Spin Devil

Rising, he left her for a minute and came back wearing his jeans and white cotton shirt, his jacket in his hand. He handed it to her. “Here, put this on,” he said softly.

Cleo did so, slipping her arms into the long sleeves then pulling it closed tightly across her chest. The jacket smelled like him—leather, beer, man and cigarettes. She made it a priority to memorize his scent, drew in a deep breath and felt drugged, intoxicated by it.

Sebastian sat down beside her, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side. He eyed her profile in silence. “We’re going to have to talk about this, Cleo.”

“Yes,” Cleo agreed, nodding slowly.

He stared blindly out at the ocean for a moment and then back at her. “I just don’t know what to say,” he confessed.

She met his gaze and thought how beautiful his eyes were. How deep and dark. There was no trace of the strong, unyielding man she knew. His features were still strong, still masculine and powerful, but much less menacing to her now. “Let’s not say anything then.”

Tightening his hold around her shoulders he smiled, a slow cocky grin, so rare on his face yet so familiar to her—for she knew it by memory. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Hey, are we spinning the devil again?” Luella asked.

“Hell no, this is much better,” Jason said. He was sprawled naked between Haley and Luella’s nude, sweaty bodies. David sat beside them, half-dressed and pensive.

“Your June wedding is definitely off, David, I’m sorry to have to say,” Luella said matter-of-factly. “Your bride will be really pissed when she finds out you fucked us.”

“Just shut the hell up,” he grumbled.

Haley laughed. “How convenient to consider the decency of your actions only after you came in my mouth, David.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” David glowered at the red plush toy, almost buried in the sand now. “Fucking spin devil.”

Cleo turned to look at it, only its tail and chubby legs sticking out of the sand.

Yes, that mischievous spin devil. It had possessed them all. And yet the game and its red-tailed mascot had given Cleo something beautiful, something she could only be grateful for. Maybe the spin devil game had, in a way, helped her to admit all these feelings, wild and beautiful and scary, that Sebastian Russo stirred inside her—now and maybe always.

“I want you again,” Sebastian whispered, his breath scorching her ear. “God, I want you so much.”

Cleo closed her eyes at his words and felt yards of slow, dizzying swirls of desire travel along her body, spreading to touch every corner of her being as he slowly, hotly kissed her earlobe.

“I want you too,” she whispered to the air, to the wind, the sky, the ocean—and him.

“Let’s go inside.”

As Sebastian lifted a shrieking, smiling Cleo into his arms and carried her toward the two-story house, the four remaining friends looked at each other in amusement.

“Think it’s the love bug?” Haley asked, her eyes lively and glimmering.

“Yep,” Jason said, nodding in approval.

David shook his head vehemently, scowling at the toy on the sand, already forgotten by everyone except him. “It’s that damned spin devil.”

Several slaps and smacks landed playfully on the back of David’s head.

“Shut up, you old grump.”

“Get over it, babe. Wedding’s off.”

“Is that what you’re going to tell the blushing bride? ‘The spin devil made me do it’?”

r /> David watched the couple as they disappeared inside the house. If Sebastian and Cleo could make things work after years and years of heartache, then David could sure as hell make things right with his bride.

He smiled and nodded at his friends. “Hell yeah. It was the spin devil.”

The End