“You had it coming, if that helps,” Calladia said, oblivious to how her words had skewered him through the heart. She looked around the bed, and her brow furrowed. “Where did the pillows go?”
“Hang the pillows.” Astaroth rubbed his temples, struggling for calm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Calladia grabbed a pillow from the floor and tossed it in his direction. “That I beat you up? I thought I had.”
Pain stabbed through his head, and his eye twitched. “It was completely unprovoked.”
“Mmmm, was it though?” she asked skeptically, chucking another pillow and narrowly missing his face.
She wasn’t taking this seriously enough. He batted the next pillow aside. “I didn’t do anything to you,” he argued, “and then you hit me and insulted my hat—”
“It was a terrible hat,” she said.
Astaroth gasped, because now he recalled it wasn’t just a good hat; it was his favorite. “That fedora cost more than four hundred quid and came custom from my favorite London haberdasher!”
Calladia scoffed and shifted to kneel facing him, apparently giving up on the pillow wall. “I don’t know why you’re buying hats using sea creatures as currency—”
“I said quid, not squid.”
“Either way, you overpaid.” She looked him up and down condescendingly. “You looked like the flag bearer for the incel cause.”
Astaroth made a face. “The what?”
“Incels,” she said. “Does the word ring a bell?” When Astaroth shook his head, she continued. “If you forget anything you might have learned about them, it’ll be the best thing amnesia does for you. Incel stands for ‘involuntary celibate,’ and they’re misogynistic fuckwads who think women owe them sex.”
Astaroth’s fingers dug into his pillow as he contemplated ripping it apart. “You think I’m a misogynistic fuckwad?”
She blew a hank of hair out of her face, then gave him a mean smile. “They like fedoras is all I’m saying.”
She was likely kidding, but Astaroth’s irritation was spiraling out of control, heading in too many illogical directions. What was he really angry about? The hat? The dismissive way she spoke about beating him up?
Or was it because he’d come to trust, admire, and—curse it—like her, and that memory had been the emotional equivalent of getting punted in the crotch? Which she had done after the throat punch, he now recalled.
Was his anger even directed entirely at her? When he remembered the cynicism he’d felt facing her in those woods, his stomach churned.
Rather than performing a more in-depth interrogation of that uncomfortable feeling, Astaroth barreled on with the argument. “So you do think I’m a misogynistic fuckwad. Even more laughably, you think I’m a celibate one.” The gall. He’d been bedding men, women, and nonbinary folks of multiple species for centuries and doing a grand job of it. Nothing but rave reviews.
Calladia’s cheeks turned pinker, and a combative light shone in her eyes. “That’s what you’re upset about?” The humorous edge to her voice was gone; she wasn’t teasing any longer, but picking up the gauntlet he’d thrown down. “Not that you might be a misogynist, but that I might think you’re not getting laid on the regular?”
“No—”
“I must have missed your travel concubines,” she continued, voice rising. “Or did you leave your Fleshlight in your other pants?”
“I don’t even know what a Fleshlight is.” And he’d never employed travel concubines, of all things.
Calladia poked him in the chest, a jab he felt through the fabric of his robe. “Well, let me tell you something, Casanova. I don’t think you’re a misogynist, for the record, but you clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed and are determined to make it my problem. I have zero interest in that bullshit, especially when I haven’t had coffee yet, so you and your attitude can go meet your hand in the bathroom and work it out.”
Lucifer, she was mean. Agitated emotions churned inside Astaroth’s chest like leaves in a cyclone. His skin tingled where she’d poked him, and the fury in her expression was sending mixed signals to his body. He wanted her to yell at him some more, pull his hair, maybe even slap him, and then he wanted to shut her up with his mouth and taste the full force of her passion.
Succumbing to instinct, Astaroth grabbed her hand and pulled until her finger hit his pectoral again. “Harder,” he said.
Calladia’s eyes widened. “What?”
“You heard me. Do it harder.” He licked his lips. “Make me feel it.”
Calladia’s breath hitched. Complicated emotions flitted across her face. This wasn’t just anger; whatever madness had gripped him had her in its claws as well.
He had a premonition: This could destroy me.
She could destroy me.
Astaroth didn’t care. “Come on,” he said, low and challenging. “Hurt me.”
Calladia hesitated, but not for long. She was a creature of passion, after all, and she never retreated from a fight. “You,” she said, jabbing him in the chest, “are obnoxious.”
“More,” he said, leaning in. He grabbed a handful of her golden hair, winding it around his wrist, and Calladia’s eyelids grew heavy as her lips parted.
She drilled her finger into his chest again, harder this time. Not hard enough to bruise, though he wished it would. “You’re an arrogant, volatile prick, and you drive me insane.”
“Same,” he gritted.
Another poke. “You’re a conceited know-it-all.”
“Takes one to know one,” he shot back.
She glared as she delivered the coup de gr?ce. “Your cane sword is tacky, and you have horrible taste in hats.”
Astaroth bared his teeth. “Take that back.”
“Make me,” she said, a challenging light in her eyes.
He would enjoy trying, but that wasn’t what he wanted now. Watching her blown pupils and flushed cheeks, the rapid heaving of her breaths, he wanted to push her. See what would happen if she snapped. “Why would I do that,” he asked, tightening his grip on her hair, “when you can just take what you want?”
Her eyes flared. The shared memory hung suspended between them, his words an echo of another time, another place. That time, she’d declared herself his enemy. This time . . .
Calladia made an incoherent screeching sound, fisted the lapels of his robe, and hauled him in for a searing kiss.
TWENTY
Astaroth’s mouth was hot against Calladia’s. He kissed her furiously, and she matched his aggression with her own. They licked and ate at each other in a mutual devouring. When Astaroth’s tongue sank into her mouth, Calladia sucked on it, then bit his lower lip.
Astaroth groaned, then bit her back just as hard. There would be no quarter given on either side.
Calladia didn’t want mercy. She wanted to make him feel the same churning, burning need eating her up. Anger and aggression had melted into a lust so powerful, it scalded her skin and sent need pulsing through her.