The July winds were whipping the grass in the high Teton meadows, drying them out and upping the danger of fire, the first time I saw her. I was walking beside my favorite horse when we stepped into the meadow. The buckskin snorted. I looked up to see her on the far side.

I could have expected elk, mule deer or maybe a coyote, not a black horse. I could see the mare watching me even against the piercing late afternoon light in my face. We all froze.

I can't imagine who’s horse that is, way back up in here. I haven’t been here in months myself. Who’s horse is it? I wondered.

She was nervous, pawing at the ground. And then like a wild animal, she turned and was gone.

I stared from under my hat brim. It’s not easy running cattle on federal land. And doing it as a woman made it that much more difficult in some of the old business circles that still controlled the local market. I had even taken to running trail rides for the city folk to see the mountains. I was back in this meadow after all these months thinking about bringing people here when I first saw her, the black mare.

I know I was tired. I know the sun was in my eyes, but in that instant that she turned I’m sure I saw a blur, something that looked like a human form.

I shook my head, mounted up and headed home.

About a week and a half later I found myself at the edge of the same meadow.

This time I didn’t step into the meadow itself, but eased through the shadows until I could see with binoculars to the far side.

The mare was back, grazing with her head down. Somebody is missing a very nice animal, I thought. Wonder why I haven’t heard anything about it?

I blinked. The scene shimmered through the binoculars like my eyes were watering. I didn’t see a horse anymore; I saw a girl. I held the binoculars away and rubbed my eyes. I looked back; it was still a girl.

She knelt there in the same spot completely naked. She was well-formed, full breasts and rump, and from what I could see a head of black hair that was long and straight, the color of a raven’s feather when wet and the sun just right. But it was the dusty coal color of her skin that caused her to stand out against the light green of the meadow.

I was transfixed. Strange notions began to crowd into my mind as I watched her change from mare to human and back a couple of times more. Never in this world had such a horse/girl been seen. I had never even heard of any legend like this. And I wanted her. I wanted her more than anything else.

I wanted her not for the money or the fame. I wanted her out of a lust that flooded my thinking brain from somewhere far more primitive. I wanted to capture her, control her, to actually hold that mane clasped in my grip, and god help me, to spend myself sexually all over her. I had no decision to make; I rushed headlong into the passion that’s brought me to where I am now.

I eased back into the shadows. With my horse’s reins in hand, I walked him back through the woods, stealing around the edge until I could see that I had gotten as close as possible to the horse/girl from the secrecy of the woods. I slipped into the saddle and loosened a lariat. Tense shivers ran under my touch down the horse’s neck. I dug in my heels and yelled in his ear, “Go!”

My buckskin was use to racing barrels; he navigated the few trees and burst into the meadow, jumping a fallen tree and already at a full gallop. The girl looked up. She looked right into the sun now herself, and I gained a full second before she could react. The next moment we were chasing the black mare up over the hillock in the middle of the meadow.

Down the other side and full tilt we ran into the woods again, the mare not looking back. I clung low to the buckskin’s back, avoiding branches and yet urging him on to greater speed. I must have her, I will have her! I thought.

Already I could see my lariat around her neck.

From more open clearings into the thickest bramble we chased the mare until we pulled nearly even at a straight gallop. I could see both horses laboring. I had but one chance; the noose dropped fairly over her head. I reined up, rope looped around my saddle horn.

I expected a fight on my hands, flying hooves and bared teeth, but before I could swing out of the saddle, the shimmering happened again. It’s not my eyes watering. It’s not my imagination. She really is changing! I thought.

I swung out of the saddle in one fluid motion, my buckskin leaning back and keeping the rope taut about the girl’s neck. I whoa’ed him. I couldn’t have him strangling my new prize, not now.

“Can you talk?” I demanded.

She nodded, her black eyes smoldering. She seemed docile enough with my rope around her neck, but here was passion itself. I didn’t trust her.

“Who are you? What the hell are you doing on my land? Explain how you keep changing!” I charged in without preliminaries.

“Why do you care?” she demanded back, accusing me of something I wasn’t quite getting.

“Because I want you more than my whole ranch. I must have you, and it’s been that way since I first saw you in that meadow, and you ran. I captured you! That’s my rope on you. Tell me!”

“Then I must. It’s the spell,” she said looking down.

I stared at her. A spell? My eyes wandered down her dark perfection, the sweat glistening at the side of her breast, the deep red areola, the nipple erect from the chase. Her hair hung in disarray.

“What spell?”

“A woman, a jealous creature of evil intent, did this. I am condemned to the shape of a horse, to shift back and forth without warning for all eternity, to run through these hills. And any who look upon me are filled with lust, obsessed to own me, to beat me, to rape me; I cannot remain in human form unless I am bound somehow in rope. Rope must touch my skin.”

I no longer had presence of mind to ask her what happened to the owner who lusted so greatly. But now that she was caught, my lust was like a firebrand that the dampness between my legs couldn’t extinguish.

“Then bound you shall be, and I will be the one to beat you and use you for my pleasure!”

I removed the lariat loop from the saddle horn and threw her to the ground, much as I would a calf. She didn’t resist as I tied her wrists and elbows firmly and then her ankles, finishing off the tie from ankle to wrists and leaving her like a bow.

I stood over her with a thirst not to be satisfied with anything other than her body.

I stripped off my shirt and caressed my nipples hard, aroused at the helpless sight at my feet. I paid no heed now to my own horse wandering off, but I pulled off my jeans, panties and boots. I must have her now, now, now…I must have her tongue between my legs. I must taste her own helpless sex, I must. I thought.

I was overdue by own standards for fucking a man but that couldn’t explain the lust I felt for the horse/girl. I knew how women made love to women, but I would never have actually done it. And tie up another woman? I can only talk about it now; at the time all I wanted to do was cum over and over again on her face.

The heat of the afternoon was giving way, but I had a deeper lust yet, the lust to beat the horse/girl. Never have I beaten a horse nor would I ever, but she inflamed my mind. I pulled the man’s tooled belt from my discarded jeans, intent on her feeling my leather.

Without preliminary I laid into her with the belt. She rolled to and fro as best she could, crying out as the metal tip of the belt bit into her tender flesh. My lust had gone past the simply sexual and into a realm I’d never dared explore, an ambit of sadistic desire that the curse of the horse/girl somehow fed.

The belt marked her all over as she lay bound in the dust. I gave her no moment to rest but sat down in the dust, legs spread. I grabbed her raven hair and turned her head so that our eyes could meet.

“Now I will take you, my horse/girl. Pleasure your mistress with your tongue until her lust spills all over your face…and then do it again!”

Do you know what you’re doing? Do you realize that you have whipped another woman with your belt, bruising her naked body, and now you’ve demanded her to stick her tongue up into your own cunt until you orgasm all over her face? Do you know what you’re DOING? I thought. But while one part of my psyche spoke reason to me, the more primeval part demanded sexual satisfaction from the woman bound on her stomach before me.

I twisted all my fingers in her thick tresses and demanded that she lick. And lick she did. Oh, my, did she lick. I could feel her tongue curl, I can still feel her tongue curl, and it pushed up inside my soaking wetness. Shivers of pleasure sparkled along my body, nerve endings alight with an other-worldly pleasure.

I forced her head down further, making her lick along the silky perineum between cunt and ass, and I fell back into the dust, my own legs high and spread, as I forced her to tongue further back.

“That’s it, my pony slut. Lick up all the honey until I make more on your lipssssss...,” my voice trailing off.

I can remember the orgasm building even now until it erupted: I was carried along on the crest of a white hot wave of sexual lava, my ears hearing my own groaning, twisting my hips against the face still held in my grip.

“God, yes, pony bitch! Fuck your mistress! Make me cum again and again and again!”

So I orgasmed in the dust, two naked bodies, one bound and beaten, the other consumed in her unholy lust. And then we lay collapsed, breathing hard, her face caked with dirt. Her coal black skin had lost its sheen, the same golden sheen I had seen on the side of the mare in the late afternoon sun.

My breath returned, but my lust did as well, overwhelming my judgment yet again. I turned her onto her back, untied her ankles and spread her thighs, her knees up in the air and her eyes glazed. I drove my own tongue between her lips so obscenely spread below me. She immediately orgasmed on my face, her fragrance driving my own lust to tongue her deeper and faster. Her fingers twisted in the dust beneath her; she would have clamped her thighs about my head if I had not held her spread.

My tongue left the deep red cunt lips for the moment as I swung around without thinking into the classic position I knew from my reading. I drove my hips down again onto her mouth and clenched my ass cheek muscles knowing that would hold her nose even tighter. She squirmed in my rope under me as I soaked her face once again, her moaning and trembling lips setting off another cum for which I rewarded her by nibbling on her lips until she soaked my face as well.

We both collapsed on our backs in the dust again.

The sweat cooled a bit from my body. I rolled over and looked at her. True, she had not changed back to the black mare since my rope had been on her. Also true my thirst was hardly slaked; my desire obscured the needs of my body for water and food, leaving only my need for her.

“I need to pee.”

I pushed myself up and pulled her up by the hair to squat. Why did the sound remind me of a horse letting loose a stream of urine onto a flat rock?

I propped myself up on my elbow and watched her squat from behind. Her back and thigh muscles rippled much the same as…that horse. What is wrong with you? So you decided to get kinky someplace other than the bunk house, so what? You can't be serious about really wanting her, owning her. I thought.

“It’s getting late. I really need to be heading back to the ranch; it will be well after dark now by the time I get there. How do I make sure you are right here tomorrow? I still want you. I can't get enough of you. You have to tell me.”

She finished peeing and looked over her shoulder. “You can't. You caught me once, but you'll never manage again. And if you leave me alone on a tether, I’ll chew through the rope. You can't believe how sharp and powerful my teeth are.”

“Then I’ll take you back with me. I’ll put you in a corral by yourself. I’ll build you a stall; I’ll build you a whole barn if I have to!”

“You take me back into that world, and I will die before the next sunset. The spell won't allow it, you can't break it, and you are caught just as badly as I am,” she muttered, staring down at the puddle in the dust. “Dying would be okay.”

Die. I couldn’t have her die. I had to own her; I could barely manage the lust even now.

Shadows were lengthening out into the meadow, but the lust was beginning to overwhelm me again. I've put my own clothes on, but I wish I had something to put on her. If only she weren’t naked, I could refuse the temptation. I know I could, I told myself over and over.

“It will be late as hell if I try to get home now. I’ll spend the night right here on the trail, won't be the first time. The boys won't look for me for a day or so.” I pulled her to her feet, looped the lariat around her neck again and tied her off to a tree.

“I’m going to build a fire and fix us something to eat.”

“I don’t eat. The horse grazes, but I don’t. I don’t know what will happen to the horse if you keep me tied up too long. Nobody has made it that far.”

Nobody has made it what? I wondered.

I made trail coffee over the coals. I eyed her still tied to the tree. Just one more time, I have to have her just one more time, then I'll let her run free, I decided. I set the tin mug down.

My feet moved on a will of their own as I stepped through the grass. Without a word on my part or so much as a whinny on hers, I untied her neck rope, sat her down at the base of the tree, and lashed her head firmly back against the bark. I roped each ankle up over her head and apart to nearby branches.

I stood over her again, trying to will myself away from her, away from the shimmering red coals reflected in the black eyes. I got to my knees and sucked a firm breast into my mouth. I nibbled. I bit. I pulled the nipple out with my teeth and let it snap back in, luxuriating in the pain I was giving her. She shuddered.

My fingernails grabbed flesh at the inside of her thighs. I scratched her, my passion now running me. When she moaned in the sharp pain, the lust shot through me like one of the bright red coals. I grabbed each of her cunt lips between thumb and forefinger, jabbing my nails into that tender flesh and pulling the lips out and away hard. Her eyes opened wider, a high pitched, eerie whinnying sound coming mostly through her nose. I couldn’t wait any longer; I dove between her spread legs, my nose buried deep in her wetness. Anything, anything to put out the burning coal of lust deep in my core.

I licked and nibbled between her legs like one of those college girl whores I heard the hired hands talk about when they thought I wasn’t listening. I ran my tongue like a practiced slut all the way through her musky crack to her rear hole and then back to the cunt. Again I was gone into some other…what…dimension?... of obsession. I looked into her eyes and demanded, my voice shrill in the cooling night air, “Cum for me, my ponygirl slut. Cum and soak your Mistress’ face. Fuck my face!”

Never in my life had I ever been so consumed with power, so driven by my sexual desire, that I would ever say anything like that. It wasn’t just the words; I had been known to say something like that to a couple of men, but it was the tone, the demand, the insistence that I get fulfillment right now that would have scared me if I’d been more in control of my mind.

Her scream filled the night air like a wild animal and startled night birds. The wetness she gave up was sweet to me, legends of feminine submission mixed with the frustration of timeless rope, or so I imagine now. I can still feel the backs of her thighs twitching when I pushed her legs further back, my fumbling fingers gaining enough slack to untie her from the tree. I took my turn instead sitting against the back of the tree.

“Between my legs, horse bitch.”

God, how I loved having my fingers twisting another woman’s hair. I never stopped to think of how many legs she had been between, pleasuring with a tongue practiced through time past human experience. I pulled her face up for a moment; she glistened in the light of coals and stars. I slapped her face. I slapped her again, reveling in the sadistic lust that I rode on. I wiped my own fingers between my legs. She opened her mouth to suck greedily.

“Now lick me again, horse bitch! Make me cum, I want to cum in buckets on your tongue, on your nose. That’s it…how did you know right there…I can feel…your tongue curl around my clit…is this how girls do it, horse bitch…is this how you always lick your Mistress…do…do you…oh, god…do you want my cum…do you, horse bitch?”

My own scream erupted, shattering again the stillness of the hills. For a moment I thought I was truly outside myself, watching myself from cold logic as I was licked into convulsing orgasm, dying over and over on the crest of a tidal wave, drowning over and over in my lust and never wanting to come up for air.

I remember my toes curling, spasms running across the arches of my feet in the air. I beat my feet on her back and twisted her hair harder to urge her on to greater heights of lust.

The last I can remember was her lying beside me, arms still bound, our sweat mixing, cooling on each other. I pulled a blanket over us. the stars blurred, the smell of sweet grass and lust filled me. I fell asleep.

I rolled over to put my arm around her, intent on fulfilling my restless lust on her once more in the bright early morning. I rolled over, but she was gone. I sat up with a start.

Where is my horse bitch? She must have wandered. I know I tied her well. I did tie her. Where is she?

On my hands and knees, still naked from the night before, I beat my fists in frustration on the ground at the sight of the loose coils of rope. She had escaped me. The bitch was gone. My black horse was gone. And now my lust would know no end.

I stumbled around in the early light, pulling on my boots and jeans, leaving my shirt unbuttoned, neglecting my panties beside the dead embers of the night before. Odd. Since that morning I have never worn panties, not once. I tugged my hat down over my face, trying to hide the dull ache behind my eyes. I saddled the buckskin. He tried to nuzzle my hand, but I pushed his nose away. I only wanted one nuzzle. The horse bitch was gone.

I never went back to the meadow. I knew she would never return to the place of her capture. I spent my days instead wandering the far reaches of the Tetons, the places people didn’t go. I didn’t really expect to find her. I’m not sure what I expected to find. Some peace would have been nice.

I sold the ranch about the time the dreams started. It didn’t help, but I wasn’t paying attention to business. People fretted over me. I ignored them. Every night it was the same dream, the black horse. I tried everything I could to get rid of it, even intentional insomnia. Nothing worked. Her passion had now become mine. I am caught in the eternal lust as sure as she is, and there is no peace.