His emotions have gone from smooth and mostly pleasant to a tight tangled mess. There's guilt at making Alaric worry, but also at having done what he did, and worry that Alaric will be displeased with him. He's very, very tempted to put the bracelet back on, but if he does he won't know how badly he's messing up, and that'd probably be worse.

He folds his arms instead, looking down instead of at Alaric.

"I met people first? And uh, made sure they were fine. And not creepy." It's not technically a lie, he did meet them first. He just also jumped right into sex on that first meeting. It was fine, Caleb used his empathy to feel what they were feeling and he enjoyed it because they did. But afterwards he felt guilty and embarrassed, like he'd done something wrong. "I just... I'm really not that into sex on my own."

Using his empathy was the only way he could think of meeting quota without it being a bad experience.