"God!" she said aloud. But it still seemed to be true… In the first place, Kaiser would protect her – he was doing that already. And then, the faithful dog would always be loyal, where a relationship between two humans could easily crumble, just as the marriage between her mother and father had. There would be none of the whispered insinuations about her involvement, either, the way there had been about her mother when they had lived in Carmichael.

"My, God!" Jackie exclaimed again. It seemed almost too perfect to be true!

She turned her speculative, blue-green eyes to the big brown ones of the German Shepherd, and her lovely face relaxed into a sly, anticipating smile. She felt rather than heard Kaiser's growl of tacit agreement, and slowly, she stood up from the wooden chair and tiptoed into the living room, with the big, eager dog following so close at her heels that she nearly tripped trying to keep from stepping on him.

His long, rough pink tongue had slipped out of the side of his mouth, and long, dribbling drools of his animal saliva dropped on the carpet as he waited by Jackie's bedside. The pretty human female was throwing the backrests off her single day-bed, pulling it away from the wall the way she did every night before going to sleep. Hurriedly, she tore off the fitted slip-cover, revealing to Kaiser's gaze for the first time the shiny pink satin of Jackie's coverlet, and just underneath it, the smooth, silky sheen of her white satin sheets.

The cool feel of the fabric reminded the blonde girl that she was still a virgin, that it wasn't too late to back out, and for a fleeting moment, she wondered if what she was doing would be right. After all, Kaiser was just a young innocent puppy, really, who responded to his instincts without any conscious thought.