by Cindy Dees
For her part, Sherri seemed content to rest on top of him, her ear plastered to his chest over his heart.
Eventually, she murmured, “Who won the bet? I was a little too distracted to notice.”
He chuckled, relishing the feel of his chest rumbling against hers. It felt so natural to be lying here with her like this. Like they’d always been the two halves of a whole.
“Hell if I know,” he confessed. “I couldn’t have told you my own name, let alone who yelled first.”
“Hmm. I guess we’ll have to do it again, then, and pay more attention next time.”
“I like the way you think,” he drawled.
“When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
“A SEAL mindset all the way,” he quipped.
Except neither of them could remember who shouted first the second time, either.
They ran out of firewood and the fire burned low at about the same time the rain let up. Its drumming noise faded to a light patter, and Sherri finally rolled off him and sat up, looking around for her clothes. He lifted his hips and pulled her pants out from underneath him.
“Looking for these?” he asked lazily.
“Pants thief,” she teased.
“Honey, I’d take away all your clothes and make you run around naked all the time if I could.”
“Right back atcha. But the scratches and bug bites…” She shuddered. “No thank you.”
“You’re going to get plenty banged up in the field. You should get used to it.”
“That’s work. It’s different.”
He knew what she meant. In mission mode, he shut down physical sensation. Turned off things like pain and feelings. But here with her, like this, alone with the night stretching out forever around them, he could afford to let all that stuff in.
Huh. Did that mean he trusted her?
“Pass me my hoodie, will you?” she asked. “And here’s your T-shirt. I don’t know how it ended up all the way over here.” She picked up the black garment across the room and carried it back to him.
“You threw it in an excess of eagerness to get me naked,” he teased.
She smiled back. “Guilty as charged.”
“I’ll drive,” he offered.
She nodded and passed him the Jeep keys. They ran for it through the last of the rain, and he expertly guided the vehicle around potholes and cracks in the ruined road.
When they reached the main road back to the compound, he stopped the Jeep, turning off the headlights.
“What’s up?” she asked quickly, alert for danger.
In a corner of his mind, he took pride in the reflexes he’d helped her develop. “We’re about to return to the real world. Well, the training world, at any rate. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to have to go back to being my usual asshole self. I didn’t want you to think that this evening didn’t mean a hell of a lot to me or that I think any less of you.”
She nodded soberly. “I understand. Nothing has changed between us.”
He frowned and restarted the Jeep, pointing it at the cluster of buildings lit up against the night. Except something had changed. Everything had changed between them, in fact.
Problem was, he didn’t have a single solitary clue what to do about it.
Chapter 9
On its surface, the next morning was just like every other morning for Sherri. Up too early. Exercise too hard while being harassed nonstop. Achieve utter exhaustion. Realize it wasn’t even 8:00 a.m. yet.
Today’s late-morning training evolution involved being dropped over the edge of a motorized rubber dinghy into the ocean to tread water indefinitely. Which wouldn’t have been too bad except for the fifty-five degree water—approximately the same temperature as a glass of ice water—and her combat boots and fatigues weighing her down, impeding her swimming motions.
The combination of cold and exertion took a toll on the mind, interfering with focus. And then there was the fear—a take-your-pick smorgasbord of what to be afraid of. Fear of drowning. Fear of freezing. Fear of sharks. Fear of being lost in this vast, featureless ocean.
Truth be told, Sherri was getting used to being scared to death. It was as if she was becoming numb to it. When a stressful event presented itself to her these days, she found herself coldly assessing the risks and challenges, assuming it would hurt like hell, and then diving in.
Huh. Maybe this training stuff was starting to work after all.
Or maybe she was simply too damned cold, tired, and half-drowned to care if she lived or died anymore.
A motorized growl approached from behind her, and she turned around to face the dinghy as it came back to pick her up. Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes.
There were two kinds of pickups: the relatively civilized one where a boat pulled up beside her and someone reached down to haul her over the big side-roll of the dinghy. And then there was the running pickup.
In that one, she stuck her arm up in the air, and the dinghy motored past at high speed. Someone in the vessel snagged her arm on the fly, jerked her violently out of the water, and tossed her into the dinghy at upwards of twenty miles per hour. It made her arm feel like it was being torn out of the socket, and all she could think of was that if they missed plucking her out of the water, that huge outboard motor would run right over her and chop her body into tiny pieces of chum for the sharks.
They’d already practiced static and slow-speed pickups today. Which meant this time the instructors would be gunning the dinghy right at her head. She waited till the vessel was about a hundred feet away from her and bearing down on her fast to stick her arm up. She angled her body the way Griffin had taught her and waited for the impact.
Griffin’s forearm slammed against hers, and then she was flying up and out of the water like a fish on a hook, twisting midair. She slammed into the rubber bottom of the dinghy, knocking what little air she had in her lungs clean out of them.
Griffin grunted under his breath, “You good?”
She managed an affirmative and rolled to the side just in time to miss being flattened by Anna sailing over the side roll and smashing onto the deck.
For her part, Anna swore colorfully as she quickly rolled aside to avoid being Lily’s landing pad.
“All aboard!” Griffin shouted over the roar of the engine.
Sherri sat up, leaning back against the inflated side of the craft. Griffin plunked down beside her, plastering his entire right side against her left side. He was blessedly warm, and she caught herself curling into him to absorb every bit of heat she could suck from him.
Oops. She hoped Kettering hadn’t seen that momentary lapse on her part. She pulled back from Griffin belatedly, plastering her shoulder blades against the rubber at her back, forcing herself not to crawl into Griffin’s lap. But boy oh boy, it was tempting.
Cal yanked on the tiller, and the dinghy’s prow caught a wave and leaped out of the water. As they slammed back down to the ocean surface, Sherri scrambled to hook her fingers under the safety rope lashed down around the bottom edge of the dinghy’s deck. She barely managed to hook it before the boat went airborne and slammed down again, all but tossing her out.
Griffin stretched his arms out at shoulder height, hooking his hands under the rope lashed atop the inflated rubber rib. The move had the effect of looping his arm around her shoulders, both holding her down and drawing her more tightly against his side.
She risked a glance up at him and caught his brief, sidelong glance at her.
Everything is going to be the same between us in training after last night, huh? She smiled a little to herself and scooted her hip tighter against his.
She closed her eyes, grabbing every nanosecond of rest she could, and let her mind drift back to last night in Griffin’s arms. He’d been strong and gentle, wild and finessed. He’d made her feel valued and lusted a
fter, treasured and plundered.
If she’d had the slightest idea sex could be like that, she’d have been bedding SEALs a long, long time ago. Although she suspected what she and Griffin shared might not be typical of most SEAL sex.
One thing she knew for sure. She wanted more of that. A whole lot more.
How they were going to manage to sneak away without being discovered, she had no idea. But Griffin did swear SEALs were good at cheating and not getting caught. Surely between the two of them, they could finagle some time for themselves without anyone else knowing—
Except being with him was wrong.
It would put both of their careers at risk.
But with a fever of need burning her up like this, she couldn’t muster any will to care about her career. At all.
Am I really willing to sacrifice everything for this man?
The question exploded across her brain like a heat-seeking missile.
Stunned, she searched her heart for an answer, but found none as they raced ashore like bats out of hell.
Cal ran the dinghy right up onto the beach, executing a nifty maneuver to lift the propeller out of the water at the last second before it ran aground, and Sherri had no more time to think.
Griffin, Trevor, Axel, and the three women leaped out of the skidding vessel in a coordinated egress, using the vessel’s momentum to help them drag the dinghy all the way up the sandy beach to the weeds at the edge of the dunes a hundred feet back from the beach.
In combat conditions, they would hide the dinghy with a camo net and vegetation. They’d practiced doing that many times already, however, and today were allowed to skip that step.
Still seated in the rubber inflatable, Cal announced, “Take me to the Jeeps.”
Sherri groaned as the women and instructors hoisted the dinghy over their heads with Cal seated in it like a conquering hero. They jogged through the dunes, slogging through ankle-deep sand. Today, the vehicles were parked a quarter mile back from the beach.
It might not seem far, but carrying a boat, motor, man, and whatever water had accumulated in the dinghy in the course of their training evolution, over their heads no less, made that quarter mile suck rocks.
Anna muttered, “Cripes. What does Cal weigh, anyway?”
Axel replied, “I don’t know what you’re complaining for. Us guys already did our time in BUD/S hauling Zodiacs around over our heads. And here we are, having to do it again, like a bunch of raw recruits.”
Griffin retorted, “Aww, you know you love having all these pretty girls see how big and strong and manly you are, Axe. Or should I say Teddy Bear.”
Sherri took her cue along with the other women and commenced oohing and aahing.
Axel scowled. “If I didn’t think Cal would kick my butt for dropping him, I’d come over there right now and go homicidal teddy bear on your ass.”
Trevor commented wistfully, “Where’s Kenny when you need him? Surely a song about homicidal teddy bears would be a number one hit.”
Sherri hated to even think about the kind of lyrics Kenny would have come up with about that topic.
Everyone was laughing by the time they got to the parking lot and lowered Cal and the boat to the gravel so the boss could climb out.
Today, Sherri was in the back seat for the ride back to base. How Griffin managed to end up beside her without it looking contrived, she wasn’t quite sure. But again, she found herself plastered up against him. The now intimately familiar contours of his body pressed against her side, and she imagined how they looked backlit by firelight against the night.
“Thinking about last night?” he breathed in her ear.
“Mmm-hmm. How’d you know?” she murmured back.
“That look in your eyes. All soft and sexy and wistful.” He added, “You’d better cut it out, or someone’s going to ask what you’re thinking about.”
“What are you two whispering about back there?” Kettering demanded from the front passenger seat.
“I was just asking Tate if she was enjoying her training.”
“What’d she say?” Cal called back.
Sherri answered before Griffin could. “I told him I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a great time and how I hope there’s more where that came from.” She met Griffin’s gaze and lifted a suggestive eyebrow.
He smirked back at her.
“Guess we’ll just have to make your training harder,” Cal responded.
Sherri smiled widely, her gaze never leaving Griffin’s. “I’d love it harder. Bring it on.”
Griffin closed his eyes briefly as if her oblique dare brought him physical pain.
“You asked. The SEALs will deliver,” Cal commented, turning back around to face front.
“Gotta love the way those SEALs deliver,” she breathed.
A blunt object poked her in the side. Hard. She couldn’t resist muttering out of the side of her mouth, “Too bad that’s your finger.”
“Keep it up, and it won’t be,” Griffin muttered back.
“Promises, promises.”
Griffin’s only response was a low laugh that shivered down her spine and reverberated so pleasurably in her nether regions that she was forced to press her thighs tightly together to stop her entire body from undulating against his. Her breath caught, and her limbs felt even more heavy and boneless than they already had.
“Cut it out,” Griffin breathed.
She noticed he was balancing a clipboard in his lap and leaning his elbow into it. Hard.
Thank goodness she wasn’t the only one too turned on for words. Although she felt a certain sympathy for him as a man. She was able to hide her predicament better than he was. Taking pity on him, she did her best to hold herself perfectly still for the rest of the ride back to camp.
As the Quonset huts came into sight, Cal declared, “Showers then lunch, or lunch then showers. I don’t care which. We reconvene in an hour for advanced escape and evasion.”
* * *
Griffin had to do a little maneuvering, but he managed to convince Trevor and Kenny to shower first, along with Anna and Lily. He caught Sherri’s eye as she walked toward the showers to join the other women and jerked his head subtly toward the chow hall.
She veered inside. “What’s up?” she asked him.
“If you could be persuaded to eat now, the showers will be all ours in about twenty minutes.”
Her eyes went wide and then darkened with sharp desire. “Dang, you’re good.”
He honestly couldn’t remember what he ate. But he gulped it down in a haze of desire, vividly aware that Sherri was doing the same at the table in the corner that the girls had staked out for themselves.
Axel and Trevor came into the mess hall, and Griffin slipped out after flashing Sherri a hand signal to give him five minutes. She nodded back infinitesimally.
This was insane. They were acting like a couple of kids cutting class and sneaking out behind the school to make out. But he couldn’t find the resolve to stop. Sherri was a fire in his blood, flat out. She was the kind of woman he could almost see himself giving up the teams for someday—a thought so shocking he stumbled jogging down the steps of the chow hall.
Crap on a cracker. Had he found the one? Surely not. She was too stubborn, too independent, too prone to not doing what she was told to do. Life with her would be a challenge at best and frustrating as hell at worst.
He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Yes, she was mesmerizing to look at. But she was so much more than that. He found her endlessly fascinating—a mystery he might never solve, but one he would never tire of trying to unravel.
Locking the locker room door behind him, he stripped quickly and headed for the showers. Blow dryers were going in the women’s locker room, and thankfully, they cut off quickly. He heard Anna and Lily talking and laughing as they pa
cked up their gear, and then silence fell. He waited in an agony of anticipation for Sherri to join him and prayed fervently that Kettering wouldn’t catch them.
It was a hell of a risk to try this right underneath everyone’s noses. But that was why it would work. Nobody would think that he and Sherri would dare fool around right here in the middle of camp.
He heard movement in the women’s locker room. And then smooth, soft hands went around his waist and a naked, sleek, female form pressed against him from behind.
“Did you lock the door?” he managed to ask before Sherri completely stole his breath away.
“I did.”
Her hand slipped through the suds on his chest and slid lower, across his abs, which contracted so hard they hurt, and lower still. Her hand gripped his erection, and his knees all but buckled.
Her fist slid up and down his shaft, warm and slippery, and just about did him in then and there. He turned around in her arms, and his hands roved up and down the length of her back.
“You need soap,” he announced. He reached for the bar of soap and lathered her up until the two of them were sliding silkily against each other. It was so sensuous he forgot to breathe.
Sherri groaned against him, and her right leg rose to wrap around his hips in her hunger for more. He knew the feeling.
He grabbed her buttocks and lifted her up against the wall. She reached between them to guide him home, and he thrust forward eagerly. Her body was a hot glove, as slippery and sexy inside as out.
Her arms went around his neck, and she hung on for dear life as he pounded home again and again, seating himself deep and then deeper still within her. She started to shudder and her internal muscles gripped him, milking his shaft, begging him to join her in release.
Gritting his teeth, he held out. It took every ounce of self-discipline he possessed to let her come around him without joining her. But as her first wave of pleasure passed, he resumed moving in and out of the tight sheath of her body.
The water pounded down on his back, drenching them both in a shower of heat and steam that added to the overall luxuriousness of possessing Sherri and giving himself to her.
