Ron roamed the big lake house while Sally and Susan bustled around in the kitchen. Wherever Phil was, Ron didn't want to be alone with him. Ron was embarrassed, wondering what Phil had seen and heard while Ron was having his sexy dream out on the deck.
Whatever it might have been, Phil gave no indication he had seen anything incriminating. He appeared at dinner, dressed in expensive casual—much too dressed up for the lake—and announced that even though it was Saturday, he needed to return to the city that night. He said he'd stop at the gym on the way to get the workout he'd missed by coming up on Friday.
The women and children were so taken up with planning their initial activities that they hardly even heard Phil's plans. And for his part, Ron was greatly relieved. He would be returning to the city on Sunday afternoon himself, but he was just as happy that he didn't have to spend the evening assessing whatever look Phil gave him.
The wives had brought DVDs of requested movies still unseen, and as the family settled in front of the TV set in the great room overlooking the lake, Ron removed himself to the small den upstairs and connected his laptop to the Internet. He fooled around for some time, avoiding going to the Temptation Castle Web site, but he was only fooling himself, and that could go on for only so long. The only reason he was on the Internet was to tool through those galleries again and imagine himself stopping at Temptation Castle and going through the photo shoot process, rather than, as he intended, taking a different route back to the city on the morrow and avoiding temptation altogether.
As he looked through the galleries, he stopped kidding himself. He got up and went to the bathroom and returned with a wad of tissues and then unzipped himself and sat down at the machine. He scrolled to the video of Mart masturbating and joined in. By the time he was really keyed up, he switched to the DVD he'd found of Mart actually fucking a guy, and he watched that. Rod came at nearly the same time that Mart's partner came on the screen. Perhaps if he had not had that dream this afternoon, he might have denied himself this forbidden pleasure. But the dream had gone farther than either the video or the DVD did—he convinced himself he had felt the creature's cock inside him, even though he knew this really wasn't possible with dreams. But it was all becoming so real and tempting for Ron, and his resolve was beginning to dissolve.
Of course when Ron drove away from the lake house early the next afternoon, he didn't take the alternative route to the city. Of course he drove straight to Temptation Castle and parked in the lot behind the building, out of sight of the road, rather than in the front lot where they had parked the previous day. He told himself that he might not have done that if Sally hadn't bugged him again the previous night to have a sexy photo made for her. But he knew, really, that he would have stopped there anyway. It was good to have Sally to blame for all of this—but it was an empty excuse. He knew he'd be betraying his wife, and he knew she would recognize the difference between having a sexy photo shot and living a sex experience in the process.
Ron had pulled into a spot between two cars and gotten out before he stopped, in shock, and realized that he had parked next to Phil's car. If Phil had said he was stopping here last evening to go to the gym, why was his car still here on Sunday afternoon? Ron hastily got back in his car and parked it well away from Phil's Mercedes—where, he hoped, Phil wouldn't see it if he left before Ron did.
Although if Phil did see him, it would be Phil who should be embarrassed, not his brother-in-law, Ron thought. Phil knew Sally had bugged Ron to stop here for a photo session. Phil, however, had no plausible reason to be here—at least not today. He said he had to be down in the city working today.
For the first time Ron considered Susan's marriage to Phil. He had always thought Phil to be much too slick for Susan. The first plausible reason that popped into Ron's mind was that Phil had something on the side—and that she was up here at the lake. It had really been Phil's suggestion that had brought them to the lake for the summer. For some reason this possibility lifted a burden off Ron's shoulders. Phil no longer had a reason to look down his nose at his brother-in-law, Ron now felt. Now Ron had something on Phil. Not that he could be sure, of course, and not that he could really do anything about it.
Ron no longer felt all that burdenless about it as he walked around the building and under the portcullis and into the great room of jumbled delights. Now he felt duty bound to do something about what he suspected—but who should he approach about it? Susan or Phil himself—or Sally? No matter what he did now, the situation would be sticky and he'd be right in the center of it.
"Hello. Ron, isn't it?"
Ron looked up and into the eyes of a smiling Mart.
"Have you come back for that photo session?"
"Yes . . . yes, I guess so," Ron murmured. "My wife won't let me alone about it. So, I might as well have a photo taken for her."
"TC46. That's what you said your number was, didn't you?" Mart was smiling. He was having nothing to do with the "my wife's making me do it" lame excuse.
"Yes," Ron mumbled.
"I only ask because, as I said, it makes a difference in whether you have to pay for it. Well, come along. Come through my red curtains back there. As you probably know, the studio is upstairs."
Mart had taken Ron with a firm grip on his arm and was leading him toward the back of the store, toward the large painting of the Temptation Castle motif. All innocence on the surface, but something more, much more, for those who knew the code of the colors and logos hidden in the curlicues of the intricate design—as Ron now knew.
If he was going to cut and run, it would be now—now, before he had walked through the red velvet curtains. Upstairs there would be opportunity to go only so far and no farther. But Ron had already been seduced well down the path of temptation. Ron knew he was going to the chamber in the tower—if that's where Mart wanted him to go.
* * * *
The first stop at the top of the stairs to the second floor was the costume room.
"Are you keeping with the cowboy motif your wife mentioned?" Mart asked.
"Yes, that's what my wife said she wanted," Ron answered in a subdued voice.
"OK, that would be that section over there. You'll need to strip all the way down and start back up with a thong—that is if your wife still wants a sexy photo. A thong. Tight jeans on top of that, as tight as you can take them and with the lowest rise. We'll want to see that auburn hair down there. I trust it has the same reddish-gold highlights as your head hair?"
"Umm, no. I go more red the lower on my body. If that's a problem . . ."
"No, certainly not. That should be great. So, lowest rise it is. Then chaps and a red checkered shirt, brown leather vest, red bandana around your neck, and a ten-gallon hat. Spurred boots, of course. Oh, and you can wear one of those face masks, if you'd be more comfortable. You can keep that on throughout the session. I won't make you to take that off—although I may suggest that you want to . . . later. And bring along a lasso when you come into the next room. I'll be in costume too. A Roman soldier, I think. Like in my video on the Web site. You saw that of course."
Ron, who had been rummaging through the pile of Western clothes, trying to remember what Mart told him to put on, looked up guiltily at Mart's question. A leading one to be sure. And when he looked up, he saw that Mart was already stripped completely down and leaning over a pile to pull out a metal-slatted Roman skirt.
"Umm, yes, I did. Yes," Ron mumbled.
Mart looked pleased, and he turned full frontal to Ron, giving him the full look and scrutinizing him closely to gauge his reaction. Ron looked away and blushed. He began stripping down himself, fully realizing that Mart was watching his every move.
"Nice, very nice," Ron heard Mart say when he was completely stripped. He looked up, self-conscious, surprised to see that Mart was still naked. Ron felt his cock going hard, no matter what he tried to do to keep calm and cool, and he turned away.
"Nice butt too," Mart remarked. "The photos will be terrific."
Ron was trembling, but Mart was humming.
When they were dressed, Mart invited Ron to go on through an open doorway to another room, which proved to be a photo studio. In one corner of the room was a stack of hay bales, one in front of a pile of three, and Mart told Ron to sit on the front bale and he began to guide Ron through a series of poses, firing off camera clicks at a rate that was only economical in today's digital age, where unwanted shots could just be deleted.
Mart moved slowly in preparing Ron for the ultimate shots, slowly enough that Ron wasn't shocked by what he progressively was being asked to do.
The first step toward the sexy photos was having Ron unbutton his shirt and let it hang open, showing his fine chest development as he leaned back on the hay in a languid pose. The shirt came off completely from underneath the vest next, as Mart clicked away with the camera. Then the vest, leaving Ron's chest completely exposed. In some of the shots, Mart had Ron hold the lasso at his side.
Mart complimented Ron on the change in hair color tone from the fine down running across and under his pectorals, then down in a thin line descending from his sternum to his hard belly and flaring out again at the golden-red edging at the low-rise waist of the tight jeans.
After these last shots, Mart came over to Ron and let him go through the digital file of the photo shoot.
At this point, Mart asked Ron is he wanted to take the mask off briefly. "The sexy cowboy photo for your wife most likely will come from this set," Mart said. "And she'll probably want one without a mask. You can put it back on afterward, though, if you'd like to take the photo shoot to the next level."
Mart hummed and had Ron take a whole new series of sexy poses as they worked without the mask.
"These are good, but I would like to do even sexier shots, if you are willing," Mart said. "Then you can decide just how far you'd like to go for your wife. I've found it's always best to go a little farther than the subject thinks will be appropriate. You never know—and you are such a good model," he added.
Ron looked through the digital images of the new photos. He knew he'd go farther. He knew he'd go all of the way if Mart took it slow. But some part of him was still reluctant, was telling him that this was wrong and that he was going down a very dangerous path and should rein in his desires and resist temptation.
"Yes, OK. We can go farther," he answered in a breathy voice.
Mart looked pleased. "Then let's move on to the next room, shall we? We have more appropriate backdrops there. You can put the mask back on now."
Ron didn't do so, although he kept the mask with him—when they got to where he assumed this was heading, he knew he'd want to be wearing it. As ready as he was for action, he wasn't that ready to make it public.
The cowboy area of the next room was a section of wood rail fence in front of a sky-blue background with clouds.
"Take the jeans off now," Mart said when he had indicated the various poses he thought Ron should take on the rail fence for starters. "And put the chaps back on."
