Her neighbors were there doing things to get ready for dinner. Biscuits were in the oven. Stew was cooking. A male neighbor was barbecuing steaks in t...he back yard. Two others were making sausage. Potatoes were roasting next to the biscuits. Vegetables were cooking near the stew. There was the smell of hickory wood from the smoke house out back. It was organized pandemonium, but the various aromas were fantastic.Wesley and I set up a table with some sawhorses and planks out in the yard. We also. His steel-grey eyes burned Liz's blue-green once and she dropped her eyes looking at the knot of his elegant dark blue tie."Please, look me in the eyes, Elizabeth. I like to have eyes at a level. Helps me to see if I'm getting a message across." Liz raised her eyes and looked directly in his, hypnotized like a bird by a snake."You know, Elizabeth, in the old days it wouldn't be an expulsion matter. It would be a matter of a healthy dose of cane, publicly applied to a pair of bare, repentant. She did not pull back from the touch of my hardness on her thigh on the small commercial airplane, but I could sense her distaste for my maleness and the scent of my desire.Of course, I was literally in bed with my former handler. She had been carefully groomed by me from the very beginning and had reached that plateau of sexual satisfaction that untrained Western women seldom achieve. This worldwide virus had caused many changes in our long-range program for total world domination and we. “We’re here as his friends, not as your employees,” Ryan said in an attempt to forestall Liz’s protests.“I figured out yesterday that you’re going to make your own decisions,” Liz said, smiling at everybody. “I’m glad that you’re persistent. It’s good to hear the laughing and joking. That’s been missing the past few weeks. I ... I feel like we’re starting to come out the other side.”“I hope so,” Jill said. “Because this side pretty well sucks.”I chuckled. Jill hadn’t been her usual exuberant.