Serving Sreelatha

Book One in the Story So Far Series

By

Kurt Steiner

The Story So Far:

When Sunil Kakkar, Tim Benson’s partner in a thriving retail business, passes away it brings the handsome middle-aged Englishman into contact with his late partner’s younger wife, Sreelatha.

        Being something of a snob, with an attractive wife of his own, Benson had kept his dealings with his partner on a strictly business footing, finding Sunil’s wife –on the few social occasions where he had been forced to interact with her- uninteresting as well as unattractive.

        However, when he goes to his former partner’s house with the intention of buying the wife out of the business, he comes under the influence of a strange tea, the widow herself, and her disapproving and sadistic housekeeper, Abhaya.

Now, seven months on -via the permission of a hypnotic command- he finds himself able to remember certain events of his life since the first taste of that “Strange tea”.

The same events explaining the destruction of his marriage of twenty-five-years and the gradual erosion of both will and self-respect that would ensure he became…

The servant of Sreelatha.

Now Read On:

For the best part of seven months I’d been little more than semi human; a sizable part of little more than an automaton-like creature; part denied conscious volition.

Now though, I remember everything.

And wish I couldn’t.

Then again, if those seven months have proved anything to me it’s the fact I could no more refuse the hateful Indian bitch and her sadistic housekeeper than I could turn cheap ale into vintage wine.

Their hold on me, I now know, is irrevocable and, so great is their confidence, they want to twist the knife further. Hence the hypnotic command given me to not just remember the shameful events of the recent past, but to actually recall the response to them they had programmed me to erase each evening before retiring to my cot in their basement.

Even I still find myself proscribed recall of the triggers and conditioning that had forced me into instigating those “Shameful events” in the first place.

Of course, a different hypnotic command held sway when it came to Vera, my wife. The deterioration of our marriage and her complete loss of respect for me as I –her husband of twenty-five-years- shamed myself before her, all too easy to recall. A shame and deterioration dating from my very first visit to see the widow of my former partner.

Seven months ago.

“What is this?” I remember asking after my first sip of the tea I’d just been served by Sreelatha Kakkar’s unsmiling housekeeper; the same housekeeper who appeared to regard me with baleful eyes; as if my mere presence were an affront to her dignity, let alone having to suffer the humiliation of waiting on me.

A response from the opposite sex towards me –no vanity intended- I was quite unused to.

Standing at an inch over six feet, with a full head of only slightly greying hair, I knew I wasn’t making a bad fist of my forty-five years.

Sure, I might have thickened a little in the beam but that was so slight as to be negligible, the blue eyes my wife and others of her sex assured me were my best feature remained bright and full of life. Despite being old enough to have a daughter who’d married an Australian and settled in Melbourne and another teenager in the third year of Secondary School- I remained vital and ambitious; goals still there to be achieved and life enough left in me with which to achieve them.

All the above, you’ll understand, making it more than a little galling to be treated so dismissively by a grim faced sari wearer in her mid-thirties.

A “Sari wearer” who was, after all, no more than the hired help.

“It is a tea special to Abhaya’s village in the Punjab,” Sreelatha Kakkar, told me, her plump, birdlike and predatory, features almost as dismissive of me as those of her older flunkey’s who had taken up a position to her side from where, if anything, both her scrutiny and all too evident animosity seemed to increase.

In fact, had I not known otherwise, I could easily have been persuaded the red tilaka in the middle of her forehead was a warning sign indicating the heat of her passion against me; rather than the religious marking I knew it to be.

Seated in the living room of my late partner’s Home Counties house, and not for the first time, I wondered how a distinguished and intelligent man of Sunil’s years could have tied himself to an unremarkable twenty-something of such limited cerebral and physical interest as the housekeeper’s mistress.

Even if, I felt bound to confess –to myself anyway- the legs crossed before me in black nylon were right up there with those guaranteed to press my buttons.

Other things being equal that is.

A likelihood, in regard of this particular example of subcontinent womanhood anyway, never likely to hold sway.

Though her breasts were quite impressive too, I felt obliged to admit to myself.

“Do you not like the taste?” she asked, English -thick with the accent of the homeland she had left behind not six months previously- in stark contradiction to the inexpensive British High Street fashions in which she’d garbed herself in an attempt to appear Western.

Like Sunil himself, the wife of my late partner could not be said to splash money around.

Witness the cheap furnishings of what was, after all, an expensive property in an affluent area of Surrey.

The “Seen better days” Mondeo on the drive yet another example of the “Kakkar’s” reticence when it came to parting with a pound note.

“It’s very nice,” I told her truthfully, taking another sip and feeling a strange lassitude come over me before, with an effort of will, pressing on; wanting my business with her over and done with.

“Now, Sreelatha, the reason I’m here is to…”

“Buy the half of the business left me by Sunil,” she finished for me.

I nodded, a little discomfited -not to mention irritated- that the flunkey in the sari had taken up a position behind her young employer’s armchair.

A position enabling her to keep that baleful stare trained upon me.

“We will discuss it shortly,” Sreelatha told me, with what passed for her as a smile. “Finish your tea first, then we will speak.

Biting back my impatience, wanting nothing more than to be out of there, I gave her a smile of my own and then, watched by the intent housekeeper –waiting, no doubt for a positive review of her hometown brew- did as my hostess asked…

“How did it go?” Vera asked, placing a coffee on the kitchen table before me as I slumped into a seat next to it, exhausted for some reason.

And more than a little confused.

I was about to tell her that Sreelatha had invited us over for drinks tonight, though for the life of me I was unable to remember any such invitation having been made by the woman/girl in the first place.

Realising, now I come to think of it, I remembered very little of anything in regard of the meeting with my partner’s widow; despite the fact I had left her home not thirty minutes prior to returning to my own.

My wife’s expression, as she leaned against the front of the sink with a coffee of her own, and regarded me was quizzical. She had just returned from a trip to the shops with a friend and was dressed in a nice two-piece outfit that showed off her legs and still shapely figure perfectly. The same figure and shapely legs I had, in truth, lost interest in over the years – even if I still regarded the woman and mother of my two girls in possession of them affectionately.

So why, all of a sudden, was I in a state of rut at the sight of her?

“Planet earth to Tim Benson.”

“Heh?”

“Is this the onslaught of early Alzheimer’s, or had you forgotten I had a pair of legs?”

“Sorry,” I said, the first erection instigated by my wife in some time growing even more urgent as she playfully tugged up her skirt at the hem to emphasise her point, revealing an expanse of thigh in tan pantyhose in the process.

“I asked you how it went?” she reminded me, allowing –to my disappointment- the skirt to fall.

I stared at her nonplussed, knowing something was wrong –or right if my reaction to her was any guide- but not knowing what.

“With Sunil’s wife?” she prompted.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, reminded and not reminded. Having, for some unaccountable reason no recollection of my meeting with the Indian girl.

Making my next words even more baffling.

“She was very open to the suggestion,” I told her, having no recall of any such thing but, for some reason, knowing I was compelled to say just that.

“She thought it would be nice to finalise the deal over drinks at her place.”

Now it was Vera’s turn to feel bemused.

“And you agreed?”

“Well, I…”

“I thought you couldn’t stand her? You told me she was nothing more than a dull and unattractive little Indian girl from a low caste background.”

She was right, of course. It was exactly the way I’d described the girl; unable to hide my distaste for her even from Sunil. I didn’t like her and he knew it, though he was professional enough not to let it taint our business relationship; seeming, now I think of it, strangely unconcerned by my dismissal of his new wife and assuring me my “Subconscious prejudice”, as he put it, altered his regard for me not one jot.

A description of me as a racist, by the way, I didn’t and don’t, accept in regard of me.

Not being a racist does not mean one has to like all the people of a certain race, or their customs, though I do admit I was, and still am, no fan of that particular region of the world.

“If having a drink with her is what it takes to buy her out of the company then that’s what I’ll do,” I told her, still struggling to remember the earlier conversation leading to the one I was now attempting to hold.

“Fine,” Vera said, with a conviction unusual to her, having been nothing but supportive of me and the business from the very beginning, “but you can go on your own. There’s no need for two of us to spend time with someone we don’t like.”

A feeling of mild hysteria made my stomach churn.

Something was badly wrong with this conversation.

I knew with certainty that it wasn’t enough for me to go alone and the prospect of so doing was inducing a panic attack in me –not that I’d ever experienced one before and had no terms of reference regarding one.

Vera had to be there and I had to persuade her.

Even if, for the life of me, I couldn’t supply a reason why.

“She wants both of us there, Vera,” I told her.

“Really? And since when has it mattered to you what “She” wants. You’ve never liked her and –for once- I agree with you. Just go on your own and finalise things with her. I’m staying put.”

“But…”

“I’m sorry, Tim,” she came in. “I don’t ask for a lot and you pretty much have things your own way, but I do not fancy spending an evening with that girl.”

She was right, of course, and I knew it.

When we had married she was fresh from Bristol and the possessor of a first-class degree in business studies – far superior, I can do no more than admit, to my 2-2 from a low demand redbrick.

Subsequently headhunted, she was already being fast tracked to the top of the multi-national employing her when Sonia, our first, came along, an arrival ensuring she give up a highly promising career to stay at home and support mine.

A decision she had not seemed to regret even when Melanie, our youngest, arrived some eight years later – even if I did detect the odd wistful expression when I left the house some mornings on route to my office.

Hardly surprising then, after having made such a real sacrifice, she would baulk at something as unnecessary as joining me for drinks at my late partner’s home in the company of his dull and unattractive young widow.

So why was I filled with such dread at the prospect of turning up alone without her? 

Unaware of any conscious decision to do so, I rose from my chair and moved to stand before her, the puzzled expression on my wife’s face as she brushed a strand of still naturally blonde hair from her face mirroring the mystification bubbling away inside my own head.

For a few moments we seemed frozen in place, then, without a word, as if on autopilot, I lowered myself to my knees before her.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a laugh I read as one-third bemused, another curious, and the last excited.

“Persuading you,” I heard myself say, words and actions beyond my own volition as I raised her skirt and pressed my nose to the gusset of her pantyhose, drawing a gasp from her despite her aforementioned bemusement.

Suddenly, as if a switch had been thrown, I was like a madman, doing my best to eat her through the fabric separating her pussy from my eager tongue, the smell of her arousal, already soaking the cotton of her panties, driving me on to even greater efforts as she took a handful of my hair to make sure I remained in the unlikely position and continued to service her in what was, until then, an unheard of way.

When the crisis hit her –and had I been in command of my own thoughts- I would have sworn her screams could be heard in neighbouring Sussex.

“Unusual taste,” Vera told Sreelatha as we sat in her front room.

The “Drinks” she had promised turning out to be more of the strange tea, served by her housekeeper – a housekeeper, I noticed, who seemed a sight friendlier to Vera than she was to me.

“It is a blend of leaves and herbs from Abhaya’s village,” Sreelatha told her, dressed like her servant in a sari for some reason, eschewing the cheap High Street fashions and leaving me disappointed –not to mention baffled- at being deprived a sight of her shapely legs.

The presence of the beautifully manicured and painted toenails I could see peeking from her sari on the end of one sandaled foot, however, going some way towards compensation.

Even if my reaction to it was equally baffling.

Since when had I become interested in feet?

And, moreover: a foot resting below such an unprepossessing visage.   

Switching my thoughts away from this new development, I was grateful Vera seemed to be okay with her presence there.

More than okay, it appeared.

Even more mystifying to me than my sudden foot fetish was my wife’s apparent enjoyment of our hostesses company and –more mystifying than that even- the company of her unsmiling, with me anyway, housekeeper.

Her acquiescence in accompanying me -after I had overcome my distaste for the act and gone down on her for the first time in our marriage; albeit through the fabric of both panties and hose- had turned to sulkiness in the car on the way there.

A sulkiness offset by the genial and hospitable way both Sreelatha and her housekeeper welcomed her inside. Greeting her as if she were a friend of longstanding they were seeing again after too great an absence. A seemingly heartfelt and warm greeting overcoming both Vera’s sulkiness and reticence at one and the same time.

Even if their reaction to me remained frosty.

In the case of the housekeeper, downright hostile.

“It’s very nice,” Vera told them, taking another sip before smiling at Abhaya and receiving a smile in return.

“Yes,” Sreelatha agreed, “your husband seemed much taken with it earlier.”

Adding with a chuckle:

“See how he swallows it down so greedily.”

With a start, I realised I had finished my cup, despite having only just received it.

Piping hot, too.

“Bad boy!” Sreelatha chided me, bringing a laugh from Vera for my schoolboy scolding and a curling of the lip from the housekeeper. The three of them, it seemed, united in their mocking disapproval of my greediness when it came to the housekeeper’s unusual brew.

My response, however, consisted of neither mirth nor contempt.

At the words “Bad boy” something stirred in me, rendering me speechless.

Unable to move or speak as a great darkness seemed to surge upwards from my feet towards my stomach and past my chest until…

“I liked what you did earlier,” Vera told me.

“Heh?” I asked, at a loss, feeling somewhat… dislocated after our visit to see the “Bitch”, as I described her to myself.

“It seemed… natural,” she continued over me, looking, I remember thinking, a little dislocated herself.

Back in our own home again after the visit to my former partner’s for drinks, I realised that once again I seemed to remember nothing. The issue of my buying Sreelatha out of my company not addressed – or, at least, not recalled. In fact, apart from the housekeeper’s strange and admittedly delicious tea, I couldn’t seem to bring to mind much of what happened there at all.

“What are you on about?” I asked, thinking she referred to our time at Sreelatha’s and curious to know just what I did there that she liked and seemed so “Natural”.

Seated opposite me with a glass of Pinot, Vera held my eyes with her own.

A different Vera.

For some reason, I thought, an element of her character I’d yet to see or even suspect had decided to reveal itself.

An assertive element, I told myself, a forthrightness in complete contradiction to the amenable woman I knew as wife, homemaker, and mother of our children.

“You,” she said simply in answer to my query.

“What about me?”

“In the kitchen,” she said. “Getting down on your knees and worshipping my pussy.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed, memory flooding back and unable to meet her stare for some reason, as taken aback by my uncharacteristic behaviour as she appeared delighted by it.

Her equally uncharacteristic plain speaking in regard of such matters also placing me on the backfoot.

“I really liked it,” she went on, “especially as you haven’t had much interest in me these last few years – and certainly not like that.”

“That’s not true,” I replied hotly, embarrassed by the reminder. “Things change with couples, that’s all. We’ve been together a long time and…”

“They haven’t changed for me,” she came in – and not without some asperity. “I still want a good hard dick in me on a regular basis.”

“Vera!” I could do no more than gasp; never having heard her speak so bluntly before and feeling, I’m obliged to admit, more than a tad threatened by the development. Such talk alien and unnatural on my amenable wife’s lips.

“Don’t ‘Vera’ me,” she snarled, asperity turning to outright anger. “It’s high time we had this conversation. I’ve let you run things for far too long.”

It was, I thought at the time, as if my earlier –and one-off, I believed- performance of oral sex upon her, simply as a means of persuading her to visit Sreelatha with me, had opened the floodgates on a far darker and more demanding Vera.

A Vera, something told me, even at this early stage, I was not going to like very much.

“The least a woman like me can expect,” she was continuing, “is a husband able to fill her with cock when she needs it.”

Her eyes were flinty in the lamplight and she looked angry as she added:

“Even if it is a tiny one.”

I was stunned.

Take hurt as read.

At no time in our relationship had she complained about the dimensions of my equipment. Fair enough, I realised I wasn’t what you’d describe as a size god in that department but I was some way –a long way, I considered- from being “Tiny”.

“You’ve never complained before,” I reminded her, still fighting the inner displacement giving everything an air of unreality. So unreal, in fact, I could almost persuade myself I was dreaming.

I wish.

“And hurt your poor male ego?” she asked, lip curling with derision.

“But…”

“No ‘Buts’. Things are going to change around here.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded, a little adrenalin lessening the numbness I felt and allowing me to engage a little more fully.

“I think it’s about time I took control and started calling the shots.”

“Do you now?” I asked, voice dangerously low now as my own anger kicked in; the dislocation from events I’d been feeling since my first visit to Sreelatha’s temporarily sidelined by the nonsense spouting from my wife. Unable to know the events of the next few hours would prove her words to be anything but the “Nonsense” my mind asserted it to be.

“I do,” she told me, not backing down, eyes holding mine. “I know you for who you are now. All these years, when I thought you were a strong, take charge, man for whom it was worth putting my own life and career second, you were actually terrified of me.”

If I hadn’t known of her capacity for drink and that she was still on her first glass of Pinot I would have sworn she was inebriated.

“That’s the reason you would never put your tongue at the service of my cunt when I begged you to do such a thing for me.”

My jaw sagged at hearing that word on her lips for the first time.

But she was already ploughing on:

“You knew once you’d had a taste of me the real Tim Benson would surface.”

“The real Tim…?” I half repeated, too taken aback to finish.

Vera was nodding, eyes fiery, actively wanting confrontation.

“That’s right. I let my feelings for you cloud my judgement and allowed you to run the show when it should have been me calling the shots.”

“What?”

“I should have seen it years ago,” she went on, overriding me. “You’re a born follower. An underling. Someone who needs to be told what to do and when and how to do it. When you knelt in front of me and worshipped my pussy simply to try and get your own way it all became clear to me.”

“Really?” I said with sarcasm. “An underling, you say? A follower?”

Her eyes did not leave mine and if she was thinking of backing down it was disguising itself pretty convincingly.

A lack of contriteness ensuring my next words were laced with a hint of threat to accompany their aforementioned sarcasm:

“Think my employees might have trouble agreeing with you on that one, sweetheart.”

Irony and growing anger –as well as the endearment I knew she disliked, though it was one she used herself- either lost to her or of nil importance.

“It was Sunil they followed not you,” she replied, unconcerned, it seemed, by either sarcasm or acidity.

“Now he was a real man,” she mused, smiling to herself. “A strong man.”

Her eyes appraised me with undisguised contempt.

“The same way,” she added, “as Sreelatha is a strong and warm woman – even if she is young.”

“Sreelatha?” I repeated, the name, for some reason, sending a shiver of dread through me I immediately dismissed as simple distaste.

“Warm?”

“That’s why you dislike her so much. Because she sees you for what you are and has done from the beginning. You’re a pussy-boy. Not a real man.

“P-Pussy-boy?”

“She highlights your weakness the way all strong people highlight your weakness.”

“For heaven’s sakes, Vera,” I began, attempting to reason with her. “Where is all this coming from?”

She shrugged, expression remaining contemptuous as I continued:

“Me?”

Shrug turned to nod.

“Weak?”

She smiled, as if to say: “Didn’t I tell you that already?”

“What utter nonsense,” I cried, indicating our surroundings, our life. “Could a ‘Weak’ man be responsible for all this?”

“Think it’s nonsense, do you?” she said, rising to her feet to stand before me, hands on hips, eyes lasering into me.

“What are you doing?” I asked, suddenly nervous in spite of my anger.

“I’m about to show you,” she said, moving towards me, “just how nonsensical it really is.”

Mouth dry and unable to make saliva, I waited as she stood poised above me, amazed at a sudden transformation I’d experienced only second-hand in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel.

“I’m going to bed soon,” she informed me. “I’m meeting Sreelatha for lunch tomorrow and I want to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for her.”

“Meeting, Sreela...?” I began to protest.

Only to be instantly overridden.

“But I’ve just enough time for a demonstration of how things between us are going to be from now on.”

“Vera, what’s got into…?”

My words died in my throat as she raised her knee-length cocktail dress above her thighs to reveal black stockings and satin panties; the front of which I could see were already soaked with evidence of her passion.

Her verbal abuse of me, the small part of my brain that was actually functioning reasoned, was obviously triggering her arousal.

Another facet of her personality I hadn’t suspected until that moment.

Even more unsuspected, and despite my increasing anger, was the discovery she wasn’t alone in her response.

Though I knew her description of me as weak bore no relation to reality, something in the situation and her changed attitude in my regard had translated itself directly to my groin.

A location according it a very warm welcome.

Yet, and you really do have to believe me now, so far was I from being “Weak”, as she described, that I was about to stand and give her a piece of my mind; determined to overturn this blip in our relationship and return things to normal.

A t least, that was the plan.

Until she said something that quelled all such thoughts of husbandly authority.

“Bad boy!”

For a few moments I stared at her as if she were mad.

Who did she think she was talking to?

Talking to me, her husband, in such a patronisi…?”

As I said:

“For a few moments.”

This time, however, it wasn’t darkness the words triggered in me.

Sat on the edge of our sofa in the front room of the house in which we had brought up our children, I realised that not once, in all the years of our marriage, had I wanted my wife more than I did at that moment.

And in the worst possible way.

For me, at least.

Which was when, knowing what was expected of me –if not how I knew it- I slid from my chair and went to my knees before her; eyes riveted on the pussy she pointed to with the red painted nail of one imperious finger. About to place my lips on the fabric covering it when she stopped me.

“Not yet!”

I looked up at her, questioningly.

The look on her face as she gazed down at me was unmistakably one of triumph. The sneer of derision aimed in my direction one I had never seen, or expected to see, on the face of my wife of twenty-five years.

But it was the words she used next that told me something had changed between us.

Something that would alter our relationship forever and something only she would benefit from.

“Before I let you worship my pussy,” she snarled, “you can apologise for pretending to be a man all these years and beg forgiveness by kissing my feet…

**The story in its entirety can now be found on Lulu**

Serving Sreelatha

(Part-Two)

Book One In The Story So Far Series

By

Kurt Steiner

“You don’t look well,” my PA, Fiona Briggs, told me the next afternoon, entering my office unannounced to make the observation after having taken note of my performance throughout the preceding morning.

Her observation being one I found hard to disagree with; even if I knew my sickness owed more to the quality of my mental well being than the physical.

In truth, the day until then had been difficult, the events of the previous twenty-four-hours continuing to play themselves out in my mind; reaching for the phone at times throughout the morning to call Vera and have it out with her, only to pull my hand away at the last second as if its plastic casing were molten hot.

Times too numerous to count with any accuracy.

Even going so far as to punch in the number at one point before slamming the receiver back on its cradle and asking myself if I really wanted to hold such a conversation over the phone.

Or, more relevantly, in my workplace.

The negative answer to such a question not preventing me from dwelling on these worrying new developments and asking myself any number of questions.

Questions I continued to ask throughout the morning and on through lunch until mid afternoon.

“How had things come to such a pass between us in so short a space of time?”

“Did she really mean the things she had said?”

“Had I really lowered my head to the floor and apologised for pretending to be a man before kissing her feet and begging forgiveness?”

And at no time, so strong was the programming I now know myself to have been under, did I once connect the Indian bitch, and her equally hateful housekeeper with the strange tasting tea, to my predicament.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Tim?” she asked for the fourth or fifth time; the matronly fifty-something who had been with the company since Sunil and I started it looking truly concerned by my listlessness; having noticed my unprecedented preoccupation and lack of attention and had taking it for illness.

The same older woman who –matronly or not- still managed to look sexy and youthful and, consequently, received a lot of male attention for having achieved the feat.

A fan base including both Sunil and myself in its membership – though today I was far too preoccupied to give her my usual once over whenever I thought she wasn’t looking.

In my present mood, even her still shapely legs, in their habitual nylons and high-heeled courts, could do nothing to shake my fixation on the problem awaiting me at home.

The same problem that had come from nowhere and appeared to be developing with a swiftness matching its unexpected arrival.

“Actually, Fiona,” I lied, “I’m not feeling too great. Might be an idea if I call it a day early for once.”

Her expression told me she concurred:

“I’m sure it’s nothing a bit of TLC from Vera won’t cure. Get her to make you a nice hot toddy and tuck you up in bed.”

With a smile of gratitude for her consideration, I assured her that was exactly what I would do and left for home.

To find Vera waiting for me.

Expecting me, in fact.

“Good,” she crashed straight in: “I called the office to order you home but was told you’d left. We –make that I- need to speak.”

Order?” I mumbled to myself, immediately on the back foot, despite having girded my loins during the short drive home to nip her new assertiveness in the bud and return our relationship to its footing prior to the day before.

“I’ve been speaking to Sreelatha about how we see the company developing from here.”

“You’ve been spea…?” I began; unable to quite finish my question, so taken aback was I at what had prompted it.

“Sreelatha feels –and I agree with her- that you don’t have the necessary expertise to take the company forward,” Vera informed me, for all the world a senior exec breaking the news she was letting an employee go.

My temper snapped.

“What the fuck do you mean? Sreelatha feels? This is my company. I started it and I own the majority shareholding. Sree-fucking-latha is a junior partner – and she won’t even be that when I buy her out. And as for you, I…”

“She has no intention of selling her shares,” Vera cut me off, unimpressed by my display of temper.

I shrugged, angry still but unconcerned.

“Whatever,” I told her. “It’s still my company, my show, and my call as to what direction we go in.”

Vera was shaking her head before I’d even finished.

“It’s only your company if you’re the majority shareholder and –correct me if I’m wrong here- but, with my shares and Sreelatha’s together, we own fifty-one percent.”

For the first time I heard alarm bells ringing.

“For God’s sakes, Vera,” I began, confidence dented, having forgotten the shares I’d given her and not having believed for one split second she would ever turn my gift to her against me. “Surely you wouldn’t…?”

“I already have,” she told me. “As of this moment you are no longer in charge. Both the company and you are going to have a new boss.”

I looked at her as if she were mad; fully expecting her to laugh and tell me she was joking.

Then, when no laughter was forthcoming:

“That’s it, Vera,” I told her, drawing myself up to my full height and towering over her. “This has gone far enough. I’m your husband. We have children and history together. But if you want this marriage to last you had better decide where your loyalties lay.”

If I’d expected a response it certainly wasn’t the one I got.

She was unfazed.

And supremely and irritatingly confident.

“This marriage will last for exactly as long as I want it to last. And from now on I’ll be the one who makes the decisions.”

I could only look on with open mouth as she laid it out for me, my loving wife of twenty-five years a stranger to me.

“All of them,” she finished.

“And you…?”

My anger and outrage were so great I could barely form words.

“And you really…?”

“Yes? Do go on.”

“And you really think I’m going to be happy with that and just go along with it?”

“Not at all,” she disabused me. “You’ll hate it, I should think.”

Smiling a nasty little smile then; before:

“But that just makes it all the more sweeter for me.”

“Vera, have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Hardly. In fact I’ve never felt more in command of both myself and you – as you’ll discover when you return.”

“What do you mean: ‘Return’? Return from where?”

“Sreelatha wants to speak to you. You’re to go to her immediately.”

“ ‘Sreelatha’ can go fuck herself,” I snarled. “If this is the way you want things, fine. I’ll pack my things and…”

“Bad boy!”…

“What have you done to my wife, you ugly Indian bitch?” I snarled, bursting into the front room to find her taking coffee, dressed once again in sari and sandals.

“How dare you speak to Ms Sreelatha in such a way,” came a thick Indian accent from behind me, the housekeeper having followed me in.

“Stay calm, Abhaya,” her young mistress urged. “Timothy is understandably angry. It is our responsibility to make sure he understands how things are going to be and how he must behave from now on.”

By now my anger was at molten levels, the low caste bitch was speaking to me of me as if I were a third-former – and a pretty slow one at that.

For one thing, I had no idea how Vera had persuaded me to come here when my intention had been to pack a few things and leave for a hotel –hoping a few days apart would show her the error of her ways and return things to normal.

For another, the Indian bitch had called me “Timothy”. Something guaranteed to make my hackles rise.

I was “Tim”.

Always had been and always would be.

“I’ll ask you again,” I began, voice dangerously low. “What the fuck have you done to Vera?”

“Really Timothy,” she tutted, “Just because I am so many years your junior it does not mean I will permit you to use such language in my presence. It is lucky for you Abhaya and myself see your potential or there would be repercussions you really would not like.”

I listened to the bitch’s words with disbelief.

“Potential?”

“Now,” she said, with that thick accent I detested so much, “come here and kneel at my side.”

For a moment I thought I’d misheard, rooted to the spot in a condition similar to shock.

Which was when a hand in my back propelled me forward.

“Do as Ms Sreelatha says,” ordered the housekeeper.

“Are you both insane?” I accused, all I could do not to haul back and lay the Indian shrew and her sari out.

“If you think I’m going to…”

The words leaving Sreelatha’s lips cut me off instantly.

At the time, of course, given the conditioning they’d subjected me to up to then, I was incapable of acting on any thought that did not involve obeying the Indian girl before me in some way – knowledge of my conditioning that was erased whenever I left her presence and made each subsequent submission to her as fresh and humiliating as the first.

Now though, being so far gone in my enslavement and having received permission to recall the fine detail of my fall from grace, I remember everything.

“Yes, That is much better,” she told me as Abhaya looked on. “Kneel right there. That’s a good boy.”

Despite my hatred of the girl for the situation in which I found myself, with both her and my wife, her praise induced in me a thrill of pleasure as I lowered myself to her side.

“Look at my foot as I speak,” came the command, my eyes immediately fixing on the red nails protruding from the sandal at the end of one crossed leg as she swayed it back and forth.

“Such a good boy,” I heard from above me. “Take a good sniff now. You know you want to.”

I was already inhaling the salty, slightly vinegary, aroma of her foot when she said:

“See Abhaya? Did I not tell you he would be a good boy?”

“He will be better, I promise,” I heard the housekeeper’s voice from above. “At the moment he is no more than a disobedient dog, and an old one at that; even if he is a very attractive example of the breed. Though he is, as you thought he might be, very receptive to our treatment of him. ”

“Do not worry, good Abhaya,” I heard Sreelatha laugh, “I may be only a very young girl from a poor background but, between us, we will soon teach this old dog many new tricks.”

Their shaming laughter at my expense triggered something in me and whatever had been holding me in place until then seemed to relax its grip, allowing me to look up.

“Bad dog!” snapped the housekeeper; any thoughts I may have had regarding rebellion barely making it out of the womb before finding themselves smothered.

“Keep your eyes on Ms Sreelatha’s feet as she ordered and continue to sniff.”

Unbelievably, my eyes returned to the still swinging foot of “Ms Sreelatha”, again inhaling deeply through the nose as instructed.

“Move closer,” the Indian girl ordered.

I moved closer.

“Good boy,” I heard her voice from above. “You see how much better you feel when you do as I tell you?”

I nodded, amazed at how nice it felt to receive praise from her, no matter how demeaning.

“Now, now,” she chided me. “It is bad mannered to simply nod when a superior speaks to you.”

“Superior?” my thoughts screamed.

“You must address me as ‘Ms Sreelatha from now on’,” she told me.

“No matter who is present.”

For the life of me I could not understand how the levels of shame I felt for the predicament I found myself in could prevent me from rising up and taking the ugly Indian bitch by the throat.

“Look at me,” she ordered.

I raised my head to find her eyes boring into mine.

“How will you address me from this moment on – no matter who is present?”

Eyes still riveted on the bare flesh of her foot, the voice that answered was unrecognisable as my own.

“M-Ms… Sreelatha,” I croaked, words and surrender exiting my mouth, despite my struggle to prevent such an eventuality.

“What a good boy you are,” she applauded me. “You see, Abhaya? He can be taught new tricks.”

The laughter I again heard shared above me did nothing to lessen my shame.

A shame heightened, in fact, when the hand of the housekeeper ran itself through my hair to find my neck and begin stroking it.

An action familiar to me.

It being, I noted, the same way my youngest daughter had stroked the puppy she had pestered me into buying her.

The same puppy that had proved so unmanageable I had, despite my daughter’s tears, been left with no choice but to find it a new owner.

Now I was the one being stroked as if I were no more than a household pet.

And by a visitor from the subcontinent I considered my inferior in every way.

My shame at this new development heightened still further when I realised I was actually leaning into the housekeeper’s caresses, as if she were for all the world my owner and I her loyal canine.

A response bringing more laughter from my tormentors.

Suddenly, the younger of the two Indian bitches was all business:

“Now, there is also the small matter of how you will treat your wife from now on.”

I waited, still leaning into that stroking hand.

“I want you to listen very carefully…”

Following installments of the story can now be found on www.femdomcave.com