Camouflage

She had herself half convinced that, other than the name, no one but Grant, Hunter Winslow, and she herself would know who that was.

Was it the only photograph of her on display, though? Knowing what the earlier numbered photos showed, how did she know one of those wasn't on the wall here too?

Cath started walking down the line of art works. She wasn't standing away from them now. She was walking very close to them—and she could clearly see the figures and distinguish them from each other. Her eyes had been trained to pull the sex-satiated nude from the background.

Still, it was a shock when she came to a male nude. Even before she looked at the title, she knew it would say "Grant Afterward #3." She had known every bulge and crease of Grant's nude body. There was no question that this was Grant. Or that the photograph had been taken postcoitally after a full, exhausting sex session.

But with who—and under what circumstance? Winslow certainly hadn't taken any nude shots of Grant laid out on the studio couch while she had been there. Was that why Grant had stayed there that night? Was he still able to look that taken and satisfied for photos shot after Cath had left that night? Or had he had more sex after she left. He hadn't looked this well fucked when he called a taxi for her that day.

She didn't have long to contemplate this, however, as shock was replaced by greater shock when she heard Grant's voice. Here and now, in the art gallery.

She felt she was disguised enough that he wouldn't recognize her, but still, although she drew near to him, she positioned herself behind a column.

He wasn't alone. He had a beautiful redhead clinging to his arm—dressed in a mere slip of a cocktail dress that was clinging even closer to the curvy contours of her body.

"I wanted you to see these before we went out to Fire Island," Cath heard him say.

"Why?" She had an irritating prissy little girl's voice. Cath wouldn't find anything about her that was hard to disdain or hate.

"Don't they make you feel sexy? I want you to feel sexy as we make love on the beach."

"The pictures make me feel sexy? Not really. You know what you have that makes me feel sexy, Grant, baby."

"Approach them closer. Focus your eyes on any edging you see. Let me know what you see."

"Holy moley, sweetie, that's a woman. And boy has she been fucked."

"Bingo. That's the expression I want to see in your face after I've fucked you on the beach, Trudy."

Cath blanched at the answering giggle. She couldn't listen to any more. He was going to take the redhead out to Fire Island, just as he'd taken her. And he was going to fuck her in the nude on the beach. That seemed just fine with this bubblehead. How many other women had he successfully played this line to, Cath wondered. Probably all of those he had photographs on his den wall for. The photos were his trophies. That's all Cath had been to him. A trophy he worked hard to collect. She was happy now that she had made it a bit difficult for him. This redhead obviously was going to lift her skirts for him at the first whistle. The way she clinged to him, they'd probably come directly here form his bed.

Photographs. Cath wondered if there were more of her in his possession. And if so, were they in that beach house out on Fire Island? She had the burning need to know, and although she fought the urge, the next day she was driving out across Long Island and onto Fire Island to check it out. She still had a key to the beach house that she hadn't given back in their sudden parting.

She parked down the street from the house and approached from the side, through the yard of a large house that obviously had been boarded up for the season, and then for only a short distance along the shrubbery fringe of the drive out onto the spit to where the driveways of the two houses forked. She came around the side of the small beach house and looked out onto the sand.

The redhead was up on all fours on the spread beach towels, and Grant was crouched over her hips, fucking her like a dog. They were both nude. Cath slipped into the house and searched it top to bottom, breathing a sigh of relief when she found no evidence of any photographs of nudes, let alone of her.

She walked over to the sliding glass door to take one last, lingering look at Grant fucking the redhead. There was a slight twinge of regret that it wasn't her. But each time she tried to conjure up Grant making love to her, the visage of Hunter Winslow, with his cold, black eyes; sensuous sneer; and hard-muscled, Satyr's thin body swam up from the depths to blot Grant out.

The towels were there, but Grant and the redhead weren't. And as far as Cath could see out into the bay, they weren't in the water either. Boldly, she slid open the glass door and walked out onto the deck. She didn't really give a shit if Grant saw her or not. All of the embarrassment should be on his side, and she'd half enjoy telling the redhead that she was just the latest in a long line of conquests and victims.

She still didn't see anyone in the direction of the beach, but she did hear voices off to her right. She turned her face to see the two nudes, Grant and the redhead, join a third nude, a man, on the deck of the main house. She had no trouble identifying the second man as Hunter Winslow.

Of course, she thought. These are Winslow's houses. When Grant had brought her to the beach house and insisted on going out onto the beach in the nude, it was just to put her on display for Winslow—an audition for her to be one of the subjects of his "Afterward" photo series.

Just as the redhead was in an unknowing audition even now. Or maybe not as unknowing as Cath had been. Maybe Grant had no occasion to call this Trudy bimbo a prude.

It indeed was evident the redhead was auditioning. The three were already in a tableau that Cath knew well herself—Grant on his back on a chaise lounge, the redhead facing him and riding his cock, and Hunter Winslow behind her and between Grant's spread legs, already working his way into her ass.

Cath stood, transfixed. And she remained there in the shadows of the eaves of the beach house, watching what was going on on the deck of the other house, long enough to see the three disengage. And, in a not wholly unexpected variation on Cath's own experience, she watched the redhead sit off to the side as Hunter Winslow grabbed and spread Grant's legs and Grant arched his back, grabbed at the edges of the lounge with his fists, and yowled to the skies as Hunter thrust his cock into Grant's ass channel and started pumping him hard.

* * * *

Cath was walking out of her shower and toweling herself off when she heard the buzzer from the street door to her small apartment house.

"Yes, who is it?"

"It's Hunter Winslow. Buzz me in. I'm coming up."

"What do you want?"

"You know what I want. You want it too. I could tell that."

Cath's trembling fingers hovered over the connection to the door release.

"Buzz me in. Now."

Her fingers pushed the release. She sighed, wondering if he'd be surprised that she received him in the nude.

Oh, well. Why hide anything? No camouflage needed now. She was a long way from Annapolis now.