Acts of Infidelity is a series of short stories describing real life events from the lives of real people.
As an author, readers often tell me about incidents and episode in their own lives. I am often asked to do requests too, but until now haven't taken up the challenge, preferring to draw on my own past and imagination rather than that of strangers.
Over the last two years however, I have got to know a number of readers whose past or present lives contain something a little special which, as well as being true, I believe suit a story well. For me, a strong element of truth always gives a story an extra special appeal and makes it much more arousing than fiction alone.
Acts of Infidelity is the result.
I have taken care only to write those stories I genuinely believe to be true. In every case but for different reasons, the storyteller has wanted this previously-secret aspect of their life to become public knowledge.
Although there is plenty of sex within them, they are not classic erotic stories, but I hope the ring of truth shines through and provides a little extra pleasure for my readers.
Although the words are mine, the stories are entirely theirs and are published with their full knowledge and permission.
I hope you enjoy them.
***
No two marriages are exactly alike just as no two people are exactly alike.
Colin and his wife Rachel love each other. They live happily together in a pleasant detached house not far from the seafront in Southsea on England's south coast. She is his second wife and, in her early forties, is a good ten years younger than him. Like most middle-aged couples they have a modestly active sex life but unlike most middle-aged couples, Rachel regularly sleeps with other men too.
Because Rachel is an honest person, Colin knows about this, has always known about it and is content to live with it. He believes it enriches their marriage. The evidence of his story suggests that for them at least, he is right.
Colin's first wife Sarah slept with other men too. Sarah was not an honest person so Colin did not know about it for many years. When he found out, it destroyed the trust they had in each other and soon afterwards, it destroyed their marriage too.
Colin realised he values honesty more than fidelity; at least the way most people think of it.
This is Colin and Rachel's relationship told in my words. Like so many of us with a big secret, Colin felt the need to tell someone and asked if I thought it would make a good story. I believe it does, both as an erotic tale in its own right, and as an example of how the life less monogamous can be lived well or lived badly.
It also shows that happy marriages come in many shapes and forms.
I have changed all the names but this time, none of the places so if you are ever in the Southsea area, you might well come across one or both of them as you walk down the streets. If you meet a man walking a dog along the seafront alone, he might have more on his mind than appearances would suggest.
And if you book a holiday house there, you might even sleep in a room where Rachel and one of her lovers have recently fucked.
I hope you enjoy it.
***
The wind blew spray over the sea front walkway as I trudged along, collar raised. It was a cold Sunday afternoon in February; by rights I should have been at home with my wife Rachel in our snug, warm house, watching football or perhaps a movie on TV, or maybe even be at the cinema followed by dinner in one of the town's many local restaurants.
But not this Sunday.
There was a whimper from Jessie, our black Labrador. Soaking wet from the spray and from playing in the shallows, even she was beginning to lose interest in the walk but it was still far too early to think about returning.
I looked at my watch; another hour to kill; another hour which my wife and her latest lover would spend together in bed. I walked on in the cold knowing that at that very moment, in the sweaty heat of a familiar bedroom, my wife's soft body was being used by another man.
Or perhaps she was using his. On reflection, that seemed a better description.
I reached the sad, almost empty amusement arcade at the end of the promenade and looked at the brightly coloured but half closed buildings. The cafe was open so I bought a large takeaway coffee, sipped it, staring out at the choppy grey sea and looked at my watch once again.
He had been there for an hour already. A lot could happen in sixty minutes.
Young, fit and strong, he would probably have inseminated Rachel's forty-three-year-old body at least once by now. A generous wad of the young man's semen would be lying deep inside her vagina, his wriggly sperm fighting their way through her cervix and into her womb though task would be fruitless. There would be no egg waiting in the darkness for them; a minor but very necessary medical procedure ten years ago had ensured that.
Rachel never used protection. At first, I had insisted she used condoms with her lovers and for a few months she had tried but had hated them; her overpowering craving to feel skin on sensitive skin had been too great and her desire to feel real, hot, sticky semen inside her too powerful to resist.
After that, she chose her lovers carefully to reduce the risk but there was no way to guarantee cleanliness. So far we had been lucky; in five years of regular infidelity she had only picked up one infection. She had passed it on to me before we noticed but a week of antibiotics had seen us both return to normal.
Rae had used condoms for a month afterwards but soon reverted to her old bareback ways and had remained there ever since.
A strong gust blew a wave hard against the sea wall sending foamy white spray over the dark, damp concrete. I laughed hollowly; as a metaphor for what was going on right now it couldn't have been more appropriate. All that was needed was a train rushing into a tunnel or a factory chimney falling down in slow motion and the picture would be complete.
I took another sip of coffee and let my mind wander in familiar directions while the dog eagerly ate one of her treats in the shelter provided by my legs.
My first marriage had lasted eighteen years; my second nearly five so far. Both had been to unfaithful wives but there was a big difference. Second time round I had known how Rachel would be from the very beginning and had gone into the relationship expecting and accepting it.
Not so with Sarah.
Being so close to Portsmouth, Southsea is very much a Navy town as well as a holiday destination and there is no shortage of bored, lonely Navy wives to be found among its narrow, low rise streets. Fortunately for them if not for their absent husbands, there is also no shortage of young, fit, virile young men willing and able to provide those wives with the essential staff of life they are missing.
Though not a Navy man myself, my job had frequently taken me away from home and my first wife had felt the loneliness that so many of her Navy-wife friends had expressed. Unfortunately she had also found relief from that loneliness in a similar way and for a prolonged period.
As a result, somewhere on the high seas there is a young man who bears my name, who calls me 'Dad' and whom I love dearly but who is no more a blood relative than any of the people I had passed on the sea front that afternoon.
I had discovered this devastating fact just after his sixteenth birthday when the results of his Navy entrance medical arrived showing that he had a blood group that couldn't possibly have come from me. After a tense few days, his equally stunned mother had confessed if not all, then enough to let me know I couldn't live with her much longer.
It was a shock to discover that the woman I loved and had been married to for eighteen years had cheated on me repeatedly for all but the first year of our supposedly happy marriage.
You are no doubt wondering how I could possibly have failed to realise that my wife's body was being used by other men on a regular basis for so long? I have asked myself the same question many times. All I can suggest is that there are none so blind as those who will not see; I had deliberately kept myself in a state of ignorance and had eventually grown to accept the condition of her body as normal.
Though not in Rachel's class in terms of multiple infidelities, it quickly emerged that Sarah had enjoyed a number of long-term lovers over the years including, it emerged during the nastier parts of our divorce, a short period with my own, much younger brother.
Sarah assured me that she had truly believed me to be our baby's father. I have no way of knowing if this is true. When the rows calmed down enough for the two of us to begin speaking again, I discovered that the only other possibility was a colleague from work with whom she had conducted a six-month-long affair prior to him going abroad.
Sarah had not heard from the man since long before she knew she was pregnant and had no idea where in the world he might be now. He had no idea he might be a father as well as a seducer of other men's wives.
We agreed not to tell our son; as if his parents' divorce wasn't bad enough, how could it possibly benefit a young man to have his world turned upside down just as he began his career at sea?
Nonetheless, it was the final straw and our eighteen-year-long marriage came to an end shortly afterwards. There was a lot of anger and resentment, especially when the truth about my brother emerged but our son was at sea for most of it and the worst was over by the time he returned.
It was a horrible time for us all but from it I learned some surprising things about myself. I had been selfish in concentrating so hard on my job; I had been inattentive to the woman in my life; I had been naïve in believing so many lies over the years simply because it suited me to do so.
But the biggest surprise was realising that it wasn't the act of infidelity that had hurt me so badly. I could actually have accepted sharing Sarah physically. I could have lived with her, knowing I was being regularly cuckolded. I could even have knowingly brought up another man's son as my own - indeed I am doing so now.
What I could not live with were lies.
Given all that has happened since; indeed what was going on at that very moment in between Rachel and a boy not much older than the one I call my son, I know for certain that I could have continued to live with my first wife despite her infidelities. I might even have been content to let them continue if only she had been honest with me.
But that amount of honesty wasn't in Sarah's character.
In contrast, Rachel is honest to the point of being brutal. From our very first date, she made no secret of her inability to remain faithful to any one man; confessing that she was quite literally addicted to sex and that this character flaw had cost her two previous marriages.
Her love of sex was not accompanied by a desire to be a mother so both marriages had been childless. The two divorces had been painful, but the damage had been confined to her and her two now-ex-husbands.
When Sarah and I separated, my trust in women was shattered. I retreated to the celibate lifestyle for over a year, the occasional visit to one of Portsmouth's better class escorts being my only sexual outlet. But as time dulled the pain, so my interest in the fairer sex began to return and I took the first tentative steps into the world of dating once again.
Both Sarah and I had been high earners so even divorced, my standard of living was more than adequate. When, thanks to the internet, my sex life resumed, I soon found out that this relative affluence made me a target for some of the more desperate divorcees in the area. It took several unsavoury episodes before I understood what was going on and learned the hard way not to lower my guard too quickly.
At first I suspected Rachel of having gold-digging motivations too. We had met using a well-known phone App and agreed to have dinner in a local restaurant. I was well on my guard; Rachel is a good ten years younger than me and from her picture, was very sexy.
What else but money could possibly have attracted her to a slightly overweight, middle-aged businessman like me?
I confidently expected her not to show up at all but to my delight, there she was, bang on time, dressed in a stunning short black dress that showed her soft, smooth legs off to great effect.
Short and blonde, Rae isn't perhaps a classic beauty. Her diminutive, curvy figure is perhaps a little fuller than she would like but she has a pretty, impish face and an aura of sexuality about her that is hard to define but impossible to ignore. There is a mischievous glint in her blue eyes too which I have seen in many sexually aware women but which few actually follow through on.
