It came as a surprise to me that there are women who are willing to go to bed with a man simply because he is married and therefore considered "safe." It doesn't seem to matter to them whether he is good looking or ugly (well maybe not ugly, but not all that great looking), rich or poor, well dressed or in jeans and a T-shirt just as long as he is married. I've met several in the last two years and they all have the same thing in common; they want sex without any commitment and that means, to them anyway, sex with someone already in a committed relationship.

I don't even pretend to understand it; I've seen many a married man lose his marriage over some chick he fell into an affair with.

"Doesn't matter" one of the girls told me, "The guy may lose his head, but that doesn't mean that the girl will. When he comes up and says "Guess what honey, I'm going to leave my wife for you" he is history and she moves on to the next guy."

Typically the way it will work is that the girl will hook up with some guy and they will get it on for a couple of months and then she will move on to someone else. The longest I've ever had one stick around is three months, but then that suits me just fine because I'm no more interested in a long-term relationship than they are.

I met the first one of those ladies by accident; an accident caused by finding out that my wife was cheating on me. I say "was" but she still could be, I just don't care enough to find out for sure.

I met Carol the day I started work at the XYZ Corporation. Carol was the receptionist and the first person I saw when I stepped off the elevator. She was sitting behind the reception desk and I could only see her from the waist up, but what I could see captivated me. She gave me a dazzling smile and asked me if she could help me and I told her who I was and that I was reporting for my first day. She handed me a temporary badge, welcomed me to XYZ and directed me to the Human Resources office.

My first day was a long one and she was gone when I went home that night. I saw her again when I came back into work the next morning and again received the dazzling smile. I was tempted to ask her to have lunch with me, but at the last minute I saw the engagement ring on her left hand and settled for saying good morning as I went by her toward my cubicle.

A week after starting I was having lunch at the small diner just down the street from work when I saw her come in. She looked around for a table or booth, but the place was packed and there were none to be had. I waved at her, got her attention and pointed at the empty chair across from me and she came over and sat down. In making small talk we found out that we both had a lot in common. We both had attended Eastern Michigan University, but while I had gotten my degree she had dropped out in her sophomore year because of money problems. We also found out that there were several people who we both knew.

We started taking our lunch breaks together and one day about four months later I noticed that the engagement ring was gone from her left hand and I commented on it.

"It just didn't work out" was all she would say about it.

"Well at least it opens the way for me to ask you out. Maybe dinner and a movie on Friday?"

"Trying to get me on the rebound?"

"Whatever works."

She said yes to the date and also to the next half dozen and pretty soon we were a steady couple. Nine months later I asked her to marry me and she said yes. I thought the marriage and our relationship were great and then three years after we said our vows I received an email at work. I didn't recognize the sender and I almost deleted it, but the subject line kind of peaked my curiosity. It said, "About your marriage" so I opened it half expecting to find out it was a pitch for buying Viagra online, but instead it was a message that said:

"You are a nice guy and you don't deserve to be shit on. You need to pay attention to what Carol does when you are off on business trips."

I was stunned! The obvious inference was that Carol was cheating on me when I was gone. I averaged one three day business trip each month and someone was telling me that Carol wasn't sitting home waiting for me to return, or then again maybe she was at home, but not alone.

Carol had been promoted and she was no longer a receptionist; she was now an executive secretary and was assigned to Brian Smithers. I printed off a copy of the email and got up to take it to Brian's office and confront Carol, but before I was fully out of my seat it occurred to me that at work was not the place to do it. By the time the end of the day came around I decided that doing it at home was a bad idea also. If she denied it what did I have for proof? Nothing but an anonymous email and to be fair about it how did I know that the email wasn't from someone who did not like Carol (or me) and was just trying to stir up some shit. I had seen no indication at all that Carol and I were having a problem in our relationship so I decided not to say anything and to see what I could find out.

Of course once I got to thinking about it I began to see all sorts of things that caused me to wonder. She worked for Brian and Brian had a reputation as a womanizer. Carol and Brian had lunch together two or three times a week. At the company picnic Carol had teamed up with Brian in the three-legged race and the wheel barrow race (although to be fair I did have to admit I had taken on too much beer to be her partner in those events). At the company Christmas party she danced with Brian more than anyone else there with the exception of me and she did stay late to work with him from time to time. I didn't like Brian anyway so I was predisposed to think bad thoughts about him. He was a back stabber and was always trying to take credit for work that had been done by others. By the end of that week I had convinced myself that my anonymous tipster was trying to let me know that Brian and Carol had something going.

I had a trip coming up in two weeks so if Carol was doing something when I was gone that is when it would happen. The question was what to do about it? How was I supposed to find out what was going on? I couldn't fake my itinerary and stay home and follow her since my travel arrangements were common knowledge and we talked with the Dayton office daily. If I wasn't there when I was supposed to be some one in Dayton would ask where I was and Carol and Brian would know. A private detective was out. I had called and talked to one and found out that they were way out of the price range I could afford, but he did make a suggestion and I followed up on it.

Radio Shack sells a voice activated tape recorder for $49.95 and so I bought three of them and three ninety-minute mini cassette tapes. I hid one of them in the living room, one in the master bedroom and one in the spare bedroom and then hoped that if Carol was cheating on me she was doing it at home. I was betting that if she was doing anything she would be doing it at home so that she would be there if I called, but if she were doing it at Brian's place or at motels or hotels I would have wasted $187.63 (with tax).

The day before the trip I received another email.

"I hope you took my warning seriously. She will be with someone else while you are gone."

The trip was uneventful except for the fact that I didn't sleep for shit on any of the three nights. I desperately wanted that stupid fucking email to be bullshit; just a case of someone being pissed that Carol and I were so happy that they wanted to fuck with us.

I got off the plane at two in the afternoon and swung by the house on the way into the office and picked up the recorders. On the drive to the office I listened to the one that had been in the living room. I heard a lot of household noises - the opening and closing of doors, the pulling out and pushing in of drawers, the sound of something hitting the floor and Carol saying, "Oh shit!" I was halfway through the tape when I heard the doorbell ring. It rang a half dozen times and then I heard the door open and Carol say:

"What are you doing here? I told you I didn't want to see you again."

"So? You've told me that for over four months now, but you still let me in when I show up at the door."

It wasn't Brian's voice. It was a voice I had never heard before. I heard the door close and voices fading away as Carol and whoever it was walked away from the range of the recorder's microphone. The master bedroom tape held nothing except normal sounds; the shower running, the toilet flushing, the sound of Carol's hair dryer and the like. I got to work before I got to the spare bedroom tape so I put it in my briefcase for later.

That night at home Carol was her usual horny self. We averaged four times a week as far as our sex life was concerned so my being gone for three nights had put a crimp in things for the week and like after all my trips Carol was all over me when I got home. As I made love to her that night I couldn't help but wonder if I was a day late in getting sloppy seconds. I didn't know - at least not yet - that the man whose voice I'd heard had taken Carol to bed. It could have been something else entirely although I couldn't for the life of me think what else it could be.

When I fell exhausted on the bed next to Carol I was still trying to tell myself that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the man who rang the doorbell. I worked hard at trying to convince myself of that. When I got to work the next morning I locked myself in my office and played the tape from the spare bedroom.

"... know that this is the last time Hank and I shouldn't have let you in tonight."

Hank? Hank was the name of the guy she was engaged to when I met her.

"You know why you let me in baby. You and I are meant to be together."

"No we are not Hank. If we were meant to be together we would be."

"That we aren't is all your fault."

"How is it my fault? You were the one who ended our engagement with that garbage about needing to date others for a while."

"You know full well I only wanted both of us to get all the curiosity out of our systems before we got married."

"No I didn't know that and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. You should have satisfied your curiosity before you asked me to marry you. You ended our relationship and I moved on."

While the talking was going on I could hear the sounds of undressing and clothes hitting the floor. "No matter" Hank said, "We are back in touch and I'm going to make you mine again."

"No you won't. I love my husband and I'm sure not going to leave him for you."

"You already have babe; that's my cock in your hand not his."

"And it is the last time Hank. I mean it this time. When you leave I never intend to see you again."

"Yeah, sure babe, whatever you say. Suck my cock babe, show it how much you love it."

There were several seconds of silence and then Hank said, "God babe, you have the hottest mouth that cock has ever seen."

There was more, much, much more. He fucked her; they went sixty-nine and then he fucked her again. She went down on him and got him hard a third time and he fucked her once more. When it was over and he was dressing he said:

"Next time it will be on his bed in his bedroom."

"Never! I was stupi..." and that is where the ninety minute tape ended. I wondered about that. She wouldn't fuck him on our bed and he wasn't spending the night even though I wouldn't be coming home. I wondered what that meant. No matter. All that meant anything to me was that my wife was fucking another man and had been doing it for at least four months. I knew one more thing; I knew who had sent me the email - it was Hank. He wanted her back, he told her he was going to get her back and to speed things up he had sent me the email so I would confront her. He probably expected me to wave the email under her nose and she would tearfully confess and then I'd toss her out.

I put the recorder back in my briefcase and then I attacked the pile of paper work that had accumulated on my desk while I was gone.

Carol was hourly and only put in forty hours. I was salary and depending on my workload I put in anywhere from as little as thirty-six to as much as seventy. With such different schedules it behooved us to drive to work separately. The day I listened to the guest room tape I told Carol that I would be working late and not to hold dinner or wait up for me. I didn't really have anything to do; I just didn't want to have to look at her right then.