The Athlete

by Elin Peer

  “Who, Raven?” Willow was rocking Nora in her arms.

  “Who else?” Leo said with irritation.

  “Don’t worry. Raven knows how to protect herself. She’ll be okay.”

  Zasquash snorted. “Sure, until she meets someone my size.”

  Willow looked thoughtful. “Raven’s biggest challenge might be that she messes around so much that the right man won’t get it when she’s no longer messing around.”

  “Ha!” Leo gave a snort. “The only interest Raven has in men is to confuse them and make them look like fools. It’s her favorite thing to do, but it won’t work with me.”

  “How are the men accepting her at work?” My voice was calm.

  Leo pulled one of his knees to his chest. “They are torn. We all are.”

  “In what way?”

  “It’s in our nature to protect women and yet we’re supposed to treat her like an equal and let her fight grown men twice her size. She says we shouldn’t go easy on her but it’s hard not to. In the beginning no one wanted to fight her, which made my job easier. Now, however…” Leo took a deep inhalation and let out a deep moan. “The men are fucking lining up to fight her. To them it’s the first time they’ll touch a woman and they are curious.”

  Zasquash lowered his brow. “If any of those fuckers take advantage of the situation and grope her, you’ll tell me and Solo right away.”

  “Why?” Leo pushed out his chest. “You think I can’t deal with it myself?”

  Solo, who had heard his name, looked over. “What did you say?”

  “I’m just saying that if any of the men take advantage of the fight training to grope Raven, you and I are happy to pay a visit to anyone who can’t keep their hands to themselves.”

  “That’s right. We’ll fucking break a few fingers to teach them a lesson.”

  “Mother of all Good. How about trusting that Raven will address such incidents herself?” Athena, who had been talking to Solomon at the table, leaned back in her chair. “Listening to you men is terrifying. What happened to addressing things in a calm and constructive manner? Breaking someone’s fingers is not going to educate him in respect for women.”

  “Agree to disagree.” Solomon opened his arms with a silent invitation for Willow to come sit on his lap. “With broken fingers a disrespectful man won’t be doing much groping. It’s common sense, Athena.”

  “Maybe here. But in the rest of the world, it’s neither common nor sensible to go around and assault people to teach them lessons.”

  Zasquash squinted his eyes. “That’s because the rest of the world sucks. You send people to places of reflection. If you ask me that’s much worse than a broken bone or two.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not comparable at all.”

  Hunter came over and squatted behind me, whispering in my ear, “You want to get out of here?” The way his hand circled over my back gave a hint that he had other things he’d rather do than listen to discussions about cultural differences.

  We could still hear the heated debate when we walked away hand in hand. “There’s a waterfall about ten minutes from here. Solomon showed me the last time we came to visit. Wanna see it?” The mischievous sparkle in Hunter’s eyes made it impossible for me not to smile wide.

  “Sure, I would love to see it.”

  We didn’t make the ten-minute hike before Hunter was kissing me. “You have no idea how much I want you.” His tongue circled mine before sucking on my lower lip. “When I see Nora, I want to fill you up with babies so bad and start our own family.”

  His fingertips were digging into my skin, his breathing ragged from desire.

  “We said that we’d wait.”

  “I know, I’m just warning you that as soon as you give the go, I’m going to be on you to breed night and day.” Hunter was pushing my hair back and licking and kissing my neck.

  “Breed. That’s sounds so animalistic,” I breathed and closed my eyes.

  “Oh, trust me, that’s how I feel right now.”

  His raw lust turned me on but we didn’t have any protection with us.

  “You know what I look forward to?”

  “What?” His hands slid up under my shirt and cupped my breasts.

  “I look forward to not having to worry about protection. Once we decide it’s time, we can have as much sex as we want.”

  Hunter sighed and leaned his head against my hair. “So say yes.”

  “Soon.”

  “When?”

  “Maybe in the spring.”

  “Yeah?” His green eyes grew round and big. “You mean that?”

  “Do you still want to play in the Northlands?”

  “You know I do, but I would never leave you and our kids.”

  “But I was thinking, Hunter.” I pulled back, taking one of his hands. “If we play one more season for the Dolphins together, then the timing would be good for you to return. I can’t play for long once I get pregnant anyway, so what do you think?”

  Hunter lifted me in the air. “What do I think about returning from the Motherlands with my hopefully pregnant wife?” His grin said it all and then he kissed me.

  “The only thing is the reason you came to the Motherlands in the first place, you know the cultural exchange.”

  Hunter frowned. “Don’t worry about it. They can send someone else.”

  “True, and we could offer to return the favor and have me working here.”

  Hunter’s face changed to an expression of deep concern and his voice grew soft as he lowered me to the ground. “No, babe. That would be too dangerous. Soccer here is brutal and with the pregnancy they would never let you.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I’m thinking I could coach the team you play for.”

  “Coach?”

  “You’ve become much better and more sophisticated in your way of handling the ball instead of relying on brute force; I’ll bet others could use some refinement too.”

  “True.”

  “As a cultural exchange, I could teach speed and ball control.”

  Hunter kissed me. “As long as I’m around to make sure no one gets too close to you.”

  “Don’t start with me. I’ve finally made you comfortable with touching women in soccer. Don’t get weird about me touching men.”

  “I’m not weird about it. You touch men all the time, but this is different, Ema. You’re talking about Nmen. They’re not used to women bossing them around or touching them.”

  “No, we all know you men like to be in control.”

  “That’s how we’re raised.”

  “Yeah, I could tell Leo is just like you.”

  Hunter lowered his brow. “Leo isn’t even a soccer player.”

  “No, but he tries to boss Raven around and he gets funny when she touches him. It’s a theme with you Nmen, isn’t it?”

  “That’s different. She works for him and he’s her boss.”

  “I was your captain and we both know you didn’t exactly bow down to my authority. You know what I think? I think you Nmen have an issue with strong women.”

  Hunter’s eyes crinkled at the edges when he rubbed his nose against mine and grinned at me. “Not true. We fucking love strong women. Everyone knows it takes a fierce woman to be with a strong Nman. That’s what attracted me to you in the first place.”

  “That I was strong?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t deal with a fragile person who would break under my honesty. You never took any shit from me and you didn’t jump in horror when I used my colorful language. From that first day when you slammed the door in my face and told me you weren’t the nicest Motlander I would ever meet, you had my full interest.”

  I was smiling back at him. “Good. Let’s keep it that way, because if you forget how much you love me, I might have to kick you.” I raised a brow and tilted my head “And for the record, I’ve got a wicked kick. Mason and the other boys told me so.”

  “Wow, you already have fans in the Northlands. I’m impress
ed.”

  “I do, so you see we could live here for a while and I could still be involved in soccer.” We stood smiling in the forest surrounded by chirping birds and lush trees. “I could be a great role model to teach young people here that females are fine athletes. Just like Raven can show them women can be anything they set their minds to.”

  “Right, except Raven has to finish her training, and who knows if that will happen? She still has the worst part in front of her.

  “Which is?”

  “The practical part. She’ll have to pass a lot of tests. Some physical, some theory, but none of them are easy.”

  “She’ll rise to the challenge. We strong women always do.” I beamed up at him. “You just said that’s why you love us.”

  Hunter raised my hand and kissed it. “I only love four women.”

  “Four?”

  “My sister, my baby niece, and you of course.”

  “Then who’s the fourth?”

  “My mother. I never knew her but she gave me life. It’s the most precious thing, and just the thought of you carrying our child one day makes my spine tingle.”

  I got emotional from his words and, wrapping my hands around Hunter’s waist, I leaned my head back to meet his eyes. “Me too. It’s going to a be a perfect child, and you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because once we conceive our kid we’ll have put in thousands of hours of practice time and every athlete knows that practice makes perfect.”

  Hunter grinned out loud. “For this, I’ll practice as much as you want me to without a single complaint. I promise.”

  “Good. I’m counting on it.” Rising on my toes, I met him in a deep kiss. “So how about we do a little training session right here?”

  “I like how you think.” Hunter held me close, his eyes glowing. “I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I’m starting to understand what made Solomon desperate enough to run away with my sister. If someone tried to separate us I would get desperate too.”

  “Does that mean you have forgiven Solo?”

  He thought about it. “I think so.”

  “Wow, that’s mature of you.”

  Hunter gave me a playful smile. “Thank you, and you know who else I have forgiven?”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  I jerked my head back. “Me? What do you have to forgive me for?”

  “I’ve forgiven you for all the times you said I had a deformed cock.”

  A snicker escaped me. “Penis. I said you had a deformed penis, but that was before I saw how nice it looks.”

  “Either way, I’ve decided to forgive you for the constant insults.”

  “Well, then maybe I should be as mature as you and forgive you for calling my vagina toxic.”

  Hunter lifted a hand and rubbed his face. “Geez, I’d forgotten about that.”

  “Did you also forget that you said that you’d rather stick your penis in a beehive than get acid burns from my toxic vagina?”

  “I can’t imagine I used the word vagina or penis.”

  “No, but I was just trying to be nice about it.”

  Hunter skewed his mouth. “Auch. I’m sorry about that. I guess, we were pretty horrible to each other back then, huh?”

  “True, but then we never claimed to be the nicest people, now did we?”

  A small smile returned to his beautiful face. “Nope. And maybe that’s why we’re so perfect for each other.”

  “Could be.”

  Letting his hand caress my face, Hunter leaned his nose against mine and whispered, “All I know is that I wouldn’t change a thing about you, babe.”

  “Really? Shoot, now I feel bad about the long list of things I want to change about you.” I tried to hold my grin back, but it came bursting out.

  Hunter laughed with me and squeezed my waist. “Admit that you love me just as I am.”

  I had no problem saying those words loud and clear as I wrapped my arms around his neck and we smiled at each other. “You’re right. I love you just the way you are and I’ll even admit that you are a fine athlete.”

  This concludes Men of the North #8 – The Athlete

  Thank you so much for reading Hunter and Ema’s story. I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, I’m crossing my fingers that you’ll leave a review. It truly matters a great deal to an indie author like me.

  To make it easy for you, here are some links.

  Amazon.com – Amazon.uk – Amazon.ca

  Goodreads

  What’s next?

  Wow, we’ve already finished book eight and only have two more to go in this series.

  In the next book we’ll follow Raven as she fights for her dream to be the first woman to join the police force.

  Men of the North #9 – The Fighter

  I’ve lived half of my life on each side of the border.

  I know what greatness women are capable of and how amazing men can be.

  For those Nmen who think I can’t be a police officer because I’m a “fragile female,” I have only one thing to say; watch me!

  Raven is a force of nature who won’t take no for an answer. She uses her humor and feistiness to blaze through every obstacle, and right now the biggest one is her rigid boss Leo Da Vinci.

  He wants her to stay safe in an office categorizing unsolved cases, but Raven is longing for action. That's why when one case turns out to be the unsolved murder case of Dina, the ruler’s sister who died when she was fifteen, Raven sets out to solve the mystery and bring the murderer to justice. Little does she know that coming face to face with the troubled past of the Northlands might set off an unwanted avalanche of events and endanger the lives of herself and the people she loves.

  The Fighter is the ninth out of ten books in the Men of the North series. From the beginning of this series, readers have been hooked on the amazing world-building and the clash between two societies with opposing values.

  If you love a mix of humor and romance with a drizzle of steamy sex then this series is a safe choice.

  Yes, I want to see Raven kick some butt and shake up the Northlands.

  About the author

  Elin describes herself as quirky in a good way.

  Being curious by nature, she likes to explore and can tell you about riding elephants through the Asian jungle, watching the sunset in the Sahara Desert from the back of a camel, sailing down the Nile in Egypt, kayaking in Alaska, and flying over Greenland in helicopters.

  After traveling the world and living in different countries, Elin is currently residing outside Seattle in the US with her husband, daughters, and her black Labrador, Lucky, who follows her everywhere.

  With a back ground in personal coaching, Elin is easy to talk to and one thing is for sure: she is not afraid to provoke, shock, touch, and excite you when she writes about unwanted desire, forbidden passion, and all those damn emotions in between.

  Want to connect with Elin? Great, she loves to hear from her readers and you can find her here: Facebook, Goodread, Amazon, or simply send an email to: elin@elinpeer.com