“Okay.” I patted my thigh. “You want something to eat?”
That invitation seemed to be all the dog was waiting for and he climbed the stairs slowly, bobbing his head up and down and wagging his tail from side to side. He seemed to be pretty well-trained, I thought, or maybe well-mannered is a better way to say it. Do dogs have manners? I guess they do, judging from the way this one was acting. He didn’t run or bark, and I was glad of that because I wasn’t entirely sure if I could have a dog in my apartment or not. I’d have to check my lease, but I wasn’t keeping him anyway. This would be a one night deal and then I’d find his owner and get him back to where he belonged.
That was my plan anyway.
“You’re going to be a good dog, right?” I asked him, closing the door after he’d walked into the apartment.
He wagged his tail and looked around, sniffing the air.
I had a small place, no doubt about it. Just inside the front, and only, door was the living room, which was also my dining room and bedroom all in one. The apartment had come furnished with old, but comfortable furniture. I slept on a hide-away sofa, except it had become kind of annoying to pull the bed out and put it back everyday, so mostly I slept on the sofa and left the bed folded up inside it. I had a couple end tables with lamps, a coffee table that I used for a dining table since I was using that for a desk and all my homework sat on it. A small television on a small stand and a bookcase with old, worn paperbacks and magazines from twenty years before I’d been born completed the room.
Surprisingly, my landlady had installed a full bathroom with a real bathtub, which seemed to waste a lot of space, but I was glad to have it. I’ve always liked taking baths more than showers. And I had a kitchen crowded with a refrigerator and a two burner stove, and just enough counter space for my toaster oven. It had been a present from my only brother. A toaster oven. I guess it was probably a good idea, and I did use it a lot, but that had been about the last thing I’d ever expected to get for my eighteenth birthday the previous June.
“No collar, huh?” I frowned at the dog as I kicked off my shoes. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got. Are you hungry?”
That was a silly question. All dogs are hungry, right? I felt kind of hungry myself and I didn’t have a whole lot of food in my refrigerator, but I had some pot pies in the freezer. I figured one of those would probably make him happy. They aren’t really that tasty, but they are cheap, and so I turned on the oven to preheat it and that would take ten minutes or so.
“Hey! Uh … Okay, nice dog…” I blinked over my shoulder as the animal startled me, pushing his nose once more to the back of my knee.
He gave my leg a lick through the sheer panty hose I wore and then surprised me with a soft growl. I frowned and turned around to face him. He really was very large and his presence made the kitchen seem even smaller than it was. I felt my heart picking up speed and I hitched a sharp breath as the dog’s nose pushed its way between my thighs and up, under my skirt.
“Stop that!” I told him, scolding the animal and reluctantly pushing my hands against his thick neck. “Be nice! Good doggy, remember?”
I really hoped he wouldn’t bite me or something. I didn’t try to grab him, but only pushed the dog back. He surprised me by not resisting at all. He let me push him away, giving me his amber eyes and a curious cock of his head. He licked his lips, or whatever dogs have, and stood there while I tried to figure out what I was going to do with a dog that was nearly as big as I was. Actually, the dog was probably bigger than me, if you think about it in practical terms.
He must have weighed somewhere around 125 pounds, maybe even more than that, while I was all of 110 soaking wet. If he’d stood on his hind legs, the dog probably could have looked me in the eyes, or close to it. I’m about 5’6″ barefoot and just because I stood on two feet instead of four, I didn’t feel superior to the animal. Not at all.
I was rather intimidated by him actually, simply because he was large and plainly very muscular, very athletic, if you can imagine such a thing. I could see his muscles ripple beneath his short, black fur when he moved and I imagined this was the sort of dog that had been bred for hunting or something like that. He didn’t seem to be the sort of pet who would be content to lie down all day at his owner’s feet, put it that way. And not only because he was so strong, but the look on his face, the steady gaze of his amber eyes … He had some strange confidence, it seemed to me. The dog wasn’t afraid of me, he wasn’t intimidated, and I got the impression that he was just kind of observing me, you know? Like maybe he was trying to figure out what to do with me.
But that didn’t make any sense and I dismissed my thoughts immediately, walking around him and out of the kitchen. I wanted to change clothes as I’d been wearing my Sears outfit for some six hours already, and my bra was annoying and my feet hurt, and I really wanted to take a bath. Once I got the pot pies in the oven I’d have forty minutes to relax in the tub and then we could eat and watch some television maybe and just go to sleep. That seemed like a good idea to me anyway.
“What’s your name, boy?” I wondered, looking at the dog as he sat down on the thin carpet, content to watch me as I removed my blazer. “I have to call you something, huh?”
He just looked at me, his heavy tail thumping on the floor as I spoke. He seemed to like the attention, as anyone would, I supposed.
“How about Jack?” I wondered with a smile. “You’re black anyway.”
The dog didn’t seem to care and I draped my blazer over the sofa and started unbuttoning my blouse.
“I guess it doesn’t matter, does it?” I said. “We’ll get you home tomorrow.”
The next day, Saturday, was a day off for me. I didn’t have school or work on the weekends and that would have been nice, but for the fact that I really had nothing better to do. Weekends, at least my first few in that new town, were rather boring. I guess that’s obvious though, since I was spending my Friday night cooking chicken pot pies and talking to a dog. Too much of that, I thought, and I’d be ready for the funny farm.
“Don’t look, okay?” I laughed lightly, getting another wag as I removed my blouse from my slender shoulders.
He did look though, and strange as it may seem, I felt somewhat self-conscious standing there in my bra. I still had my skirt on, of course, and my pantyhose, but from the waist up I wore only the thin white lace of my bra and the dog was staring at me with his curious amber eyes. Intelligent eyes, I thought for no particular reason, except he reminded me somehow of the men back home who’d stared at me as I’d walk by. I’d never been comfortable with that sort of attention. The hungry, desperate gaze of the boys in school, and even some of their fathers as I walked around town, had always made me feel small and vulnerable.
The dog reminded me of them, but I didn’t know why. I tried to laugh it off. He was only a dog, an animal, and perhaps he wanted some dinner and a scratch behind the ears later, a warm place to sleep on the floor. But he was only a dog and I felt silly worrying over his watchful interest. I reached behind me to find the clasp of my bra and undid it easily, so that the shoulder straps were immediately loose and the cups only barely covered my breasts.
He licked across his sharp teeth and cocked his head in that curious way I’d seen before, and I realized his eyes weren’t on my face any longer. They had been, while I’d spoken to him, but now he was looking lower, staring at my partially exposed breasts. With my naturally thin build they look larger than they really are. My breasts are firm too, proud and topped with dark nipples that could be difficult to hide at times. My boobs had certainly earned me more attention than I’d been comfortable with back home. Even now, around college and at the store where I worked. I’d gotten some long, lingering looks from strangers and I’d ignored them, but I couldn’t have expected such a thing from a dog!
He was looking at my tits, I was sure of it, and I had no idea why. I’ll admit I’m no expert on dogs, but I’m no dummy either. Perhaps it was just my bra, the way it fell loose and probably looked odd to the animal. The movement probably caught his attention, I thought, but even so I felt myself warming all over. I turned my back to him without really thinking about it, except no man had ever seen my breasts naked. He wasn’t a man though, I reminded myself, just a dog. All the same, I felt very shy suddenly and I didn’t like his eyes on me, so I turned and considered undressing in the bathroom.
The silliness of my mood is what stopped me. It’s one thing to be embarrassed, but quite another to have no reason for it. I felt kind of stupid actually and I rolled my eyes at myself. The dog was looking at me, so what? Was I some sort of male-phobe, or whatever the correct word for being afraid of males might be, did I fear men so much that it extended to dogs? No. I wasn’t afraid of men. I merely had little interest in them, aside from my boyfriend, and he’d been … What?
“Expected,” I sighed, trying to forget the dog behind me as I pulled my bra off my arms.
“You’re the prettiest girl in school,” my mom had told me more than once. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”
“When are you going to get a boyfriend?” my dad wondered, having mixed feelings on the subject. He didn’t want me to have one, but he wanted me to want one, you know?
He’d been happy enough that I’d shown no interest in dating, until it became peculiar. People wondered about me, being sixteen and very pretty and without so much as a single date to my name. And so I’d gotten a boyfriend, a nice one, and a boy I knew to be harmless. It had been fun and I’d enjoyed our two years together, our junior and senior years in high school, but I’d kept him at an arm’s length all the while. He’d talked of marriage just before leaving for the army and I’d shaken my head at that.
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