Beyond the Limit

by Cindy Dees

  Anna and Lily headed straight for the showers, but Sherri made her way to the gym, where foam rollers were stored. She wanted to roll out some of the kinks in her shoulder before calling it a day. Assuming the sadists training them didn’t have some dastardly night evolution up their sleeves.

  The hard foam rolled across the kinks in her upper back, and it hurt so good. She groaned in pain and relief as the knots worked out.

  “You gotta quit making noises like that around us guys,” a voice said from just behind her. Griffin.

  She lurched and slid off the roller, her rear end thumping unceremoniously on the concrete floor. “You startled me,” she mumbled.

  “A SEAL should never be startled. You should scan your surroundings continuously, know where everyone in the room is at all times. You should spot every entrance and possible egress point, identify where an attacker would ambush you, and know what your first couple of moves will be in response to any attack.”

  She pulled a face. “You’re singing to the choir.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I’m a woman. Worse, I’m a decent-looking woman working in a largely male world. I already do most of what you described in self-defense.”

  Griffin grabbed a roller and lay down beside her, rolling his hamstrings across the foam cylinder. “I thought sexual harassment has been addressed pretty aggressively in the military.”

  “It has. But too many men seem to think I’m an exception to the rules.”

  “Is that why you want to be a SEAL? So you can kick their asses?”

  She shrugged as she shifted the roller to her other deltoid muscle. “It wouldn’t suck as a side benefit.”

  “Speaking of which, I apologize for kissing you. That was out of line.”

  “No worries. The way I remember it, there were two voluntary participants.” Besides, it had been more of a mutual collision than a boy-kissed-the-girl moment.

  He nodded and turned on his side to roll out his right quad.

  “Tell me something, Griffin. What hangs you up so badly about the idea of women as SEALs?”

  “It’ll change the team dynamics, that’s for sure.”

  “You mean like sex and attraction and flirting?”

  He shrugged, declining to answer. But clearly she’d hit the nail on the head.

  She responded, “Women have worked in various professions with men upwards of forever, and everyone has managed to get their work done. More to the point, women do all sorts of military jobs side by side with men, and have for decades. But for the most part, everyone manages to keep their libido in check. Give me a better reason than that.”

  He was silent a long time and then blurted out all at once, “I don’t think a woman can have the guts of a SEAL.”

  “What does that mean?” she challenged.

  “I don’t know how to describe it. SEALs have…courage beyond the ordinary. They’ll sacrifice themselves for the right cause. It sounds lame to call it heroism, but that’s basically what it is.”

  “And you don’t think women have that?”

  “Not the same way a SEAL does.”

  How the heck was she supposed to prove that she could be a hero? Nobody could really know how they would react in one of those split-second life-or-death moments until one presented itself.

  Taking advantage of Griffin’s rare talkative mood, she changed subjects and asked him something else that had been bugging her.

  “So how is this training going to work?” she asked. “Are you guys going to yell at us every day and then be civil with us every night?”

  He stopped rolling and sat up, stretching one arm across his body and pulling on it with the other. She was a little surprised at how flexible he was. She’d heard rumors that SEALs practiced yoga and even took the occasional ballet lesson. Maybe those rumors were true.

  Griffin finished stretching the first shoulder and went to work on the second one before he answered, “We’re in a weird position of having to simulate BUD/S for you three and also teach you how to get through it.”

  “I get that,” she replied. “It just gives me mental whiplash sometimes.”

  “The BUD/S instructors will do that, too. Particularly in Phases Two and Three. If you survive the first phase, they’ll want to get to know you. See if you’re the kind of guy—or gal—they’d want to work with. How you react to ribbing or to friction inside a team. Every now and then someone washes out in Phase Two or Three just because they’re assholes nobody wants to work with.”

  “So even if I pass the physical requirements, the boys’ club can toss me out simply because they don’t like me?”

  He met her stare reluctantly. “It’ll be different in your case.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because you’re a woman. And we’re under orders to graduate one.”

  “What if I want to get through all three phases on my own merits?”

  Griffin started to snort but cut the noise off quickly.

  Not quickly enough. She still heard his skepticism.

  “Indulge me for a minute, Griffin. Let’s play a what-if game. What if I do make it through the physical conditioning phase for real? Then what? Do you think the instructors will give me a fair shot at the swimming and land phases of training?”

  He looked her square in the eye. “It’ll depend on who they bring in to instruct you. Most of the instructors are older guys. They’ve been on the teams a while and have aged out or been injured out of the field. They’re not going to be fans of a female SEAL.”

  “What if I can do the job as well as the guys? Then would they accept me?”

  Griffin’s eyebrows drew together. “I honestly don’t know.”

  “What about you? If you were my instructor, and I could actually pull my weight on a team, would you let me work with you and your guys?”

  “It’s not as if I have a choice in the matter. This shit’s rolling downhill from the Secretary of Defense herself.”

  “We’re playing what-if. What if I make it all the way through BUD/S because I deserve to be there fair and square. Would you work with me then?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He didn’t sound the least bit pleased about his answer, but warmth pulsed through her all the same. He’d said yes. He would work with her if she made it through training. It was a hell of a goal to shoot for.

  “Maybe you’re not as giant a jerk as I thought you were, Caldwell.”

  He aimed a disgusted look at her but didn’t deign to answer. She would take that as a score for the female half of the human race.

  Griffin started rolling his head around and rubbing at the back of his neck.

  “Turn around,” she ordered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  She climbed to her knees. “Turn around. I can fix your neck.”

  “Huh. Break it, more like.”

  She grinned. “Don’t tempt me. But seriously, I can help.”

  He turned around, sitting cross-legged in front of her. She put her hands on the slabs of his deltoid muscles, and they tensed, hard as rocks. Lord, the heat of that man. It rolled off him in waves, just like the potent sex appeal that poured off him every time he looked at her.

  In any other situation, she’d have been all over flirting with this man. Getting him into her bed ASAP. As it was, she was still half-tempted to go for the gusto with him, instructor or not. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a man—smart, funny, handsome, and sexy as hell. He was even kind and decent, if reluctantly so. The man had an ironclad sense of honor, and she suspected that he wasn’t the kind to lie to her. In fact, he would be pretty darned near perfect if he weren’t so damned determined to destroy her dream.

  She probed the muscles across the back of his neck lightly until she found a giant knot in one of them.

 
“This is old scar tissue,” she commented. “How long have you been running around with this knot? It must give you constant pain.”

  “Pain is optional. I choose not to notice it,” he muttered as she dug her thumb into the mass of scarred fascia to start breaking it up. “Ouch!” he yelped.

  “Hang in there, Mr. Optional Pain. Just a few more seconds.”

  The scar tissue started to release. It felt like a zipper unzipping, and she smoothed the pad of her thumb down its length more gently. “Try that,” she murmured.

  Tentatively, he rolled his head. “Whoa. That is better.”

  He rose to his knees and turned around to stare at her. What was that expression in his eyes? Gratitude? Confusion?

  Huh. What did he have to be confused about? Although, Lord knew, he confused the hell out of her. One second she wanted to strangle him, and the next she wanted to have hot monkey sex with the man.

  “Where did you learn how to do that?” he asked.

  Hot monkey sex? Oh. Wait. He was talking about fixing his neck.

  “A fantastic soft-tissue chiropractor at the Olympic Training Center showed me how to do it.” The words came out more breathless than she wanted them to, and darned if her cheeks weren’t heating up.

  “That would be a handy skill in the field. Can you teach me how to do it?” he asked.

  If she wasn’t mistaken, his voice was huskier than usual, and his breath was coming faster and lighter than before.

  “Sure. It takes a little practice, but it’s not hard.”

  “I have a staff meeting with Cal in”—he glanced down at his watch—“two minutes ago. Shit. Show me later?” he called over his shoulder, already sprinting for the gym’s door.

  “Yes!” she called back.

  * * *

  The next day, they got to play with grenades. Well, training grenades that made a lot of noise and threw bits of paper all over the place. The three women and each of their swim buddies stood inside a concrete box about neck high and eight feet square. It was the far-left hand of five safety pits in front of a pockmarked strip of dirt about fifty meters, a little over one hundred fifty feet, long.

  Griffin put the first training grenade in Sherri’s hand and then stepped behind her, his front plastered against her back. Heat and muscle surrounded her, and all of a sudden she wasn’t breathing quite right.

  Was it normal for SEAL instructors to get so up close and personal with the trainees, or was he coming up with excuses to snuggle up to her? Were she not so wildly attracted to him, she might just be bothered by how…physically…he was teaching her. But as it was, her pulse leaped erratically every time he touched her.

  She murmured, “We have to stop meeting like this, Mr. Caldwell.”

  “Cut it out.”

  “Cut out what? Can’t a girl enjoy a big strong man’s arms around her?”

  He huffed in her ear, but didn’t sound as convincingly irritated as he should have. She smiled to herself.

  Griffin instructed, “Put your left arm straight out and up in front of you like this.” He reached around her with his left hand and guided her left arm into the correct position. His forearm rubbed against her ribs, perilously close to her breast. Yowza.

  “Draw your right arm back by your ear like Jojo demonstrated before.”

  She turned her head to answer and froze. Her mouth was about three inches from his. Double yowza. She managed to choke out, “The motion Jojo showed us is just like throwing a shot put. Which is one of the heptathlon events I’ve competed in for years.”

  “Perfect. You don’t want to throw a grenade like a baseball, or it will roll after it hits the ground, and who knows where it will end up. You want to lob it in a high arc so it’ll drop to the ground and stick where it lands.”

  She probably knew more about the math of the perfect trajectory for maximizing travel of a heavy spherical object than he did, but she let him adjust her arms and explain what a good grenade throw looked like because it felt so blessedly fantastic to have his hands on her like this.

  He stepped back from her, and she actually felt a little…bereft.

  “Okay. Give it a try,” Griffin directed. “Pull the pin, assume the position I showed you, and let ’er rip.”

  She went through her highly practiced shot-put motion and heaved as hard as she could. The grenade, substantially lighter than an 8.8 pound shot, sailed downrange.

  Bang! A puff of white smoke marked where her grenade had fallen. Griffin stared at the smoke, his jaw as hard as the concrete safety pit around them. She would take that as approval.

  Jojo was the first to speak. “Dang, Tate. That’s a solid thirty meters out. Good arm you’ve got there. Not like mine, of course, but not half bad.” The guy said that as if she, Anna, and Lily weren’t all outstanding athletes. Sherri bit back a sarcastic comeback.

  She glanced sidelong at Griffin, trying to not look too smug. But she probably failed.

  He simply turned and climbed out of the pit, heading for the parked Jeeps. She scrambled to catch up and tagged along beside him. After all, they were swim buddies and required to go everywhere together. As he reached into the back of the Jeep for a wooden box, she couldn’t resist poking. “Aww, c’mon. That was a decent throw. Admit it.”

  He hefted the crate onto his shoulder and headed for the safety pit at the right end of the line, farthest from everyone else. His jaw muscles had yet to relax after her throw.

  “What’s in the box, Santa Claus?”

  “Inert grenades weighted to feel exactly like live ones,” Griffin answered shortly. Poor man hated it when she succeeded at anything.

  “Get used to it, big guy. Girls are coming soon to a team near you.”

  He set the box down outside the safety pit, and she stepped inside ahead of him. Her foot kicked what felt like a rock, and she glanced down. “Oh, look. There’s a grenade on the ground in here.”

  She bent down to pick it up, and out of nowhere, Griffin grabbed her T-shirt and yanked her backward, propelling her clear of the pit. He threw her so hard she flew a good ten feet through the air, landing flat on her back. Then his entire body weight smashed down on top of her. The impact drove all the air from her lungs. She tried to inhale, but nothing happened. Crap.

  As panic slammed into her, a tremendous explosion deafened her.

  Kaboom!

  Griffin grunted on top of her.

  She stared up at him at a range measured in inches, and he stared back.

  “Y’okay?” he bit out.

  At last, she was able to suck in a meaningful lungful of air. “Uh-huh,” she gasped. “You?”

  “I’m good.”

  Their bodies were mashed together in a blatantly sexual fashion, his thighs between hers, his junk pressed against her lady parts. She knew the exact moment when her body and their position registered on him, because his eyes widened abruptly. Just as suddenly, his expression took on a hooded intensity that made her breath come unevenly.

  “What was that?” she managed to choke out. “The explosion, I mean.”

  “Live grenade. You activated it when you kicked it.”

  “Oops.” She added lamely, “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault. You didn’t leave live ordnance behind. Whoever used this facility last is going to hear about leaving a dud grenade lying around, however.”

  He rolled off her, leaving her feeling needy and wanting. Why oh why did he have to feel so good? With a quick bunch and flex of muscles, he pressed to his feet. She followed suit.

  Oh. My. God.

  Where she’d been standing an instant before, an actual crater now gaped.

  “That thing could have blown me to bits,” she said breathlessly. “You saved my life.”

  He turned to face her, glaring at her nose-to-nose, and ground out, “That’s what it means to be
a SEAL. And that’s why you’ll never be a real one. You don’t have the heart of a SEAL.”

  He whirled and stomped away as the other men and women came running. Then the guys chased her and the other women away from the row of pits to perform a safety check of the whole area.

  Shaking, Sherri had only one thought running through her mind over and over.

  Griffin Caldwell doesn’t know the first thing about my heart.

  Chapter 5

  Griffin alternated between pleasant dreams of a lithe female smelling of soap and sunshine pressed against him, and nightmares of not reaching Sherri in time to knock her away from the unexploded grenade. He woke up groaning with lust from the first and sweating in fear from the second, his heart racing in something suspiciously akin to panic. Either way, it sucked.

  He’d had plenty of close calls over the years, plenty of oh shit moments, but glancing down to see Sherri reaching for that grenade had literally made his heart miss a beat.

  He had to get over this concern for her. Find a way to think of her as just another one of the guys. Except she wasn’t a guy. Hell, she wasn’t even one of his teammates for whom he would lay his life down without a second thought. Why then had he jumped for her in that damned fool move and nearly gotten himself killed, too? He could’ve just yelled at her to back away.

  The answer was staring him in the face. But that didn’t mean he had to like it. He was attracted to her. Hell. He might even be a little obsessed with her at this point. Worse than that, he actually would’ve liked her under any other circumstances. She had a dry sense of humor that emerged at stressful moments and would serve her well as a SEAL, not to mention she was smart and kind and generous. Dammit.

  If only she’d been dumb as a post or just plain mean. Then he would have had a decent reason to hate her guts. But as it was, he was finding it harder and harder to work up a righteous froth of indignation at her being here, invading his world. It didn’t help matters one bit that she was showing signs of fitting in seamlessly.