The Challenge by Susan Kearney Page A

floor, complete with some hot food. “Come, you will eat.”
    Still unaccustomed to his speech patterns which made everything he said sound like an order, she refrained from sarcasm. Clearly, he had a difficult job, and the tension in his stance told her he wasn’t pleased with her progress, yet he had turned off the damn suit stimulation.
    Although her body was no longer screaming for her to jump his bones, she hadn’t totally shut down, either. She was too aware of the tension simmering between them. He hadn’t forgotten that she’d asked him to touch her. She saw questions in his eyes every time he looked at her.
    She joined him at the table where he’d arranged his suit to hold him in a position where he sat on air. The sight looked odd to her, almost silly, but she realized that in his world where there was no need for chairs, she was the anomaly.
    “You will stand until you learn to operate your suit.”
    Again he used that commanding word choice that she disliked. She watched him use the utensils, one of them a combination of a spoon with tines on the end, and followed his lead. But despite the strange tastes and textures, she barely paid attention to the meal.
    They ate in silence with her thinking hard. She’d asked him to touch her and he hadn’t. She most certainly didn’t intend to beg.
    After he finished his food and sipped the last of his drink, she cocked her head to the side. “If you want me to work to attain this psi power, wouldn’t it be a good idea to tell me how to go about doing so?”
    “Your first task is to cover your nudity.”
    She crossed her arms under her breasts and palmed the eating utensil. “You keep issuing orders, but you aren’t teaching me how to go about following them.”
    His amber eyes twinkled with secrets. “I cannot tell you more than I already have without hindering your progress, but if you would prefer my touch to the suit, you must give me more details why.”
    With the meal over, all of the marvelous gadgets he’d revealed began to slide back, fold, and hide themselves into the walls and floors. While he was distracted with his task, she eased the utensil she’d palmed to the floor and shoved it with her toe next to the raised platform.
    And she answered his query with a question of her own. “Have you ever been in love?”

Chapter Six
     
    “I DON’T HAVE time for irrelevant questions, woman.” Kahn let his annoyance show. She’d gone off track into a raw topic that he never discussed.
    “I was once very much in love,” she continued as if he had not castigated her, her voice soft, dreamy and sliced with pain. “And the suit stimulation has something to do with developing my psi powers, doesn’t it?”
    She‘d gone from a statement about love to the completely different subject of psi, which revealed that she had a much greater understanding of his plan than he’d intended. He didn’t fathom how her mind worked. How much had she figured out? He didn’t know. Couldn’t ask. However, her guess was close enough to the truth to shock him, and he kept his face implacable and remained silent.
    “Right. You cannot tell me that. “She waved her hand in the air as if gesturing away a bad thought. “However, the suit’s ministrations are only exciting my physical reactions. My mind—my emotions are not as involved as they could be.”
    No wonder she wasn’t frustrated. She had no idea of the importance of what she’d just told him—or did she? If she spoke the truth, if physical stimulation couldn’t involve her entire spectrum of emotions, she might never break through and engage her psi. Federation members were psi trained during childhood before they developed strong emotional barriers like the ones she put up.
    If what she was saying were true, unless he changed his tactics, he might never get through to her. That she’d realized this before he had gave him even more cause for concern. By requesting him to engage both her mind and her