“Having fun yet?” he asked her as conversationally as he could manage. Part of the game was to give trainees mental whiplash by switching in and out of screaming asshole mode.

“Hooyah,” she replied sardonically.

He grinned at her, genuinely enjoying himself. He loved being a SEAL, and he loved training like a SEAL. Besides, he knew what came next. She was about to learn the true meaning of being cold. And he got to sit back and enjoy this particular little show.

The Jeeps wound through the town of Holly Ridge and crossed the North Topsail Bridge onto Topsail Island, a narrow barrier island fronting the Atlantic Ocean. Sherri leaned her head back, eyes closed, the slender column of her throat exposed and tempting as hell. Everything about the woman was attractive. He had yet to see her from an angle that was anything but camera-ready. Or bedroom-ready.

His dick stirred, and he frantically turned his thoughts to paperwork. Desk jobs. Regular Navy uniforms. Office politics. He couldn’t come up with any bigger turnoffs on short notice, but thankfully, those did the trick.

They drove a few more minutes and parked at a government-owned stretch of beach not open to the public.

Piling out of the Jeeps, they headed down to the water in the predawn darkness. The surf was quiet this morning, the waves no more than knee-high. But it was late October. The Atlantic Ocean would be chilly—around sixty degrees Fahrenheit—cold enough to cause hypothermia in just a few minutes.

“Shoulder to shoulder, ladies,” Kettering ordered. “Forward march.”

Grif traded grins with the other guys as Sherri, Anna, and Lily marched out into the edge of the surf, turned around when ordered to face the beach, linked arms, and lay down. A wave lapped over them gently.

Ahh, surf immersion. It used to be called surf torture before use of the word torture became politically charged. The first time he’d endured it in his BUD/S training, the guys on each side of him had rung out of the course on their very first dunking.

Griffin strolled over to Kettering, who was staring down at a tablet computer. “Did you give them thermo pills last night?” he asked his boss. The SEALs had used swallowable temperature sensors for some years. It made this kind of training safer, but also guaranteed maximum suffering. A win all the way around. If you weren’t the poor slob dunked in frigid water.

Cal nodded. “The sensors are reporting their core body temperatures like a charm.”

“How low are you gonna go with them?” Grif asked.

His boss shrugged. “Same as BUD/S. Ninety-one degrees.”

That was class II hypothermia, and Grif knew from experience that it was excruciating. The entire body cramped as muscles tried desperately to create heat and move blood to the core to preserve vital body functions. Shivering became violent, speech became slurred, and brain function became impaired.