I shouldn’t have done it, but last week I opened my wife’s computer while she was in the shower. We’re both sex nuts, and the bedroom has kept us together through ten years of marriage, but we hadn’t even approached a kiss in weeks. Worse, somehow I didn’t mind. Something had gone wrong, something I couldn’t begin to put a finger on. She’s still one of the sexiest women I’ve ever met, dressing like a classic movie star – garter belts even, holding up exotic silk stockings whose swirling patterns I used to study, all hidden underneath some prim skirt by a French designer. She’s European (it hardly needs to be said), and we live in an exotic place under palm trees across the Atlantic Ocean that I’ll choose not to mention for the moment. Mostly, though, she has preferred not to wear anything at all. She tends to cavort around the house naked, relishing her body: blond hair, always red lipstick, pale skin with tits made for some mermaid bursting from the sea in a Renaissance painting, a round smooth ass, pussy showing pink through a few blond hairs, then firm legs down to bare feet with red-painted toes. She’s the sort of innocent thing on the surface who inspires dirty thoughts, and as far as I can see, she hasn’t aged a bit. But she’s stopped cavorting, and we’re hardly even talking. Her body’s becoming a memory. So what’s gone wrong? I opened her computer hoping to find out.

For years I know she’s kept a sort of diary. She doesn’t do it every day, but occasionally over coffee in the morning I’ll see her typing away, eyes glazed over in private thought as if I’m not even in the room. So I opened the lid to the sound of water running in the bathroom, and on the desktop I found a document called “Me – 2011” and opened it up. My heart was pounding. I knew that if I was caught, our marriage would be in even worse shape than it already was. So quickly I scanned through the days – mostly just descriptions of ordinary events, and I saw how unhappy she’s been. Even the most insignificant notes seemed to be filled with a longing for something else.

Never mind. Towards mid-February, just a few weeks ago, I came across this, which I’ll quote exactly as I found it: “Dammit I keep fantasizing about that stupid Richard [our neighbor who lives across the hall with his wife and baby girl]. Yesterday I was coming up the stairs as he was coming down. I was on the phone and wasn’t paying attention and ran right into him. The phone crashed to the floor, and he grabbed my arm to steady me. I blushed like an idiot, and I realized he could see right down my blouse. So more idiotic blushing, and I don’t know why, but suddenly I was soppingly wet. Just like that. I felt paralyzed and didn’t want him to take his hand away, but of course we couldn’t stay there like that, so I laughed and said something totally nonsensical, and bent over to pick up my phone. I could feel him looking down by blouse again, and at my legs, and jesus, I just felt like a puddle on the floor. Then I was back up on my feet again, we said goodbye, and he was gone. I went inside, and [my name] wasn’t home. I put down my bag and slid my skirt up and put my hand down there, and god, I was dripping. I couldn’t help myself. I took off my clothes, put on my skimpy little pink robe and went out to the balcony. I lay down on the couch and took off the robe to sunbathe in the nude. I wanted Richard to see me. It’s crazy, but I wanted him to see every inch of me. Of course he’d already driven off, but as I lay there with the sun beaming down into my crotch, I couldn’t stop this sexy fantasy of him seeing my tits, my belly, and my dripping (really) pussy. I even turned over so he could see my ass! Dirty man. I just kept fantasizing about him standing there looking down on me. Jesus. What is wrong with me? He’s not even my type, and I don’t find him attractive at all. Hormones? Probably. Well I’m fed up with hormones.”

By the time I had finished reading this, the shower had stopped in the bathroom, and I slammed down the lid to sneak back to my office as quickly as I could (later I would sneak another look and stoop to e-mailing her diary to myself). I sat at my desk overcome by emotions I hadn’t felt in years. Once she had told me that she’d had fifty lovers before me, and if it had made me jealous at the time, it hadn’t in years. I never thought about it anymore, but suddenly I was almost crippled by that jealousy again. I couldn’t see straight. Or was it just plain anger? I was furious. I had been working hard to find a way to bring us closer again, going out of my way to spoil her at every occasion, but here she was getting “soppingly wet” at the touch of our boring neighbor, who any sane person would have agreed was unattractive. This was the conversation I had with myself, all while seething at the thought of him looking down on her naked body, and I seethed, and I seethed, but I couldn’t help but notice that in the process I had developed one of those rare, raging hard-ons that won’t go away till they’ve been tended to.

And so I started stroking myself through my pants. My anger had become erotic. I fantasized about that fucking Richard looking down at her tits, and of her pussy growing wetter and wetter, and within seconds, it seemed, I was grappling with my zipper and pulling out my cock just in time to explode into my hand. Cum dripped everywhere, down to the floor. I hadn’t come like that it years, and strangely enough I wasn’t angry anymore. I was just vaguely ashamed.

That’s when I came up with the experiment. What was really in my wife’s mind? What was she really capable of? Those questions excited me deeply, and deep in my guts, in my groin, I wanted to know the answers. I wanted to play a game, and in that moment of intense, animal excitement, I didn’t care where it led. So I set up an anonymous gmail account and composed an e-mail to my wife:

Forgive an e-mail from an anonymous admirer. I won’t tell you my name for the moment, but I have seen you around socially and have even been introduced to you once or twice. I am a man about your age, and I don’t know that I have ever seen a woman so sexually desirable. Please don’t fear a friendly compliment: I am not writing to harass you. I know that you are married – happily, I assume – but if you’re willing I would like to play a game with you. I would like to send you an e-mail occasionally with a sexual challenge – a proposal of some little sexual risk you might not otherwise take. What would excite me more than anything is if you would occasionally write back telling me how the experiment went. This is not intended as a way of getting you into bed. We will probably never meet again. This is just a modest little adventure, an intriguing game to play until you don’t want to play it anymore, and I promise never to ask too much or put you in harm’s way. If you agree, my only request is that you don’t speak of this for the moment to your husband. If you agree, I’d like this to be about you. Please let me know. Afterwards you can always say “No”, of course, but for the moment just the thought of you considering a “Yes!” excites me more than you can imagine.

…

I didn’t know if she would suspect it was me. We live in a country where English is not the first language, and although we know many English-speaking people, this might give me away. I didn’t even know if I cared if she knew the truth. Maybe that was better (and the more I thought about it, how could she ever expect it to be anyone but me?). I just wanted her to respond, and everything that the “stranger” had said in his e-mail was true (except for not wanting to get her in bed): I wanted this to be about her. Strangely enough, that’s what had excited me. In that moment I wouldn’t have minded if a man like Richard actually saw her naked and liked it (who wouldn’t). I was willing to try the experiment if she was too.

Need to catch up? Read the Sex Experiment from the beginning: Table of Contents

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