“Thank you,” Emma said, picking up on the cue. “It’s been a bit weird tidying up for guests, after all this time. Especially when i think about your place — your home is always so beautifully tidy. I don’t know how you manage it.”
On key, Rebecca and Dan shared a sly look, which apparently went right over Jack’s head.
“Ems’ been driving me mad all morning,” Jack said in a jocular fashion as he inclined his head towards his wife. “Clean this, tidy that, put that away. I told her, I said, they’re only allowed to go to the loo and back. It’s not like we’ll be using the living room today.”
“But it’s nice to have a tidy house,” Emma said. “Isn’t it?” she asked, appealing to Rebecca for support. And again, there was the knowing look.
***
And so it went, for several hours. Drinks were drunk, food was partially incinerated and consumed, and Emma and Rebecca examined several portions of the garden with keen interest, leaving the boys to chat about, oh, football or cars or whatever men liked to discuss when the women weren’t around.
Jack also got into the local excursions, taking Dan over to marvel at the improvements he’d made to his shed while work wasn’t filling his days. And, indeed, Dan did express admiration for the neat way that all Jack’s garden tools were mounted on the walls or arranged cunningly to maximise the use of space.
“I got this baby from the tip,” Jack said, resting his hand upon an old TV cabinet. “Reckon I can convert it into a tool store. Few shelves, some hooks. Job’s a good ‘un.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” Dan said. “I just don’t have the eye for that kind of thing. Or the talent.” And so they worked their way around to the topic Jack actually wanted to talk to Dan about.
“So what’s the deal, then?” Jack said to Dan, while Dan was looking at some up-cycled kitchen units that now provided Jack with some in-shed work surface.
“The deal?”
“I’ve been noticing the way you and Rebecca keep giving each other weird looks. Each time Ems goes on about cleaning and tidying, you both look like the cat that got the cream, but you don’t say anything. So, what’s up?”
Dan looked shifty, and gave every impression of weighing things up, before saying, “I don’t know whether I should tell you, mate, to be honest. I mean, for myself, I’ve got no problem, but it involves Rebecca too, see, and I don’t know whether she’d be okay with me mentioning it.”
Jack’s eyes went wide, but he held up a reassuring hand. “No problem, mate. Don’t want to cause trouble between you and your good lady. Didn’t mean to pry. I was just curious, that’s all.”
“No harm, no foul.” Dan said.
Shortly after, when they were all seated again around the barbecue, Dan raised the topic with Rebecca. “So….” he said to her, “Emma’s been asking about cleaning all day, and Jack’s wanting to know why we’re making such weird faces each time. I was thinking about telling them. If it’s okay with you,” he added.
Rebecca managed to look surprised, and glanced around at the group. She pretended to be considering for a few moments, then said. “Two conditions. First, this stays between us, okay? I trust you guys, but this goes no further, understood?”
Both Emma and Jack nodded, their faces now intent.
“Good. Second: no judgement.”
And again, there were nods.
“If you’re sure…?” Dan asked, supposedly giving Rebecca a chance to back out.
“I’m fine. Go ahead.”
“Okay.” Dan turned from Rebecca and looked at Emma and Jack.
“We get a lot of cleaning and tidying and general housework done all the time,” he told them, “because we make a game of it. We basically mix housework and sex.”
Jack gave a laugh. “You’re kidding!”
Dan held up a hand. “Hey, no judgement, remember?”
Jack waved his apologies.
“We call them Servant Days,” Dan said.
“What, like BDSM and all that stuff?” Jack interrupted again.
This earned him a smack on the shoulder from Emma. “Will you just shut up and let him tell us!”
“Okay, okay. I’ll be quiet.”
Dan waited, grinning, then continued. “No, not really like that. We take it in turns to be the ‘servant’ for the day, and the other person assigns a list of cleaning and tidying tasks. So, straight away, we’re sharing the housework, taking it in turns. One day, Rebecca will be getting me to do some hoovering, and the next day I’ll be getting her to, oh, I dunno, dust on top of the wardrobes. So, one person is the servant, and the other is in charge. Call that what you want — Lord or Lady of the house, Sir or Madam, or whatever fits.”
Dan took a pull from his beer, and continued. “To make things interesting, the person in charge gets to decide what the servant wears, while doing the work, so we’re making sure the other person is wearing some outfit that makes them appealing to look at, while the work is getting done. It’s nice to have your other half being a bit of eye candy for a while.”
Jack was grinning at this bit, sharing a smile with Emma.
“Now here come the interesting bits. There are two rules. Rule one is that, at any point, the person in charge can interrupt the servant’s task and tell them to do something else instead, generally for the benefit of the person in charge. So, if I was the servant and doing the hoovering, Rebecca could come by and get me to stop doing that and make her a cup of tea and a sandwich before going back to the hoovering. But we want to keep this interesting and we want the servant to be motivated about doing their tasks so, while we could say, ‘make me a cup of tea’, the requests are usually considerably more adult in nature.”
“Whoo!” said Emma, while Jack looked amused.
“That’s rule one,” said Dan. “Stop doing that, and do this for a bit instead. The other rule is slightly different: the person in charge can also do things to the servant. And if the person in charge doesn’t tell them to stop, then the servant has to keep doing their task, while that’s happening.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Jack.
“Let’s say Dan is the servant,” Rebecca interjected. “I’ve got him dressed up in something that floats my boat, and and this sexy bit of man-stuff is parading around the house doing the work I’ve told him to do. If I feel like it, I can go up to him and take advantage of him, and have my wicked way with him, and he still has to keep working at that task and not stop doing it, unless I tell him to stop.” She looked at Emma. “It’s amazing the things you can come up with to try to distract your husband, while he’s trying to clean the house while mostly naked. And the facial expressions are delightful to watch.”
Emma shrieked delightedly in response. “God, you hussy! I love it!”
Jack looked more unsure, and was still looking a bit surprised at what he was hearing.
“The main thing is to get the balance right, between anticipation and activity,” Dan continued. “You want to make sure the servant has time to get their tasks completed, but you also don’t want to leave them alone so long that they get bored, frustrated or even resentful. The servant is volunteering to do the housework, in the expectation that they have a good time in the process.”
“Well!” Emma said. “That explains why you weren’t saying anything before.”
“It’s certainly a side of you I hadn’t expected,” Jack added.
Emma slapped him again. “Hey, no judgement, remember?”
Jack held up his hands in surrender. “Wasn’t judging,” he said. “Just surprised, is all.”
***
The afternoon became the evening. Emma and Rebecca kept finding reasons to chat separately, leaving the men to themselves. During one such break, Jack returned to the previous subject.
They were standing, staring at the coals of the barbecue, now almost out, each with a beer in hand.
“Do you really do all that role-playing stuff you were talking about? Letting her boss you around in the bedroom and all that?” he asked Dan.
Dan looked side-long at Jack. “First off, oh yes, absolutely. Everything we told you is true, and it’s absolutely brilliant. Our sex life has never been better. But I wouldn’t call it role-playing,” he said. “It’s not like we’re pretending we’re the lord or lady of the manor. To tell you the truth,” he confessed, “if Rebecca wanted to play doctors and nurses, or said that, oh, I dunno, that she was a naughty schoolgirl who had to be spanked by a stern headmaster, I’d probably die of embarrassment.”
Jack nodded. “I know, right?”
Dan fixed Jack with a sharp look. “But, that said, if Rebecca said she wanted to play naughty schoolgirl because it turned her on, then I absolutely would give it my best go, even though it’s not my thing, because making sure my wife is feeling sexually fulfilled is very important to me.”
Jack blinked, then looked away, a bit shaken. Dan’s comment reminded Jack that he worried about whether Emma enjoyed it when they had sex, sometimes, since she didn’t always achieve an orgasm. Jack sometimes went down on Emma but, if forced to, he would have to admit that he didn’t really know what he was doing, there. He’d lick and suck somewhat randomly, and hope. Sometimes, Emma would explode with a massive orgasm; sometimes, she’d be lying there for ages without any indication that he was making any impression at all, and as far as Jack knew, he was doing the same thing in both cases.