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.

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.