This morning, lying discarded, dishevelled on the unmade bed, lie her panties. A pink lace and satin confection they are made of almost nothing. A handful of scrunched up loveliness, an intimate and tiny covering for her sex. I touched them, my eyes closed and I felt the slimy glaze of his semen. I felt eyes closed what had been left there, a marker of what he had pumped inside her.

This morning, lying discarded, dishevelled on the unmade bed, lie her panties. A pink lace and satin confection they are made of almost nothing. A handful of scrunched up loveliness, an intimate and tiny covering for her sex. I touched them, my eyes closed and I felt the slimy glaze of his semen. I felt, eyes closed, what had been left there, a marker of what he had pumped inside her. Just why I approached them thus, through touch I cannot say. May be it was that to see his residue there would be too much? May be to see it glisten on her confection lace would just be too terrible. What if it were thick, and copious, and glutinous, I might…need to lick it. I might need to do more than what I suddenly did, bending eyes closed to smell his visit. I might have swept up the panties and licked and licked until nothing of his unctious seed was left.

Carol was sleeping with Richard my boss. There, for the first time, I have written it. But that morning, that damp and cool morning, whilst the dew lay heavy across the hedges below our bedroom, I was still pretending. I pretended that there was always another explanation.Carol went to the sales convention with him, why not, she was a freelance marketing executive. Carol went to the theatre with him and rock gigs-I liked neither. When I watched her dress to go away with him to a sales event in Amsterdam I saw her other self. She was subtly provocative. It wasn’t only that her skirt was a little shorter than usual, it was that it was in leather and had a full length zip that facilitated its peeling. Carol dressed on edge for Richard. Every step in that skirt hinted it, ‘he’s fucking me’. So now, you see, you sense it too, don’t you, here in the bedroom, when I have returned early from visitiing my sdick mother, it is a little easier to encounter her panties, through smell, rather than sight. I have lied to my eyes. What I see doesn’t really mean what my brain knows is happening.

The copious and thick semen upon her panties felt like a mess. There was that much of it. I paused and threw back my head. What did that mean?! That he was a bull of immense scrotal potential. Perhaps his single ejaculate had been so generous, hefty and insistent, gushing into her that her womb was inevitably insufficient to hold it all. But I thought instead, shaking my head slowly that it probably meant something else. It meant, that he had fucked her repeatedly on our marriage bed. He had taken her first after the last glass of brandy, then again an hour later and so on through the night, waking her gently to couple again. I imagined her coming too, her blue eyes blinking beneath the warm breath of his aggressive mouth, smiling then. ‘You’re naughty…you want it again? Darling, you’re insatiable….yes…I want you too’. I know that she will have submitted to him, lanquidly stretching her legs wide as he pushed between her thighs, then sliding them up and over his broad shoulders so that he can slide pump his cock into her squelcing cunt.

Cunt. That word. The dirty word. When I picked up those panties and swept them up to my nose, I thought of her sex that way. Carol had a cunt and she needed it filled. Because she had a cunt she fucked like a bitch, pushing and grinding in. bucking rhthym because she not only submitted to his seduction, she welcomed it. A woman with a cunt is capable of despising a man, hurting and humiliating him. She is ready to use one man in order to heighten the pleasures with another. There is no Catholic mass there, no veil, or shy romance, she needs to be fucked and she accepts that. I inhale the scent of their fucking, the heat and the fecund warmth of it. He is more than me, isn’t he? What a big house you have Richard, what a smart Maserati sports car. You have so much, you are so much, but did you really need to insult me by putting a Rolex on my wife’s wrist. No one ever believed that that was a reward for a sale secured did they? No one ever really saw it as business. You wear the self same cunt fucking model don’t you!!!

I promised myself that I wouldn’t. It was shaming beyond belief. But then, when the blackbird began to sing in the garden, I licked the semen. It looked like semolina. It had that consistency, rich and creamy and sustaining. But it tasted quite different. It was salty, very salty and it had a bitter taste on the back of my tongue. I wondered where that came from, you, you bastard or her. The woman who had vowed to keep herself only onto me? But this creamy mess has been inside her. You pumped it there, insistently, making her back arch, her nails drag through the sheets on our bed. It has trickled from her body as she has then walked naked about our bedroom. She wouldn’t shower. She wanted to smell of you. I seat myself on our marriage bed and I start to lick the semen off the panties. My tongue sweeps it all up and then there is sufficient there, filling my mouth, to sense how much better you are than I am. Now, this bolus of desire explains it to me. I swallow.

When at last I open my eyes Carol is there.

She is standing in the doorway to the bedroom, dressed only in a tiny silk wrap and the watch you gave her. She sleeps in it, did you know. She sleeps wearing it, even when she lies in bed with me. She has watched me bury my face in her panties, inhaling and licking the territory marker that you left there.

I stare at her, my mouth open, undone, discovered and judged in as moment. It is as if I have been caught with my hands down my pants by a Sunday school mistress. I try to read her face but I can’t. There should be embarrassment that she has left panties there and ihave discoverd them. Surely they should have gone in the wash basket immediately? But I see no shame, nor surprise. I look for contempt, a harrowing disdain as she sees what I have sunk to. That is there, surely?! If so, it transitted her lovely face in the first glance. No trace was left behind. Without a word, on bare feet she moves to the dresser and picks up her mobile phone. She raises it before her, pointed at me, a picture to be taken. When it lingers there, I realise that she is filming me. I look up at her. There is the merest nod. Yes, do it Alan. I start to lick her panties again, searching out the spunk stuck to the gusset of her lacy attire.

When the filming is done, when at last the blackbird has ceased it’s tuneful song, she glances at her watch.

‘I’m spending the day with Richard’ she tells me softly. Her voice has not risen, there is no challenge, no contest to be fought. She pauses. I could be a man now, if I chose. I could protest. But my mouth tastes of him. It tastes every bit of him and how tnhey feel about one another. It is as if I have both love and lust in my mouth, salt and bitter alkaline. ‘Would you go and polish my boots whilst I get dressed?’

I blink at her.

Now, we know.

We both know.

I cannot pretend to her, to you, to myself that I don’t know that she is in love with him. If I fought the issue she would wait for him to win, dismissing me from my post, kicking me off down the road and taking her as his. She would move into the big house and our home, this place, blackbird, dishevelled bed, a kitchen with units that needed refurbishing would be no more. She checks her watch again. She is waiting. She reaches out to take the panties from me and her hand lingers as she takes hold of the material. I kiss her fingers. She lets me, watching me now surprised, now gently amused. I let go off the panties.

‘I think that you should meet Richard and tell him that you accept things’ she said simply.

I nod.

‘He was going to have you seconded to the Edinburgh office, but if you are well behaved…’ her voice, husky, registering pleasure now, traild away.

‘Yes, thank you’ I whisper. My voice cracks. My throat is dry.

I stand to go down and find her boots, to polish those that are probably clean already, so thatn they look just so.

‘The black pair’ she tells me as an after thought, ‘the cavalier pair, OK?’

‘Yes’ i murmur.

And my nose is full of him, my mouth and my mind too. He has breached my pretence. I cannot ever look at Carol again without imagining him taking her.