His body, even where he lay on the colored concrete, could be seen to be thickly muscle and powerful. His teeth, as he ripped the lamb flesh from its bone, were patently those of a trained and vicious watchdog, and Karen could not repress a small ripple of excitement as she watched him. A dog like that looked so brutish and untamable it was difficult to imagine him ever wearing a collar. He was at once malevolent and yet attractive like a dangerous and powerful man.

"Come on, dear," Georgia said just a trace more peevishly than she realized. "You've got to help me with breakfast. Your father will be down any minute."

Karen smiled silkenly to herself. There was something very masculine about the big brute in their yard. It wouldn't have been possible for him to have been a female. Having so recently become a full-blown physically matured female herself, the attraction was instantaneous. Not that she would ever have dreamed of consummating her vaguely aroused interest, of course. Her mind could scarcely have conceived of sex between a dog and a human girl, indeed she had the utmost difficulty imagining it between herself and a human boy! But nonetheless she could feel the magnetic pull between her eyes and those of the beast working so malevolently over his lamb bone. That was instinct. It did not require translation into physical action, only the understanding that it, the magnetism, existed. She knew instinctively that she would have loved to have an imperial animal like that around all the time, psychologically; sex didn't enter into it.

"Boy, he's a big dog, isn't he, Mother?" she said, leaving the window. "Are we going to keep him? He looks like a good watchdog."

"Yes, and there'll probably be a reward out for him in the newspaper, too. You can't just pick up dogs like that, Karen. They belong to people somewhere."

Karen sniffed haughtily. "It certainly doesn't look as if the people he belonged to cared for him much, though. He's just filthy. We really should clean him up a bit."