Zared looked at him, and immediately her heart began pounding. That was how she'd wanted him to look at her. That was why she had bought the potion. But she began to feel afraid. He had always been kind and gentle with her, but would the potion turn him into a monster? Would it make him into someone that he was not?
She backed away from him until she was pressed against the bed. He was stalking her slowly, like a large animal going after its prey and knowing that the prey was cornered.
"I… I think that…"
She couldn't finish as he reached her and put his hand on the side of her face. "I have never seen you this beautiful," he whispered. "I have never seen any woman as desirable as you. Not in all the courts of France or Italy or England have I seen another woman to rival you. I desire you above all others."
She looked up at him and blinked. Those were the words she had wanted to hear, the words that she had purchased when she bought the love potion.
Very gently he kissed her lips, and Zared felt her knees weaken. He caught her about the waist and lifted her to the bed, where he lay her gently on the coverlet. He stretched out beside her and kissed her face and neck and then moved to her breasts, exposed above the gown. Zared closed her eyes and enjoyed the sensation for a moment, then looked down at his hair. He had such thick, dark hair. She ran her fingers through it.
He leaned on his elbow and looked down at her, his hands running over the skin of her chest, playing along the swell of her breasts. "I do not seem able to help myself. It is as though some outside force has taken over my body. I must have you or I will die."
He pushed her to her stomach and began to unlace the back of her gown, his fingers slipping inside to touch her skin through her linen undergarment. Zared closed her eyes at the sensation. It was what she had wanted for so long. Too bad that she'd had to resort to using a love potion to make him desire her.
Easily and with more knowledge than Zared wanted to think that he had he unfastened her gown, then expertly slipped it off over her head. She was wearing only her undergarments, and he made quick work of relieving her of them.
It wasn't long before she was unclothed, wearing only her stockings, fastened at her knees with pretty ribbon garters. For a long moment Tearle lay beside her and looked at her, then he sat up and looked at her some more until she began to become anxious.
"I do not please you?"
"I have never seen a woman such as you," he said softly, and he meant it. He had seen many women unclothed before, but with the exception of a few peasant girls, they had lived soft lives. Zared's life had not been soft. From the time she could walk she had carried a sword and had been taught how to use it. She had worn demi-armor. She had learned to ride before she could walk. All her training had given her a body of firm, hard muscle. There was no fat on her body except for her soft, rather large breasts.
Zared was not experienced enough with men to know that the way he was staring at her was with lust. She started to roll away from him, but he caught her and pulled her back.
He looked at her as one might look at an unknown species of animal, and as he looked his eyes grew hotter and hotter.
"Zared," he whispered, and he moved his body on top of hers and began to kiss her with an ardor she had never felt before.
She was by nature an enthusiastic person, and she began to kiss him back with passion. He didn't so much as break the contact of their mouths as he began to fling his clothes off. She knew that he was a man who cared about his clothing, and she almost laughed when she heard a seam rip. But tearing cloth didn't slow him down in his urgency to get out of his clothes.
His mouth moved down to fasten onto her breast, and Zared stiffened in surprise, then seemed to melt in desire. It was better than she had imagined, and she buried her hands in his hair as she arched her back so that he could have better access to her body.
"You are the loveliest woman I have ever seen. Had I known what was under your clothes I would have torn them from you sooner," he said as his mouth moved down to her stomach.
It was those words that made Zared open her eyes. He would not have torn her clothes from her body because he had not drunk the potion. The potion was what was making him desire her. It was not Zared he wanted. His desire was caused by the spell of the witch.
She pushed at him. "Let me up! Release me!"
She pushed and pushed at him, but he did not move. He kept kissing and nibbling at her hips, moving down to her legs. Zared lifted her leg, put her foot on his shoulder, and gave him as hard a shove as she could manage.
Dazed, befuddled, Tearle looked at her as she moved to the far corner of the bed. "I have hurt you?"
"You do not want me."
Tearle was too stupefied to understand her words. He could not take his eyes off her body: those legs, that stomach with the two muscles running down the sides of it. She looked like a woman, but she also looked like the sleekest racing animal in the world. He reached for her.
Zared eluded his hands. "It is not me you desire. You are under the spell of a witch."
"Aye, that I am," he said, leering at her. His palms were beginning to itch from wanting to touch her. In another moment of looking at her he would not be able to control himself; the man in him would flee, and he would become the animal that he felt like.
When he lunged at her again Zared left the bed and went to stand behind the post at the corner of the bed. "You do not want me. You have never wanted me. It is a trick. Go to your Lady Catherine."
Now that her body was hidden behind the curtains of the bed his mind cleared a bit, at least enough to begin to understand her. "I do not desire you?" He reached out a hand to touch her. "I will show you how much I desire you."
"No!" She moved out of his reach and grabbed a pillow from the window seat, making an attempt to hide her nudity. But the pillow only tantalized him more, leaving her legs bare as well as the swell of her breasts at the sides.
Tearle knew enough about women to know that words were going to be needed before he could get what he wanted. "Do you wish me to tell you that I love you?" he asked. "Do you wish me to make up a poem to your beauty?" At that point he would have done anything to get her to come back to the bed. His voice lowered. "Do you wish me to swear to give my brother's estates to your brother?"