by Cindy Dees
She could picture what Griffin described, could smell and taste the metallic tang of the dust. Stress tightened across the back of her neck, and she took the slow, calming breaths he’d taught her.
Her heartbeat steadied. Slowed.
Another breath.
She eased her eye to the sight and slipped her finger through the trigger guard. She reached up with her left hand to insert the wind adjustment. Everything else fell away from her, leaving her in a bubble of silence and stillness. It was just her and the target, linked by her weapon and its hair-thin crosshairs.
She squeezed gently.
The weapon bucked on its tripod.
“Dead center,” Kettering announced, peering through binoculars. “Nice shot, Tate. Keep it up.” Kettering strolled away to stand behind Lily at the other end of the firing line.
“Hark. Was that praise from the block of ice?” she muttered.
“Aww, Cal’s not that bad. Wait till you meet the instructors at BUD/S.”
“You always assume I’m going to be the one who gets sacrificed to BUD/S.” She propped herself up on an elbow to stare at him. “Why is that?”
He shrugged. “You would be the worst-case scenario for the teams.”
She spied Kettering heading back in their direction and flopped back down beside her rifle, muttering. “Add that to the agenda for our conversation later.”
What did he mean by that? Worst case? Her? Was she that hopelessly not cut out to be a SEAL?
Chapter 6
Later came well after dark that night when Kettering finally declared them done for the day. Griffin and the other guys had just spent hours chasing the women around in the dark, using NODs—night optical devices—and teaching them how to erase their own tracks. They were at least a mile from camp in a thick stand of brush and towering pine forest.
The women had caught on fast to stealthy movement. Really fast. As if it came naturally to women in a way it didn’t with men. It almost made a guy wonder if there were certain skills and tasks women were more suited for than men.
Nah. Men were better than women at all things physical.
Except even as he had the thought, he knew deep down in his gut it wasn’t true.
It was an unsettling revelation.
As the others tromped loudly back toward beers or beds, Griffin touched Sherri’s arm and gestured for her to stay behind with him. They sank down slowly into the bushes until the others had moved out of sight.
When silence had fallen around them and the night creatures were starting to chirp tentatively once more, he said quietly, “We need to talk.”
“Duh, Einstein,” she retorted.
He laughed under his breath in spite of himself. He did enjoy her sense of humor when she cut it loose. Most of the time she was too polite to say what was really on her mind. Pulling the NODs up on top of his head, he stood up. She did the same.
“You go first,” she surprised him by saying.
Crap. He hated having to talk about touchy-feely stuff in general, and having to talk about it with the source of the problem was worse. But it had to be done. One of the cardinal rules on the teams was never to let tension between yourself and a teammate fester until it rotted team morale.
He took a deep breath and said bluntly, “Am I wrong in sensing that there’s something between the two of us? As in attraction?”
Sherri went perfectly still. “Is this a trap?”
“No. It’s an honest question.”
“Is this part of my training?”
“No, dammit!” he burst out. “You’re messing with my head like nobody’s business, and I’m trying to confront the problem and deal with it before it gets both of us in trouble.”
“For real?”
“Yes. For real!” He exhaled in frustration. “What does it take for you to believe a guy?”
Her shoulders slumped. “It’s not you. It’s me. I get defensive when men compliment me or try to talk earnestly with me. I always assume they’re putting a move on me.”
“Why?” He sensed she might just have revealed more about herself than she’d intended to.
“Because they usually are?” she retorted.
She rustled in the darkness. He was tempted to pull his NODs back over his eyes to get a better look at her. She mumbled, “Let’s just say that spending a lifetime having men hit on me has made me a bit cynical.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
“Really? Do men hit on you all the time, too, Griffin?”
A burst of laughter escaped him. “You never fail to surprise me.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
He considered her question. “Mostly good. You women are performing better physically than I would have ever guessed women could.”
“But…” she prompted.
He shrugged. “I’ll admit I was surprised when you freaked out in the pool.”
“I don’t know what happened. I swim all the time.”
“You don’t like loss of control,” he observed. “The drowning evolution forces you to deal with not being in full control of your body.”
Sherri was silent. Thoughtful. Then, “You may have a point.”
“Ya think? I’ve only been doing this for most of my adult life. Perhaps I might know what I’m talking about.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” she said mildly. “I was just thinking out loud.”
He subsided. “Fair enough.”
Silence fell between them. How the hell was he supposed to circle the conversation back around to his original question…which she had yet to answer?
Sherri leaned back against the trunk of a huge pine tree. He did the opposite, stepping toward the tree until he was well inside her personal space. He didn’t touch her, though. If she wanted to pivot to either side to escape him, she was free to do so.
Except she didn’t. Instead, she gazed up at him as if she was trying to read his mind. If he wasn’t mistaken, her breathing accelerated.
She was totally as into him as he was into her.
But how to get her to admit it?
Using the tip of his index finger, he traced the curve of her cheek. Then trailed it down the column of her neck. Across one collarbone, outlined by the soft cotton of her T-shirt. Then he dragged his fingers down her arm, noting with amusement when goose bumps lifted on her skin in the wake of his touch.
“Admit it, Sherri. You like me.”
“I do, actually. I find you smart and your store of knowledge endlessly interesting.”
He smiled a little. “Chicken.”
“Who are you calling a chicken?” she flared.
“You. You’re a big ol’ chicken, Sherri Tate.”
“Have you noticed what course I’m currently training for?” she replied tartly.
“You’re afraid of men. So why do you want to surround yourself with the biggest, scariest ones you can find? Are you pulling some deep psychological junk where you force yourself to face your greatest fear?”
Sherri stared up at him in what he could only interpret as shock.
Holy crap. Was that it? Had he accidentally hit the nail on the head? He’d just been talking out of his ass, trying to get a rise out of her.
Very quietly, he asked, “Why are you afraid of men, Sherri?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. I think maybe it does.”
She exhaled hard. “I don’t like men crawling all over me all the time.”
He frowned. “Does it bother you when I touch you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She glared up at him. “I have no idea, and that bugs me most of all.”
Ahh. He smiled a little and ducked his head to capture her gaze, which was currently pointed at his combat boots. Relucta
ntly, she lifted her gaze to meet his.
“Is it possible that you’re attracted to me in spite of me being a man?” he tried.
“Yes, dammit,” she spat out in exasperation.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I don’t want to like you!”
That made him laugh aloud. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t want to like you, either. But there it is. The heart wants what it wants.”
“Since when are you a romantic?” she demanded.
“Aww, honey. Just because I run around in the woods killing stuff for a living doesn’t mean I don’t like the feel of a woman in my arms, or that I don’t want to share my bed with one from time to time.”
“From time to time?” Sherri snorted. “You sure know how to woo a lady there, Sparky.”
“Hey. My life doesn’t allow for long-term relationships. I’m just trying to keep it real.”
“Why not? Lots of SEALs are married.”
“Huh. Have you seen the divorce rate? Or heard the arguments? Don’t kid yourself. It’s hell being married to one of us.”
“Why’s that?”
“We come out of the field wired too damned tight for the civilian world, we expect our families to follow orders like our men, and I’m told we’re shut down emotionally.”
“You don’t seem shut down to me.”
“You’re seeing me in my native environment. Apparently, in the civilian world, men like me tend not to engage emotionally with others.”
She lifted one foot and placed it flat against the tree trunk behind her. “So, if I saw you in, say, a restaurant or a bar, I’d think you were a gigantic jerk?”
“Oh, no. You’d think I was handsome and suave and sophisticated. You’d want to go home with me, get me naked, and take me to bed.”
Sherri’s laugh was music across his skin. No matter what else she might be, she was attracted to him like a moth to a goddamned flame.
He leaned in closer, planting his right hand on the rough tree bark beside her head. She shocked him by settling her hands on his waist, and he stopped breathing. Literally.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she said. “It’s against the rules.”
He exhaled. “SEALs live to break rules.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Danger is our middle name.”
“But—”
He closed the remaining distance between them, pausing only long enough to whisper, “SEALs don’t get caught. It’s what we’re trained to do.”
He felt her hesitation as her breath feathered lightly across his lips.
“Do you have the daring to be a SEAL, Sherri?”
His dare hung between them, in that inch-wide gap between their mouths. Would she seize the moment or not? They both knew she wanted to kiss him again.
Without warning, she surged forward, pushing off the tree and flinging her arms around his neck. Her mouth closed on his, and suddenly they were kissing wildly. They went from zero to sixty in way under a second.
His arms wrapped around her, dragging her higher against him, fitting their bodies together. She kissed him with all of herself, moving sinuously against him, her belly rubbing his, her pelvis pressing deliciously against the hard bulge behind his zipper. Great ghosts almighty, he wanted this woman bad.
The scent of her filled his head until he was drunk with it. He plunged his tongue into her mouth, trying to capture the taste of her. Her tongue spiraled sexily around his, and his knees damn near buckled out from underneath him.
“You’re so effing hot,” he ground out.
“Have you looked in the mirror?” she panted back.
He tugged her T-shirt out of her pants and slipped his hand underneath the soft fabric to touch the even softer flesh beneath. Her back was slender but ridged in muscle, her skin like velvet beneath his hard, callused palms. He pushed the fabric up, out of the way, desperate to get naked with her. To hold the wonder of her. To lose himself in her glorious body.
She arched into his arms, groaning in the back of her throat. She did want him as bad as he wanted her. He was pretty sure he’d never experienced a sexier kiss than this. He swirled his tongue even deeper into her mouth, and she returned the favor eagerly. Passionately. Openly.
For a woman who was wary of men in general, she kissed like she couldn’t get enough of him. Which made it all the hotter. Knowing that she reserved this reaction for him…
Violent possessiveness flared low in his gut, rocking him to his core. He didn’t get possessive of women. He enjoyed a little time in their bed. Had a little fun. Hell, a lot of fun. And in the morning, he was gone.
But this woman was a fiery addiction in his blood. All he could think of was getting more, and yet more, of her. He felt himself falling into an unfamiliar pit of need and longing. This might just be the one who did in Griffin Caldwell, bachelor extraordinaire—
“Grif! Tate!”
God damn it. Kettering had come back looking for them.
Griffin jerked back, panting, and Sherri brushed a frantic hand across her mouth. Urgently, she stuffed her T-shirt back into her pants.
“Yo! We’re over here. In your two o’clock!” Griffin called back, yanking the NODs back over his eyes quickly. Sherri did the same.
“You two okay?”
“Yep. Just having a little conversation. Clearing the air.”
Kettering jogged up to them and looked back and forth between them. Thank goodness the NODs covered their eyes, and the boss man couldn’t see the lust that still had to be flaring in both of their stares. “Glad to hear you’re working things out. You two have been out of sync. I need you to get it together and work as a team.”
“Yes, sir,” Sherri said contritely. “That’s what we’re trying to do.”
“Fall in behind me, Tate. You can bring up the rear, Grif. Let’s see how quietly you can make your way back to base camp.”
Kettering turned around to head home, and Griffin waited for Sherri to move off in front of him. Which was for the best. Maybe by the time they got back to the compound, his massive hard-on would have subsided enough for him to walk normally. In the meantime, he would enjoy the sight of Sherri’s juicy derriere as she practiced the silent, heel-to-toe stride of the Special Forces. Lit up in bright lime-green, her heart-shaped tush was a sight for sore eyes. Too bad it couldn’t do anything for his painfully throbbing crotch.
As he murmured the occasional instruction on how to signal to the person behind her to watch out for a log or a low-hanging branch, the majority of his thoughts focused on that incendiary kiss.
He and Sherri still hadn’t figured out what the hell they were going to do about the smoking-hot attraction between them. Unfortunately, he probably wasn’t going to sleep properly again until he scratched that particular itch.
* * *
By night, Sherri lost herself in erotic dreams of Griffin. Many of them completed the tryst in the woods that would have happened had Cal Kettering not interrupted them. Sometimes in her dreams, Griffin laid her down on a soft bed of pine needles and made long, slow love to her. In others, he backed her up against that tree and pounded into her until she woke, gasping with pleasure.
But by day, Sherri existed in a miasma of pain and sweat interspersed with freezing cold, wet, and sand. Griffin seemed to have redoubled his efforts to be a jerk while teaching her.
She hoped it was because Kettering seemed to be keeping an eagle eye on the two of them, and Griffin was protecting both of their careers from the boss. For which—if that was Grif’s motive—she was grateful.
But it was also entirely possible that he was mad at her for luring a moment of weakness out of him. In the mind of a man like Griffin Caldwell, any lust between them would undoubtedly be her fault. Heaven forbid that a man should be expected to control his own libido.
&
nbsp; Or maybe he was right. Maybe she was unfairly projecting her general dislike of men onto Griffin.
Her desperately erotic dreams continued unabated, and she found herself sleeping less and less. Better, though, to stagger through each day too exhausted to think than to lose her rested mind in daydreams of hot sex with her oh-so-sexy instructor.
In a way, she was grateful to Griffin for his renewed assholery. It made keeping up the charade of distant professionalism a tiny bit easier to maintain.
But in odd moments, when he caught her by surprise or when she turned suddenly and caught him by surprise, their gazes met for brief instants of naked honesty. The attraction between them was still there, still as strong as ever. It pulsed and throbbed relentlessly between them, a magnetic pull that never wavered. Never weakened. It was maddening.
But there wasn’t a damned thing they could do about it. Not with Cal Kettering watching every move they made with the predatory alertness of a hawk.
Her life settled into a weird dichotomy of desperate desire for Griffin at night and deeply despising him during the day. The only reason she didn’t lose her mind completely was that love and hate were ultimately the two sides of the same passionate coin, and one was not far from the other.
As the intensity of the training increased, Griffin was always there, right in her face, telling her she wasn’t good enough, whispering in her ear that she should just quit now and save them all the hassle. That she was arrogant and stupid for thinking she could be more than just a pretty ornament in this man’s Navy.
Problem was, she’d grown up with that crap. Her father had been a Vietnam veteran and a total SOB. Looking back as an adult, she could see how broken he’d been. PTSD didn’t have a name back then, and admitting to “combat fatigue” had been a sign of weakness. Sherri’s mother had mostly checked out of dealing with her father by tranquilizing herself into a stupor and moving through life on autopilot.
But young Sherri, desperate for Daddy’s approval, had kept trying to make him happy. Kept trying to make him proud of her. No matter how much she accomplished, though, it was never enough. Perhaps that was why she’d become such an outrageous overachiever. When one sport didn’t please Daddy, try another. When straight A’s didn’t make him proud, go for A+’s. When being pretty wasn’t enough, start winning beauty pageants.
