.” Mariel had never been a fitness nut the way Calladia was, but she loved hiking, and the two of them had spent countless hours wandering the woods together. “We hadn’t gone in a while, and Sam had been limiting the time I spent with my friends, but he was out of town one weekend. So I drove up to Glimmer Falls and joined Mariel on a hike to the hot springs.”

She could picture it clearly. Calladia hadn’t exercised in a long time, and her workout pants and tank top had hung loose. When she’d looked in the mirror, she hadn’t recognized the frail woman playing dress-up in the old Calladia’s clothes.

“I couldn’t keep up,” Calladia said. “I used to run half-marathons, but I was winded within minutes of starting a gentle hike. After fifteen minutes, I nearly passed out. It was then I realized Sam hadn’t been improving me the way he claimed to be. Instead, he had made me weak.”

She’d cried her eyes out at the side of that trail while Mariel had held her and whispered assurances that this wasn’t the end, and she would be strong again.

Then Mariel had driven back to Sam’s apartment next to Crabtree College, helped Calladia pack her things, and brought her home.

“I dumped him by text,” Calladia told Astaroth. “I couldn’t bear to look at him again. He blew up my phone for a few weeks, then moved on. His new girlfriend was posted on Pixtagram within the month.”

Silence fell as her story concluded. That hadn’t been the real end of it, of course. It had taken time to build up her strength and confidence again. It would still take time for all the damage Sam had inflicted to heal. But like building a muscle, the places she had torn had become stronger with time. She would never let anyone make her feel small again.

Rain pattered gently against the tent, and wind soughed through the trees. It was wet and cold outside, but under the blanket with Astaroth, with magic glowing overhead, Calladia felt warm and safe.

Safe with her enemy—who would have thought? But she’d thought Sam an ally once, and look how that had turned out.

Astaroth cupped her cheek. “You’re strong.”

“Now I am. Back then I wasn’t.” It was embarrassing how much time she’d spent letting Sam tear her down. She hadn’t recognized the bars of her cage until she was too weak to open the cell door and escape.

“Being strong doesn’t mean winning every battle. Sometimes it means surviving to fight again.”

Her vision blurred with fresh tears. “Wow,” she said with a watery laugh. “That’s deep. Have you thought about writing advice columns?” Dear Sphinxie from the Glimmer Falls Gazette couldn’t touch his level of eloquence.

“Most of my advice is much less wholesome.” His thumb traced her cheekbone. “I’m sorry that bastard hurt you. Is he still alive?”

That didn’t sound enough like a joke for her comfort. “You’re not allowed to murder him.”

Astaroth pouted. “Why not?”

Ridiculous demon. “Because we’re working on your redemption arc.”

He sighed dramatically. “Redemption sounds boring.”

“Does it?” Calladia shoved him to his back, then clambered on top, the blanket draping from her shoulders like a cape. “Even if only redeemed demons get laid?”

“A compelling argument.” He reached up to massage her breasts, then abruptly stopped, expression turning serious. “We only do this if you want to, understand? Not because you think you owe it to me or that I’m not interested in you without the sex.”

Oh, Hecate. Had this kindness and consideration been hiding under his ruthless façade all along? Or had losing his memory given Astaroth the chance to reclaim the person he’d been before the centuries had hardened him?

Calladia wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t going to waste the night debating the issue. Maybe this would all go tits up and Astaroth would turn back into a villain. She’d survive. And not just survive, but thrive. Calladia was done letting other people try to diminish or reshape her. Sam hadn’t broken her; if it came down to it, Astaroth wouldn’t either.

Calladia covered his hands on her chest with hers. She swallowed, feeling the giddy lure of the cliff edge. This time, she jumped. “I want this,” she said. “I want you.”

The grin that lit up Astaroth’s face was a wonder to behold. “Then take whatever you want. It’s yours.”

And Calladia did.