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Carolyn Bessette left John F. Kennedy Jr. furious as she confessed to kissing another man as their marriage crumbled, a sensational new book claims.

Having wed America’s most famous bachelor, Carolyn suffered immense anxiety over the media who hounded the couple, writer J. Randy Taraborrelli says. And in his new book, “The Kennedy Heirs,” Taraborrelli — who spoke to scores of friends and associates of the couple — says the high-profile marriage took its toll.

So much so that Carolyn, a former Calvin Klein publicist, confided in a male friend from her fashion days about the pressure she felt after marrying John in September 1996.

In an excerpt published by People, Taraborrelli writes that the evening at the friend’s apartment in 1998 ended in a kiss, saying: “Carolyn was crying, he was consoling her, and somehow they ended up kissing. It was brief. He remembered, but consensual.

“Then she pulled away and said, ‘No, what am I doing, I can’t be here right now.’ and quickly left.”

The next day, the book reports, Carolyn told her friend she felt she had to tell John.

Two days later, the friend was awakened at 2 a.m. by the intercom and someone claiming he was a police officer. He opened the door “to find John Kennedy, his face twisted in anger.” Before he could say a word, John swung a punch and told him: “Stay away from my goddamn wife.”

Shortly after, John and Carolyn entered couples counseling, the book says.

Taraborrelli also reports that a friend witnessed the couple snorting coke at the apartment of John’s cousin Anthony Radziwill, as John shrugged and blamed it on press attention: “It’s been a bad week … Look I’m a Kennedy. Do you think this is the first time I’ve done drugs? Please.”

John then sank blissfully onto Carolyn and laid his head on her lap as she stroked his hair and kissed his forehead.

Although John was not a regular cocaine user, Taraborrelli also spoke to John’s friend John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist who died last year, who said that he and John been doing acid and ecstasy together for years.

According to Taraborrelli, Barlow said, “[John] thought of them as a way to experience life differently.”

The writer said, however, that he didn’t feel either of the couple had any drug issues.

On July 16, 1999, John was piloting a plane with Carolyn and her sister Lauren en route to his cousin Rory Kennedy’s wedding in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, when it crashed. John was just 38, Carolyn 33, and her sister was 34.

The book claims that Carolyn had not actually wanted to go to the wedding — and in fact, had phoned Ethel Kennedy to make her apologies. However, she changed her mind, as Taraborelli says John had promised he would never force her to go to the family compound again.

Carolyn, in turn, said the marriage was on “probation” and told her husband she would tell him her thoughts on their future in three months’ time.

When the plane crashed off Martha’s Vineyard, killing all three passengers, a confused Ethel kept asking why Carolyn was on the plane — hoping that she had had some instinct not to make the trip.

“Oh, how I wish she had listened to it,” Taraborelli reports that Ethel said.