The mare

They have the same concerns as anybody. She struggles with her jealousy. He struggles with his irresistible desires. He likes her as much as any woman. When he watches the dog mount her he has an erection that is the hardest ever. When she wakes in the night and he is absent she feels the loss in her gut and even burying her head in the Labrador's neck and inhaling his calming scent cannot fix it for her. She crawls out of bed and the shock of the cold is what she wants right now. Her feet icy on the floorboards, the rough damp of the boots beside the door. In the barn it will be warmer. There will be the smell of hay and horse, the scent of his arousal.

She knew it would be this way when they married. His hand clutching hers so firmly when she lead him around the yard. The dogs, the miniature pony, the stable and the mares.

"I'm Zoo." This admission right at the beginning of things, an email exchange, one zoophile to another. It wasn't a lie at the time. There was the dog and the miniature pony. It isn't a lie now, and yet she stands inside the barn and he is here again, up on the ladder and sweating over her flank, the shuddering of his hips as he thrusts. He never shudders quite like that with her.

I am Zoo, she tells herself, I am Zoo. And yet she would give it all away to make him clutch her thighs with the same intense arousal, his hands shaking, that uncontrollable twitch of the hip.

He sees her and he comes. These two things converge a single moment. He sees her and he gives that final thrust, his fingers clutching at the mare's rump, the twitching spasms of his hips.

She knew this about him when they met. She watches him pump his love into the warm furred flanks. He watches as her heart pumps it's poison through her veins.

I am Zoo. I am Zoo. And yet in this moment she is nothing but the icy creep of jealousy and if she had a gun her love of animals would not be enough to save the mare at all.