Temptation Castle Ch. 01

[Temptation Castle has six chapters and the posting will be completed by the end of August 2011]

"Let's stop there. See, that place coming up. The one that looks like a castle."

Ron turned to Sally and gave her a look of disbelief—not to her face, because she was looking down the road toward where she was pointing.

"That place? You want me to stop there? It looks like . . ."

"I know, it's pretty much what it looks like—a glorified souvenir stand—but Susan told me we should stop on the way up. She told me it was a gas of a place to look through—junk like you wouldn't believe—a tourist stop in its own right. But it's also where Phil had that sexy photo of himself done for her. There's a photographer's studio there, and Susan says he does custom costume photos."

"Yes, and it looks like there's a bit of everything else there too. Look at those lawn dwarfs," Ron said with a little laugh. But he slowed down and pulled off the road into the parking lot of an old Victorian house, including turreted tower, that had been stuccoed over and made into some semblance of a castle, complete with drawbridge and portcullis—if you stood a good bit off and squinted your eyes. A billboard sign off to the side identified it as Temptation Castle, home to the most exotic souvenirs and valuables in the whole Copper Lake region. "Look, is that a fitness gym advertised over the door of that wing over other? Talk about everything including the kitchen sink."

Ron opened his car door and stood there in somewhat of a daze as his wife, Sally, and his two daughters bounded out of the car.

Sally turned half-way to the castle door and called out, "You coming or not?"

"In a minute. You go ahead," Ron answered. "I'm stiff from the drive. Got to do some unbending first. Maybe I should start with the gym?"

It was a weak joke, but he felt a little weak. He hadn't been able to think of anything but the Temptation Castle for weeks—guilty thoughts, thoughts that surprised even him. He'd told himself he'd stop here on the way back to the city from dropping Sally and the girls off at the cabin at the lake. The one that the two sisters had decided to rent for the summer for the two families to share—and the husbands coming out for weekends. But he'd thought he was just fantasizing. He didn't think he'd really stop. And here Sally, of all people, had taken the decision out of his hands.

He knew far more than she did about what was to be found in the Temptation Castle—if his browsing of the Internet hadn't deceived him. Much more than he hoped Sally would ever know.

* * * *

It had all started when Sally and Susan got their heads together and decided they wanted to give the cousins a combined experience for the summer so that they wouldn't be strangers when they grew older. The sisters also both said they wanted to get out of the city. But they didn't want to go so far away that Ron and Susan's husband, Phil, couldn't join them on weekends and still cover their jobs in the city.

Ron and Phil had nothing in common other than being married to sisters. They were pretty much opposites. Ron was a chief financial officer for an advertising firm with a great reputation in the big city. He'd been grabbed up for the job because he'd been on a gold medal-winning Olympic rowing team and, helped by his clean-cut handsome athlete look, had done some national commercials. But he also was very good at and conscientious about his job.

Phil, conversely, was a somewhat shady steamroller from the dark side of town, which had made him into an aggressive survivor. He owned a couple of nightclubs, and Ron was not just intimidated—and, admittedly also intrigued—by his gangsterish look and the size and physical power of him, but also by possibilities that sprang to mind of some of the seedier activities that made him successful with his clubs. Susan only talked about the jazz club and piano bar in the hotel. Ron wasn't even sure she knew about Phil's fleshier ventures.

The incongruity, though, was that Susan seemed to worship her husband and treated him as if he was a regular guy. They seemed to be a solid couple. And their two boys, in close approximation to the ages of Ron and Sally's two girls, were good, polite kids. The cousins got along famously, which was at the base of the pooled summer vacation plans. The sisters got along well too—it was just Ron and Phil who were slightly uncomfortable with each other. Ron got the impression that Phil looked down on him because he was so squeaky clean—he certainly found the club owner prone to just sit there and look at him with hooded eyes and the trace of a smirk on his face.

Ron had to hand it to Phil, though. He was the one who came up with the idea of Copper Lake and who wrangled the rental of a terrific house that gave each family a zone of privacy as well as common rooms where they could comfortably mix. And there was room to spare—they didn't even need to go up to the third floor with its one large bedroom with dormer windows.

Of them all, Ron had been the least enthused about this vacation arrangement. Ron wasn't sure how well he could mix with Phil, who intimidated him both for reasons he could clearly name and other, darker, temptation-related ones Ron couldn't manage to express. Phil had several times invited Ron to check out his seamier clubs, but Ron, though tempted, had thus far only been to the jazz club—and then as a foursome centered on the two sisters. Part of what made Ron uncomfortable with Phil was the looks he gave Ron when he made the invitation—like he knew Ron was tempted, and thus no better than he was.

As uncomfortable as proximity to his brother-in-law made Ron, the two of them would rarely be there together and the sisters and the kids bonded well. Some activities were shared, but the arrangement was loose and comfortable enough that each of the children could do his or her own thing as well.

Ron had wondered if there really were activities his daughters would enjoy, but it was Phil who had also settled that. He had pointed out to Ron that there was a regional Web site, where Ron could browse what was on offer—and Phil had given him the URL for that. As soon as Ron had seen that an introduction to camping was provided and that there was a horse stable for Cindy and an American Doll play club for Laurie, he was sold on the vacation arrangements.

It was on this Web site that Ron had stumbled on a link to the Web pages for Temptation Castle, and over several days, he had slowly been sucked into something he never in a million years thought he'd be tempted by again. He'd dabbled a bit in it in college—primarily in the form of watching and admiring the physiques of the other guys on rowing teams and comparing musculature and, eventually, endowments and getting a little glow off that. He'd even let a guy give him a hand job once, and had then thought, guiltily about that for several weeks. He didn't think it meant anything, though, and he'd forced himself to just not think of it again when he'd married and entered the corporate life.

The Temptation Castle Web site was bringing it all back and had done it so insidiously and slowly that he was deep into it—almost obsessed by it—now.

Temptation Castle was a collection of things. On the surface its main purpose seemed to be a store for novelty items and antiques and what it called "rare finds," which probably meant not-so-glorified junk and retail items no one had been able to sell out in the city stores and thus had consigned out to tourist traps like this one—although Copper Lake wasn't really a tourist trap sort of vacation area. This lack of competition was probably what kept it in business, Ron thought.

But Ron had already discovered that the Web site, which had a main page for the novelty shop and a couple of linked pages on other functions—the photography business and the fitness gym—and bio pages on the two men who owned the endeavor, had a deeper purpose.

One owner, a guy named Mart, who claimed to have had his start as a male model—and who looked Nordic in his photo—was the photographer and an artist too, Ron gathered. He'd done the art for the Web site, which used the shape of the Temptation Castle itself as a motif, although his rendering of it made it look much more like a castle than they'd been able to achieve with the real thing.

The other was a hulking, swarthy guy, named Theo, who claimed to have immigrated from Germany, and who ran the gym. Together they supervised the novelty shop.

What had led Ron down the garden path into the deeper depths of the Web site was the photography business. For Valentine's day the previous year, and while he was scouting out summer vacation areas, Phil said he had stopped at the Temptation Castle and had a sexy photograph made of himself for Susan. Glamour shots were all the rage then for women to have taken for their men, so Phil had one done, he said, almost tongue in cheek. Susan had loved it, though, and had run to Sally with it, who also loved it. Ron was a little nonplused. Phil was hunky, Ron acknowledged, at least to himself. He certainly worked his body well and had the body of a bodybuilder and the dark, curly-haired look of a man who was both trouble and sensual at once.

For the photo he'd been dressed in the metal-pleated skirt of a Roman soldier that dipped down so low at the waist that the trail of curly black hair that ran down his sternum after flaring in from his muscled chest flared out again on his groin and barely kept his manhood covered. He was wearing lace-up sandals and leather arm bands and was carrying a round shield out from his body. The pose was provocative and left little to the imagination of the power and sensuality of the man—he had the musculature that seemed appropriate to a Roman warrior.

"God, that's beautiful," Sally had said. "So sexy. I want one too."

"You want an X-rated photo of Phil?" Ron had asked, the shock and hurt leaking from his voice—not because he didn't understand that she really wanted one of himself, but because he did understand and he was feeling unexplainable and conflicting violent emotions about.

"No, silly," Sally had said. "I'd like a photo like that of you. You're sexier than Phil is. Maybe a cowboy. I've always fantasized about being ridden by a sexy cowboy."

I did once myself, Ron had thought, but then he'd wanted to slap himself, and he'd changed the subject in embarrassment—the foundation of his emotional response to the suggestion was becoming clearer, and it wasn't something Ron wanted to admit to. That photo—and Sally—had germinated a seed in his mind. And the thought that Sally might think his body was sexier than Phil's aroused him, because he'd have to acknowledge, dipping back into thoughts he'd suppressed for years, that Phil's body was plenty sexy.

So, when Ron had clicked into the photographer, Mart's, page, he'd seen that he had links to galleries of his photographs. And the photographer had been really clever in setting the page up. The only gallery that would open up from Mart's page was gallery one, although there were tags for three galleries and something called "the chamber."

The photos in gallery one were totally innocuous—some artsy building and landscape shots and a few artistic ones of people—but devoid of sensuality. Well, not devoid altogether. The photographer seemed to have the concept of sensuality somewhere in the background of everything he shot—and all of his drawings, as well. This gallery included drawings as well as photos. And at the bottom right corner was a detailed drawing of the castle motif that had started on the main menu page.

None of the tags for the other two galleries and the chamber would open on this page, but they had subtle shadings of color filling in their backgrounds—green, blue, and red. And as Ron clicked on the tags without result after perusing the photographs and drawings on display on gallery page one and he became a bit frustrated, he noticed that small disks set in the castle motif drawing began to pulse. Three of them. Three different colors: green, blue, and red.

Ron clicked on the blue disk, but nothing happened. He clicked on the green disk, though, and gallery two, the one with the slight greenish tint to the tag background, opened up. These photos and drawings were more provocative. These were the custom-posed costume shots like the one Phil had had made. There were shots of both women and men—no landscapes or other themes now—and Ron found himself looking past the shots of women, which included ones in full French court dress, but with something extra about them—a reclining shot of the buttocks exposed or a frontal shot of an elaborate dress with the bodice open to the waist, nipples peaking out, almost but not quite covered by the spread bodice.

Ron had this bee in his bonnet that Sally had put there, though, and he found himself looking for the shots of men dressed as cowboys. They were there. Shirts full open or not there at all. Low-slung jeans with chaps exposing the jeans at the crotch, with a bulge or even the ability to trace the positioning of the cock. Expressions on the faces that showed either arousal or sexual satisfaction. Drawings every bit as revealing, with features even more accentuated than the real-life photos were able to show.

Ron found himself turned on and repelled at the same time, and he quickly backed out of the Web page and went off to another family activity where he could forget the titillation that these photos had brought out. He'd only gone this far because Sally had said she wanted such a costume-posed photo of him. He had thought about these things in college, when he was thrown together with well-muscled, nearly nude young men for long stretches of time, but he'd managed to put all of that behind him.

The next day, after the girls had gone to bed and Sally was cleaning up the kitchen, Ron slid into the den, turned the monitor screen away from the door, and opened Mart's pages at the Temptation Castle Web site again. He went through the sequence and clicked on the red blinking disk, deciding to go straight to the last gallery, but nothing happened. Almost despondently, he clicked on the green flashing disk.

Up popped a prompt. He'd have to register to see gallery three. In disgust, Ron clicked off and went to find a book on small sailboats. He'd sailed as a child, and having a big recreational lake outside the patio door of the Copper Lake cabin would give him a chance to renew the pleasure of being out on the water in a boat.

All day at work, though, Ron thought about that gallery three—and the one after it, the chamber. Embarrassingly, he went hard when he was thinking about those. And he felt himself trembling and the photos of men in gallery two swimming in front of his face. And the thought of him maybe being brave enough to have that photo made that Sally wanted and to have justification for being turned on by that too. They'd put it on her nightstand and he'd look at it while he was fucking her—and maybe she'd get an extra special thrill out of its effect on him as well.

Ron knew you could get a blind Internet account. There was no mystery to that. He'd get into the other galleries just by creating a cut-out account.

So, that night, when he could get to it—having thought about nothing else other than that all night—Ron registered for gallery three—the blue one—with his fake e-mail address account and a plausible, but made up, street address, and he was in. He wasn't able to pick his own password; he was automatically assigned password TC46. When he saw what was in the gallery—which he assumed would be what was in the gallery—Ron almost clicked right back out, but something held him there. There were only three men featured in this gallery. Two of them were men who had costumed shots in gallery two—two particularly good-looking men, both of whom wore masks on their faces. The third one was Mart himself, in the Roman costume Phil had been photographed in. In a series of shots, the men slowly shed their costumes and ended up nude, laying on a bed, and holding an engorged cock.

Ron had trouble keeping his eyes off Mart. He was a Nordic god, big boned, and nice-muscled, and the primary muscle was thick and long.

Ron saw that each of the photo series ended in a video frame that invited him to click on them. Instead, with trembling fingers, Ron shut the Web page down.

A half hour later, though, he was back on the Internet. Getting access to where temptation was leading him on the Temptation Castle Web site frustrated him—he went back to the last pages he had viewed there and clicked on the buttons promising a video—but at each point he was asked for a subscription number before he could open the video.

Ron wasn't ready to commit on this Web site—to do anything traceable back to him. But he wanted to do something in his arousal and frustration—the temptation was just to great. So, using his fake e-mail ID and the PayPal account he'd opened, he searched for a male video site and joined and then started looking at the men who popped up on DVD covers. He was looking for a specific type—without even realizing he was. And, as luck would have it, he found what he was looking for—a blond Nordic god type—and pulled up the DVD. Lo and behold, however, he found even more than he thought he had been looking for. He found Mart himself, in the same setting Ron had seen on the Temptation Castle Web site—the Chamber. But it was a sequence that took the viewer beyond where Ron had been able to get on that Web site. Mart fucking another young man on the bed in the chamber—an example, no doubt of what Ron could see on the Temptation Castle Web site if he could get into just one more page in Mart's area.

Ron sat and watched the scene in horror and arousal, knowing he should turn it off but knowing he couldn't—knowing that this was exactly what he had been tempted to search for on this Web site.

The young man was lightly bound—his arms above his head, wrists tied off at the headboard. He was on his back, his legs spread, Mart's knees up under his buttocks, raising the young man's pelvis to give both Mart and the camera a good angle to watch Mart's cock plowing in and out of the young man's hole. Mart was working the young man's cock with one hand and his nipples with the other, and the young man was moaning deeply and writhing under Mart's expert spell. Ron watched the film through the ejaculation of the two actors and of his own.

That night he fucked Sally like there was no tomorrow, and Sally got up early and fixed him a gourmet breakfast and cooed and made eyes at him from across the table as he ate it and coached the girls to wolf down their cereal so he could drop them off at school and day care on his way to work.

The next evening he watched all three videos and held his breath as each hunk masturbated to an arcing ejaculation. And each video ended with another naked man coming into view and sitting down on the bed beside the reclining first man. In two cases, it was Mart. In Mart's case, though, it was the swarthy and heavily muscled other owner, Theo. And in all three cases, the videos ended there. Ron didn't find this to be enough, however—not anymore. He went back to the DVD he had found of Mart's on the other Web site.

The next morning, Ron enjoyed yet another gourmet breakfast as Sally sat there in a loose robe with a sloppy grin on her face.

Now Ron was hooked. But now he was thoroughly stymied as well. He managed to get a page up by clicking on the red disk for the chamber, but it demanded not only his password but something called a "photo number." All Ron could think was that he probably would have to sit for a photo session to have access to the last photo gallery. He was becoming obsessed with seeing more action from Mart. Getting into that last page of Mart's was out of the question, of course, so he decided he'd just have to push that out of his mind. He found himself instead searching for another independent DVD of Mart in action at the Web site now subscribed to, but his search was fruitless.