Major Allenby watched his wife stick her tongue out and look up at him pathetically for approval. He made a non-committal grunt and nodded to where his booted feet were crossed on the footstool that stood in front of the chair he was currently lounging on.

She was on her knees and had to drag her gown round with her as she turned before she lowered her head and began to lick. She took long slow licks, trailing her pink tongue across the toes and vamps and towards the ankles.

But he was wise to her tricks.

"That's not where they're dirty, Emily."

"No, John. I'm sorry," she said meekly and returned her tongue to licking along the sides and cleaning them down to the soles. Every now and then she would pause to swallow and then go back to work. Sometimes he could see her large, startlingly blue eyes flick up to him to check he was satisfied.

He steepled his hands in front of his face and then uncrossed his feet to allow her full access to the insteps of both boots.

There was a knock on the door. Emily looked up.

"Get on with your work, Emily," he told her and shouted for whoever it was to come in.

One of the maids entered, a tray of tea cups and a teapot in her hands. She made herself busy and Allenby watched her with amusement whilst he made sure that Emily was not shirking the dirtier parts of his boots. Every now and then the maid would look across to her mistress with a look of the most profound contempt on her dark, handsome face with its soft lips and wide, liquid brown eyes.

Tears of humiliation began to roll down Emily's cheeks as she felt the maid's gaze on her.

Eventually he held up one foot and presented her with the sole.

"Lick it," he said curtly.

There was a scarcely suppressed snort of derision from the maid as she finished and swept out. Emily sobbed as she screwed her eyes shut and licked the soles of his boots, one after the other.

"Very good, my dear!" he said when she had finished and had retched into her handkerchief a couple of times. "You are becoming quite a talented boot licker!"

"Oh, please no more! Is it not enough that I do what you tell me without your parading it in front of the slaves?"

John got to his feet and walked over to a window. "No. It is not enough. You must be utterly humiliated. Utterly!" He spun round, and she flinched from his expression of fury. "You humiliated me utterly! You bitch! And you still have a long way to go before I consider that I have paid you back!"

He stalked out of the room, leaving her sobbing quietly. Once out of her sight, he relaxed and smiled.

***

He and Emily had married back in London before coming out to the colonies for him to work for Sir Arthur Taylor as his overseer-in-chief on St Kelmo.

Emily was a blonde English rose type of beauty with a well-proportioned figure and a dazzling smile. She loved to socialise and on St. Kelmo he had watched her blossom amid the unending round of balls and parties. He had watched indulgently as she had swirled and spun on the dance floor with this or that handsome partner, but she had always come back to him happy, smiling and breathless.

Their love life had also blossomed.

In London she had been a dutiful wife, the offspring of a very old and well established 'county' family, she rode and had all the social graces. In bed she was just as dutiful and opened her legs whenever he wanted. However, John Allenby had not been any stranger to the stews and the camp followers that army life had brought him into contact with and he found her an unadventurous lover.

However, he had tried to widen their sexual experiences, but Emily had been violently sick the one and only time he had attempted to ejaculate in her mouth. As for anal, which had always been his most favoured way of enjoying a woman; he had seen that it would probably poison the whole of the rest of their lives if he tried it.

But in St. Kelmo, with its warm scented nights when they slept with virtually no bedclothes and only the very lightest night clothes, she had become more adventurous and had succeeded in taking his spend in her mouth on several occasions and was obviously immensely proud of herself.

Sir Arthur had watched benignly and had dropped some hints to John that there was definitely something in the air of St. Kelmo that affected the relationships between the sexes. Lady Sarah - a handsome blonde woman in her late thirties - had merely smiled and fanned herself more vigorously when her husband had mentioned it.

Then John had been sent to a neighbouring island to a sale of slaves, Sir Arthur's plantation being short handed at that time - and after purchasing four males he had returned a night earlier than planned, having been away for a week.

He had ensured the new purchases were safely shackled for the night and then had gone to join the Taylors at a ball at the home of the Sir Archie and Lady Isabelle Stuart.

It was in full swing when he arrived, the lights from the ballroom shone out over the darkened lawns and shrubberies as he walked up the grand stairs to the main door when his coach dropped him off. He handed his hat to the footman who waited beside the door and then declined to be announced as a dance was in full flow and the house was flooded with the sound of the orchestra. Instead he took a drink from a tray carried by a passing waiter and wandered out onto a terrace at the rear of the house.

And there he found Emily.

She was at the far end where it was dark and he was in time to see the end of the scene being enacted. She was on her knees, in her finest ballgown before a tall, dark haired man. She was holding him by the hips and it was plain from the nodding movements of her head - her thick blonde tresses hid her face from him - that she had his cock in her mouth. As he watched in disbelief, the man suddenly gave a soft cry and held her head tightly against him while he jerked his pelvis convulsively against her face. Emily made no move to escape or to rear away, instead she seemed to cope perfectly calmly and as he finished she lifted her head off and he could see her throat working as she swallowed the stranger's emission more competently than she had ever done with his. And furthermore she looked up at the man with unmistakable pride and pleasure.

For his part the man calmly set about buttoning his flies while Emily regained her feet and settled her skirts again.

John stepped back into the shadows as they turned.

They both passed him talking calmly about the ball and who she was dancing with next, then before they reached the lights, they split up and the man went in first while Emily adjusted the shoulders of her dress, patted her hair and made sure she didn't look as if she had just come from an assignation.

He stepped out from the shadows, strode forwards and gripped her upper arm with all the strength of his anger.

She cried out in pain and shock but was already being dragged bodily towards the carriages.

"John! Wait!" she whispered frantically tried to keep up with him and avoid being dragged bodily. "What are you doing? What's going on?"

"I think I should be asking you that, you strumpet!"

"Wait! Oh Lord! It's not what you think you saw!"

"Ha! You think I don't know what a woman sucking a man's cock looks like?" he snarled.

"But it's not that simple. Please!"

"It's very simple you harlot! You thought I was away, so you grabbed the first cock you could!"

He hailed a carriage and flung her in then climbed in after her and they rode home in silence, aware of the postillion and the driver.

But as soon as they had arrived home and Emily had been dragged bodily upstairs in front of the astonished domestics, he shoved her into their bedroom and delivered a thunderous slap to her face.

She was thrown off her feet and landed heavily up against a chaise longue.

"Get up, you bitch!" he growled.