We, or rather, Sarah and her servant, had received in the mail an invitation to attend a Femdom High Tea.
Sarah is my wife and the love of my life. She's a workaholic businesswoman and often jokes that I'm her house husband as I spend my non-working hours doing all our life admin such as cooking, cleaning and shopping.
As great as our relationship worked for us both, we did have the problem of feeling our friend circles slowly shrink as our late 20s turned into our late 30s.
She'd casually mentioned one of her gym friends had invited her to High Tea as an opportunity for her to meet people her age, with similar interests.
Although, until this invitation arrived, I didn't know the friends she wanted to meet were fellow dommes, or that their shared interest was Femdom.
I hadn't always seen our dynamic as a femdom relationship. Sarah didn't dress as a leatherbound dominatrix, and neither of us was interested in the more hardcore femdom acts like pegging, humiliation or chastity.
But after Sarah described Gentle Femdom as a female-led relationship, largely focused on her but where both parties treat each other like real adults, I saw us. So from then on, I was happy to call us a gentle femdom couple.
Sarah described the event as just a low-key introductory-level Femdom party held at an acquaintance's house. She hastened to add if things went well we could move on to higher level parties.
We both immediately agreed to go, although there would need to be a few ground rules. Being a sub at a Femdom party meant I'd be expected to serve the women attending in many different ways.
And Sarah being a domme at a Femdom party meant she'd be free to indulge in whatever she pleased.
After some discussion, we agreed that oral sex should be allowed. But, she drew the line at kissing or having actual sex with the other attendees. We also decided that to get the most out of the experience we should fully commit to it, and put all our efforts into trying new experiences.
Simply put, our rules were, 1) she'd do whatever she liked. And 2) I'd do everything I was told to.
Our excitement for the event took over our whole week.
Sarah had been stressed and worn out from her work, but the closer it got to the weekend the more bubbly she was. On Friday I heard her happily singing a made-up song to herself about how this weekend she was going to be pampered.
I spent the week on a knife edge, spending half my time dreading the horrible tasks I might be forced to perform. The other half of the time excitedly daydreams of being used as a slave.
The only service I knew for sure that I'd be expected to perform was to help cater the event.
One of the things I quickly learned was the difference between a high tea and an afternoon tea. As a servant, I was expected to prepare two separate trays of food. I'd planned to make one platter of cupcakes and a tray of my favourite red jelly slice. But Sarah had to inform me that high teas are closer to real meals and usually include savoury meals. So I spent the week perfecting my mini quiche recipe to bring along with my tray of jelly slices.
Sarah was very taken with the themed dress code. The invitations called for "Dommes - dress however makes you feel powerful. Servants are expected to dress as servants."
Sarah had decided to have fun with her costume and got herself an 80s-style bright pink power suit, complete with enormous shoulder pads.
I am far more plain in my tastes so I decided that dressing like a cocktail waiter in a black vest and bowtie would suit the theme of servant.
Sarah decided that was far too boring and bought me some black thigh-high stockings and a garter belt to wear underneath. "You'll look far sexier pouring tea wearing these" she insisted. "Wearing only these" she added jokingly inverting Rose's famous line from Titanic. I sheepishly put the stocking on but quickly covered them with my suitpants.
It wasn't a large event, there were only five of us attending, three dommes and two slaves. The venue was just the house of one of Dommes so it felt like we were going over to a friend's house for an afternoon tea, even though we knew there'd be a lot more in store than just cakes and chit-chat.
We were the last to arrive so once we entered, the host introduced us to all the attendees.
The stern middle-aged woman who met us at the door introduced herself as Ms Katya. She emphasised the "Ms" as she introduced herself and I knew immediately from her tone that I didn't want to find out what she'd do if I forgot her title so I resolved to always refer to her as Ms Katya, never just Katya.
She was dressed like a stock image of a dominatrix. Black thigh-high stockings, a black PVC skirt with a black latex crop top leaving her muscular arms exposed. I thought she looked like a villain in an 80s Cold War movie.
She gave us a brief tour of the house, showing us the kitchen so I could leave the food I'd cooked there. Then she took us to the lounge room where the other guests were waiting.
It was a very average suburban loungeroom, with two lounges arranged around a coffee table, both facing the TV. A normal living room, except for what could only be described as an oral sex chair in the corner. At first, I thought it might have been a normal office desk chair, but once I noticed the leg stirrups, the crescent moon shaped gap in the seat and the kneeling cushion on the floor I knew exactly what it was. Its sole purpose was to facilitate oral sex on a woman. And if there was any doubt the base of the seat had a giant arrow saying "Your face goes here."
"Like what you see?" Ms Katya said playfully, noticing my interest.
I tried to downplay it, but the chair both excited and terrified me.
Next, she introduced us to her partner. "This is my little twink, David," she said playfully, slapping him on the butt. He was a least decade younger than Ms Katya, mid-20s at best but still maintained a boyish face, clean-shaven with floppy hair.
"But for today you won't be using his name. All servants will be referred to by number alone."
"You will be called Servant Number 2" she said, pointedly pressing her finger into my chest. "And David will be Servant Number 3. You'll both be graded on your performances today and the one of you with the highest marks will be granted the Servant Number 1 badge for our next party."
"How embarrassing for him!" Sarah joked looking him up and down "He's come wearing the exact same outfit as you Katya!"
Apart from a name tag saying "3" David was indeed dressed identically to Ms Katya, although his latex skirt was a size smaller due to his narrower hips.
A burst of laughter came from the nearby lounge from the domme I hadn't been introduced to yet. I realised this must be Sarah's gym friend as I vaguely recognised her. We'd met once before in passing when Sarah had introduced her as Emma, her friend who worked as a primary school teacher.