Surrender to Love

by Rosemary Rogers

  “I am disappointed that none of my lovely priestesses took your fancy tonight. But perhaps you are in the mood for something different—or unusual, perhaps?”

  When Orlanda undertook to be charming, she could make herself almost sparkle, her teasing black eyes suggesting everything while promising nothing—yet! Now, sensing something of his mood, for all that his dark face showed her nothing beyond a lifted eyebrow, she put her ringed hand lightly on Nicholas Dameron’s sleeve while she cocked her head a little to one side and let her mischievous smile become a challenge.

  “For instance?” His lazy voice matched her challenge and made her laugh with genuine delight at the prospect of a contest which she knew she must win in the end.

  “I said different or unusual, did I not? And as you must know, my lord, my Temple of Venus would not otherwise have attained its present...may I say fame instead of notoriety? What might your pleasure be tonight? Or your mood? Everyone who comes here has a reason for doing so—you agree? They are looking for something they cannot find elsewhere, and that ‘something’ is...whatever it is they desire.”

  “That could be a very rash promise to make, signora.” His voice seemed to hold a grim kind of humor in it as his eyes narrowed at hers. “For example—what if I happened to want, for just this night only, a woman with hair of a certain particular coloring that is quite uncommon? A— married woman?” Nicholas Dameron’s dark green eyes watched her wickedly while he spoke, but Orlanda merely smiled and shrugged.

  “Ah, I am no enchantress with a magic wand, as you well know, but perhaps in your case... Do you feel adventurous enough to follow me, my lord? I am going to take you to a particular room that is set apart from all the others, where anything may be discovered if you wish it hard enough. I call it the Chamber of True Dreams. And I can promise you that you will not be disappointed!”

  It had not been the woman’s ridiculous “promise” that had decided Nicholas to follow her in the end but rather his own curiosity, coupled with the bored, restless feeling that had been plaguing him for the past few weeks while he’d lived without living, like a parasite, with nothing more important to challenge or occupy his mind than what clothes he should have his valet lay out for him on that particular day or which club or theater he might visit. In fact, he had been glad of the opportunity to visit Italy with the Marquess of Newbury, even if it meant keeping an eye on his relative’s twin brothers-in-law for part of the time, because it had meant escaping from London for a breathing space he had begun to feel he sorely needed. But in the end the Marquess, who was deeply involved in politics, had made a hurried and secretive journey to meet with the King of Sardinia, and his restless heir was forced to cool his heels in Rome in the company of two extremely young men on their Grand Tour who were determined to see and experience everything.

  Perhaps Roger and Myles would learn something in the Chamber of True Dreams, or even discover their secret fantasies. Lying on a wide, silk-covered bed that was piled with silken cushions that were meant to dream on, Nicholas found himself frowning up at the patterned ceiling while wreathing, sickly sweet smoke floated up to join the patterns already there and form new ones that kept moving and changing all the time. Presently, as he concentrated on watching the different shapes that seemed to emerge, Nicholas found himself unable to remember if he was smoking opium or hashish and decided that he did not really care which it was, for he had smoked both before and was aware of what effects they could produce. True Dreams. An exaggeratedly fanciful name. Dreams, perhaps. Rather pleasant, relaxing ones too; but hardly true dreams, whatever those were. In fact...

  In fact even the small effort it took to turn his head against the soft silk cushions seemed hardly worthwhile until he saw why he had suddenly felt impelled to glance at the door. It had opened, with a soft click of the latch, and now she had pushed it closed behind her, standing there poised on bare feet with her wet hair streaming down past her shoulders and her only garment a damp silk chemise that clung to every curve and hollow of her honey skinned body. His mermaid-turned-whore in the flesh. Or was he only dreaming her?

  “Nicholas?” she said on a softly questioning note. “That is what you prefer to be called, is it not?” And then she lifted up her arms and began shaking out her hair, sending drops of water flying everywhere, each one like a miniature golden bubble in the orange lamplight and the lighted braziers in every corner of the room. “Do you still like me better now than before?” she said teasingly, with her fingers still in her hair and her lifted arms emphasizing her high, pointed breasts and the flatness of her belly below the arch of her rib cage. “I’ve changed, you know, and I have learned so much since we last met, thanks to you. You left me with a thirst for more knowledge, I suppose.” She smiled in a provocative, rather tantalizing manner before murmuring huskily, “Would you like me to show you how much I have learned?”

  The room had become musky and grey-veiled from smoke, for all that he had either dropped or laid aside the long-stemmed pipe before she had crossed the small space between them, to lie beside him on the silk-covered couch of pipe dreams. Strangely enough, Nicholas found that although he could not remember her name, he remembered her body and the silky texture of her skin and most of all her hair—a curtain falling across her face when she bent, and a mantle for her shoulders when she flung her head back.

  “Don’t you want me?” she whispered. “You did before. Would you rather have someone else to share your dream with?”

  Moving with the smoky currents rather than try to fight against them, Nicholas heard himself laugh, the sound grating even in his own ears. “I apologize, mermaid. But I’m afraid that the pipe that sends pleasurable dreams also takes away certain physical urges. I wonder that you have not learned that yet, along with the rest of the knowledge you seem to have acquired. Perhaps you should seek out someone better able to slake your appetites tonight.”

  She had been lying almost docilely by him with her face resting against his shoulder and her firm breasts pushing against his ribs while one of her hands moved caressingly over his body. But now she reared up angrily like a female cobra ready to strike, becoming ever more furious when he only gave her a mocking half-smile and a shrug.

  Alexa was sorely tempted to lose her temper completely and make him regret his indifference even if she had to scratch and bite to arouse some reaction from him. Was he telling the truth, or did he really not want her at all? And yet, while she was trying to curb her rage she felt his arm suddenly enclose her body against his, while his fingers seemed to become trapped in the tangled masses of her hair. She felt her pent-in breath released in a sigh as she did what suddenly seemed easier and let her head down against his shoulder again.

  And now it was he who said almost angrily, “Don’t you want to go hunting for a more satisfying prey before the night is over and you must return to hide behind your facade of respectability once more?”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  His arm tightened, almost cutting off her breath as he said under his breath and in Spanish, “Dios! And how should I know what I want or do not want at this moment? Stay if you will or go if you will. What difference can it make?” His eyes had closed as if he meant to sleep, but his arm still held her close and his fingers remained caught in her hair, so that Alexa found she could hardly move her head without feeling that her hair might be torn out at the roots.

  With her face pressed against his chest she could feel his heartbeat pulse against her cheek and the roughness of the hair on his chest against her nipples, making them erect and sensitive against her will, almost aching with the need to have his fingers touch them; his mouth claim them as he had done before. What was happening to her? “Be careful, my dear,” Orlanda had warned her earlier. “Too often the body can betray the mind, and blind emotion override sensibility and will.” Alexa had come here planning to seduce him while he was still half-dazed by the drug he had willingly indulged in, meaning to keep her mind clear and calculating wh
ile she cleverly inflamed his desire to the boiling point before she retreated. But instead of responding to all the techniques of lovemaking she had been instructed in, he had told her frankly and without embarrassment that he was incapable of making love to her under the circumstances. She should make some suitably cutting remarks and leave at once before he insulted her even further by falling asleep. Hadn’t he told her to go or stay as she pleased? And at what point had she turned her body so close to his that she was almost lying on top of him, with one of her legs straddling his in a shameless fashion?

  Moving her head cautiously again, Alexa noticed with mounting anger and resentment that his eyes were still closed and he was breathing quite evenly and peacefully. Had he actually forgotten her presence?

  “I hate you, Nicholas Dameron!” she almost growled between gritted teeth, adding passionately, “and I will always hate you and despise you for the lying hypocrite that you are!”

  Although she had hoped for some reaction from him, Alexa flinched instinctively at the strange, short laugh he gave. “Do you, querida?” he murmured half-mockingly in a drowsy voice, his eyes still closed. Alexa had opened her mouth to make some suitably acerbic retort when he said in the same half-slurred tone that seemed to deride himself as well as her: “You must not expect to surprise me with that kind of statement, you know. My pure virgin wife felt the very same way, or perhaps worse. I did take her virginity after all, and very clumsily too, I’m sure, to judge from the way she used to cower away from me if I came within a few inches of her mortified body.” Again his short, humorless laugh made Alexa flinch in spite of the feeling of shock that had made her body stiffen. Then he said thoughtfully, “I suppose I should have had the sense to stick to whores and the Indian and Mexican women I met who wanted the same thing I did. But, Christ, did you ever know a young man under twenty with any sense at all?”

  Alexa did not know why he was suddenly telling her all the sordid details of his past, unless he had managed to forget her presence and was talking almost to himself. Part of her revolted against his forcing her to hear any more; and yet another part of her wanted to hear everything, so that she would have even more reason to hate and despise him. Whores and women of even less than easy virtue. He should indeed have stayed at his own level.

  “Why did you marry then?” she heard herself ask with surprise. “Since you are not a female, no one could have forced you into a marriage you did not want, surely?”

  She thought for a few moments that he had either fallen asleep after all or chose not to reply to her question until he said with sudden bitterness: “No? Ah well, I suppose I did not have a rifle pointed at my head or the threat of being shut up in a room to exist on bread and water to make me take a wife. But my father died before I was old enough to remember what he looked like, and I was brought up by the Spanish side of my family. They had already arranged a marriage for us when poor little Teresa was still playing happily in her cradle. She was not asked if she cared for the match or not, I’m sure, and I married because it was expected of me to produce heirs as quickly as possible in case either hostile Indians or a storm at sea finished me off—which would have been a stroke of good fortune for her, I’m sure. But...” Alexa felt his shrug against her and wondered why her mouth had suddenly become so dry as he said in a detached voice: “I suppose we were both unlucky in the end. I can feel sorry for her now, and I see too clearly what a clumsy brute I must have seemed to the poor girl. She hadn’t been told anything at all about what she might expect to take place in a marriage bed, and I had had no experience with...I suppose it must be called innocence, for want of a better word, although ignorance was more like it. Hell...!”

  He paused for so long that Alexa was on the point of bursting out at him to finish what he had begun, so that she need not be goaded into thinking about him merely because he had managed- to arouse a certain amount of curiosity in her. Tilting her head back so that she could see the expression on his face, Alexa felt her heart give a sudden, nervous jolt when she encountered those dark, jungle-green eyes she remembered only too well, especially when they narrowed at her like the slitted eyes of a crouching black panther. Moistening her lips, she succeeded in forcing what she hoped would pass for a coy smile, while she ran one hand teasingly down from his shoulder until it rested on his thigh. Instead of displaying any evidence of desire, he frowned down at her before growling: “How the devil did you get here? Damn!” Running tense fingers through his tousled dark hair, he seemed to wince; completely ignoring Alexa’s growing anger in his preoccupation with himself, until at last he released her from the almost crushing embrace in which he’d held her locked against himself, saying in an insultingly casual tone of voice: “Since the signora has been kind enough to provide me with a handmaiden to share my dream, would you be a good girl and bring me a glass of that cold wine from the bucket in the corner there? And while you’re about it, you might as well light that pipe up for me again. It seems to have gone out.”

  With a kind of spring that would have done any feline justice, Alexa leapt off the bed and stood glaring down at him while she wondered viciously exactly what he might do if she raked at him over and over again with her nails, especially since there was no body of water handy for him to try and drown her in. More annoyingly still, she noticed that he had levered himself up against a pile of cushions and closed his eyes again; although being part animal himself, she thought unpleasantly, he must have sensed the pent-up fury in her that was on the verge of eruption. Why else would he have thought to say without even looking at her: “Listen here, my girl, if you’re of a mind to throw a temper tantrum I should warn you that childish displays of that nature tend to bore instead of titillate me—if that was your object—and I presume that is why you’re here?” Ignoring Alexa’s choked gasp, he continued in a bored and slightly weary tone of voice: “Although I am not generally in the mood to give advice, I will do you the favor of warning you that if you hope to get ahead in your—ah— chosen profession, you should really learn to do as you’re bid by your clients, with a smile and a pretense of enjoyment at least!”

  “What?” As Alexa’s voice rose dangerously in pitch he seemed to give an exaggerated shudder before he suggested rather impatiently that since she was obviously neither docile nor obliging, both qualities that he always insisted upon in women, she might just as well take herself off and have the signora send in one of her better-trained young ladies. “Like... Oh, yes, the ravishing blonde. Maddalena, I believe her name was. Very much a real woman in every way. And please—before you begin to shriek again—let me assure you that I intend to pay the signora for the time you’ve spent with me, as well as for your earlier efforts to make yourself pleasing.”

  Had he perhaps gone a little too far in teasing that dangerously volatile temper of hers he remembered almost too well? Regarding her through barely slitted eyes he screened with his lashes, Nicholas found himself hoping that she would manage to control herself this time at least, for the contents of that pipe had been very potent, and he still felt waves of that dreamlike feeling washing over him from time to time. Looking at her as she stood there like an angry young Amazon in that diaphanous apology for a chemise, with angry spots of color blazing in her cheeks and her lips parted as she literally gasped for breath, Nicholas wanted her almost as much as he did not want her. He had desired her from the very first time he’d set eyes on her; and now he damned her and the infernal chemistry that was like an invisible cord drawing him to her. For he had actually begun to want her now with his loins, although his mind despised and almost detested what she had so easily become, and the suspicious cynic in him mistrusted most of all the maneuvering she must have done to “find” him here tonight. And that was why, when he had somehow known with his senses that he was going to see her again, he had deliberately ensured that he could not make love to her even if he had wanted to. It was for the same reason that now, with an angrily muttered obscenity that would never be used within earshot o
f a lady, Nicholas pushed himself off the bed and strode over to one of the braziers to light his pipe. He noticed, quite interestedly, that she had at long last recovered at least some of her powers of speech.

  “You...!” Alexa sputtered ragingly. “Oh, you...you unspeakable... Oh! If I only could...could...”

  With legs crossed he had settled back against the cushions again, and now he gave her a curious look before he suggested disinterestedly that if she wanted to swear in any language she chose there was really no reason why she could not, was there? Especially now that she must be quite used to hearing all kinds of oaths and obscenities.

  There was a dangerous moment, after she whirled around and almost ran to the other side of the room, when Nicholas thought she actually meant to pick up one of the red-hot braziers and throw it at him; but then she plucked open a door he had not noticed before and rushed through it with all the force and fury of a whirlwind, the door slamming heavily in her wake. Would she come back? Would she not? Obviously it would be the best thing for both of them if they never set eyes on each other again!

  Nicholas stared morosely at the door while the smoke gradually and insidiously worked its sweet magic in his mind again, and he noticed that the door had on it the same pattern as the ceiling and that it even seemed to twist and change shapes in the same way. When he set the pipe aside and lay back again, he stopped wondering about her and began thinking about the decision he would have to make very soon that concerned another young woman and another dynastic marriage. His lips twisted ironically at that conceit. “Dynastic” certainly fit the attitude of the Dowager Marchioness of Newbury, who had already told him imperiously that she thought he’d do, after all, and that considering the elevated rank that would be his some day, he could do no better than to marry a girl young enough and healthy enough to bear lots of children and who was also used to the running of a large household and the correct etiquette and manner of doing things on any occasion that might arise.