The Challenge (18 page)

He frowned. She chuckled. “What? You don’t want me to try that move again?”

“Your blows cannot hurt me.”

That’s exactly what she wanted him to think. She needed overconfidence to make him careless.

Master Chen hadn’t taught Tessa only technique, but also strategy, and he’d fed her mind with the belief she could conquer any opponent if she set her mind to the task. While the eighty-year-old master
sensei
had found a new reason to live as he tutored Tessa, his star pupil, he’d pushed her to her limit. She’d developed an acute awareness of timing, of space, and—most important of all—of trusting her skills. She’d never realized how proficient she had become until he’d entered her in her first and only competition, The World Karate Championship. Tessa had dominated the fighting, winning a title. Shortly afterward, her mentor died, and she’d never competed again.

Instead, she delved into the secret world of the ninja, studying under Master Funishoki. Tessa learned to sneak silently upon an opponent and kill without ever being seen. She was the shadow to be feared in the night. The enemy you never saw or heard. Over three hundred and thirty years ago, she’d guarded Daron Garner, and the sixty-year-old wheeler-dealer business tycoon had shown his appreciation for her saving his life by making sure she’d been assigned to the presidential protective detail.

She’d learned additional skills after the Secret Service recruited her. Now, she would need every one of them.

Kahn was keeping strict control over his temper. Despite landing a series of blows to his neck, chest, and thigh, she hadn’t done real damage. To defeat him, she needed to goad him into an attack where she could use his power against him. But he wasn’t even trying to attack, merely staying on guard and countering her when possible.

“You needn’t be so very careful, Kahn. I won’t hurt you—at least not badly.” She shifted, spun, caught his thigh in a glancing kick.

With his thighs thick as tree trunks, he didn’t so much as budge. Yet the skin reddened as blood rose to the surface. The big man was keeping his word. He hadn’t raised his psi shields, or she wouldn’t have seen the evidence of her accumulation of strikes.

He chuckled but never relaxed the wariness in his eyes. “The only offensive move I plan to make is riding you on our wedding night.”

A trickle of sweat seeped down his brow, and she goaded him. “Let’s hope your stamina at lovemaking is better than when you’re fighting.”

He glowered at her. “I’m also looking forward to your accommodating my every request.”

Perhaps she could distract him with sex talk. “I will deny you nothing.” She performed a spinning back kick and spiked her heel into his chest. “You will stroke my breasts or lick them, and I will be thinking of—” she slammed a side thrust kick at his groin—“pleasing you, so very much.”

Between her words and her blows, she could see anger building in those careful amber eyes. When he finally pounced, she almost didn’t react quickly enough. Almost. Kahn lunged straight at her, coming in fast and hard with his arms outstretched, his hands ready to grab her.

She dropped to her bottom, planted her feet in his stomach and catapulted him over her head. Even as she fought, she realized that he’d adjusted her suit. When she’d dropped, the floor hadn’t met her bottom with a normal force. Even as he’d attacked, he’d protected her.

Forced to give up his plan to grab her, he slapped his palms on the floor, ducked his head and rolled. However, she somersaulted backward and ended up astride his chest, her wrist cocked with a straight-edged knife hand to his throat. “You adjusted my suit.”

“To protect you,” he admitted.

He’d adjusted her suit to prevent an injury, but hadn’t touched his own. Both of them knew she could have ended the fight with the death blow she’d held back.

“You’ve won.” He spoke with respect. “You have what you wanted.”

She expected to see defeat in his eyes, but not regret. At first she thought his disappointment was self directed, but then she realized her error. He used his psi power to regain his feet and was staring at her with confusion.

The uncertainty in his eyes bothered her more than she wanted to admit. She stood and backed away a few steps, saying nothing because there was nothing to say. By defeating him, she’d proven to him that she was everything he didn’t want in a wife.

She could see he wanted no part of her in his life, but she already knew him well enough to understand that his dedication to his people would override his personal preferences.

She kept her voice soft and level. “If you have changed your mind about our marriage, I will accept your decision.”

“I am a man of my word.”

At his statement, tension eased out of her then returned with a measure of uncertainty at his next words. “You must prepare a meal for our wedding ceremony. Also, there is a ritual bathing, and then we place ceremonial bands on one another.”

“When will our wedding take place?”

“You shall have time to rest. We shall marry two hours after you awaken. Be ready.”

She nodded. “I will.”

“YOU ARE INSANE,” Dora told Tessa the moment she awakened after a restless sleep.

“Thanks a lot.” Tessa’s mind whirled with plans. With the revelation of her psi abilities, her attitude had done a complete 360 degree change. She no longer preferred death to living—even if that meant marriage to a sexy alien who didn’t even like her. “Dora, I have no time to waste. What must I do to get ready for the wedding?”

“You must cook dinner. Prepare a ritual bath.”

“Kahn told me. I don’t want him to suspect your presence so if you must leave—”

“Not necessary. I’ve inserted my personality into the mother ship’s systems.”

“That’s great.”

“You have no idea,” Dora bragged. “Watch.”

The computer altered the chamber. A table rose from the floor. Cooking equipment and cabinets materialized right out of the walls.

“Kahn authorized the computer to give you whatever is necessary to prepare for the wedding ceremony.”

“Did that include clothes?”

“Sorry, no.”

Tessa closed her eyes. “Dora, would you please be quiet for a few minutes. I want to experiment.”

“Compliance.”

Ever since Tessa had attacked Kahn with her psi powers, she’d wanted to tap into her mind, again. Until now, she hadn’t had the opportunity. Sitting with her legs crossed on the floor, Tessa closed her eyes. She tried to put herself into the same emotionally fragile state she’d been in when she’d accidentally activated her psi.

She built a mental picture of a steel trap, put herself inside and let the walls and ceiling close her in. All the while she imagined herself in clothing. Trapped in a cage, wearing a
dress.
With no place to go in her
white dress
. No free will in her
pretty white dress
. Her frustration mounted, and with a mental shove, she again merged into an emotional maelstrom.

“Congratulations!” Dora piped in.

Annoyed by the interruption, Tessa opened her eyes, but then she looked down and smiled in delight. She was no longer naked but covered by the simple white dress of her imagination. “This is so awesome. I can’t wait to try again.”

“You don’t have time.”

“I’ll get faster with practice.”

“Right now, you’d better start cooking a meal and drawing water for the bath.”

“Okay. Tell me what to prepare and how.”

“I’m a computer, not a cook.”

“Don’t you have recipes in your data banks?”

“No.”

“How does Kahn prepare our meals?”

“He uses his psi. But he would probably expect you to prepare a meal from the ingredients in the blue cabinet.”

Tessa opened the blue doors and stared at the strange array of fruits, meats, and vegetables. She might as well have been a Stone-age woman in a twentieth-century grocery store. She had no idea how to identify the food or how to prepare it. For all she knew, she could accidentally poison them both.

“Maybe I’ll try the food materializer, after all. What should I do?”

“Kahn stands there and the food appears.”

“Thank you very much. Even I know that,” Tessa muttered. Once again she closed her eyes and envisioned the steel trap. This time she built the image more quickly, called up the frustration more easily. She thought of food inside the box with her. Raw carrots, celery and peanut butter. Pizza and beer. Ice cream with hot fudge sauce. And steaming black coffee.

She smelled the delicious scent of coffee and pizza before she opened her eyes. Pleased by her efforts, her mouthwatering, she raised the cup of coffee to her lips, ready to enjoy that first scalding sip as much as the rich flavor that reminded her of home.
Delicious
.

She enjoyed another gulp before speaking. “Now all I have to do is keep the pizza hot, the ice cream frozen, and the beer cold.”

“Not a problem. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a warmer and a freezer.”

Tessa placed the foods in the appropriate compartments but kept the coffee to savor as she made preparations. “Do I have time to fix my hair before preparing the ritual bath?”

“If you hurry.”

The caffeine from the coffee kicked in, revving through her veins. “Do you have a mirror?”

“Compliance.”

Tessa pulled her hair into a neat twist onto the top of her head. She didn’t have time to figure out how to make her suit keep her hair in place, but she snagged a food tie from the blue cabinet. “I could do wonders with a curling iron, but this will work.” Tessa pulled a few strands loose around her face.

“You look more feminine.”

“That’s the idea. Kahn has issues with a wife who can defeat him in hand-to-hand combat—without a suit—even if that’s considered an archaic form of fighting here.”

She shivered at the recollection of disgust in his eyes. While she didn’t want to marry, she now most definitely wanted to train her new psi powers and win the Challenge. If that meant marrying Kahn, if that meant having sex, so be it, but she didn’t want him to be revolted every time he looked at her.

While many of her fellow Secret Service Agents also had trouble with Tessa defeating them on the mats then showing up at a cocktail party in a slinky dress, she didn’t understand the problem. She enjoyed looking good. She liked being a woman and intended to show Kahn a different side of her personality.

Sipping the last of the best coffee she’d ever tasted, Tessa surveyed the chamber. “Dora, can you make this room look like a comfortable Rystani home?”

“Compliance.”

The ceiling dropped, and the surfaces became irregular, cave like. Soft, glowing lights lit up the Rystani room with huge, chunky furniture. “Why do Rystani have furniture when they can alter their suits to sit wherever they like?”

“Rystan is new to the Federation. Many of their customs such as old-fashioned furniture and ritual bathing are left over from their pre-psi past.”