Chapter 4: Painting Sheila

WHEN I AWOKE in the morning, Rita was gone.

Well, strictly speaking, it was barely morning. I lay in bed several minutes reliving every sensuous moment of the previous night, trying to convince myself it had not been an elaborate fantasy I put over on myself. When I realized what time it was, though, I jolted out of bed and dashed to the bathroom for a shower and shave. Saturday is a busy day in the real estate industry and I had an open house scheduled at one of my listings in less than an hour.

In the bathroom, my mirror had been decorated with lipstick. A curly border had been drawn around a series of XOXOXO and a perfect lipstick imprint of Rita’s lips. It seemed there were no hard feelings. She must have had to work this morning, too. Or else she wanted to get across the drive and into her own house before daylight. I got dressed and made it to my open house with minutes to spare, then sat and waited for four hours while a sparse trickle of visitors came, showing no interest in the house whatsoever. Some days are like that. I entertained myself between visitors by sketching small details I could remember from the night before. I discovered Rita could turn me on without even being in the same room.

I didn’t see Rita at all for the rest of the weekend. She had taken off Saturday morning with a bunch of girlfriends for a girls’ weekend at a local spa. She called Saturday night and said she’d see me sometime the next week.

Mondays are dead in the real estate industry unless you happen to have landed a fish during a weekend open house. I considered Monday my weekend. Tuesday morning, I would have to deal with brokers’ open houses and a new homes tour, but Mondays, I reserved to paint. The inestimable Sheila Monroe, my wealthy client, called and asked if she could sit for her painting that afternoon. I’d laid in the background and washes, and was ready to start on the detail work. I agreed and Sheila arrived about noon.

She didn’t bother to step behind the privacy screen I keep in the studio for changing, but made sure she had my eye first and began simply taking her clothes off in front of me. This was a portrait that showed down almost to her draped waist, but she took off considerably more clothing than was strictly required. She stood in a lacy transparent thong and waited for me to position her on the couch in the pose I’d recorded. I spread a blanket on the chaise I was using to pose her on and she settled into position. I looked at the position in the photo and made several small adjustments to her posture and position, letting my hand rest gently on her shoulder or back as she got comfortable.

I’d warned her that sitting for a painting was not like sitting for a sketch. The process is much slower and therefore, the pose must be held much longer. I usually work for forty-five minutes and then take a break for fifteen so the model has time to get the blood circulating through her limbs again. After the first session, Sheila was stiff and tired of the same pose, but she dropped her drape and pranced around the studio—loosening up, she said—in just her thong. She leaned over my shoulder to look at the progress on the painting, pressing up against me.

Sheila is in her mid-thirties and has two children, but in true trophy wife fashion, she’s taken immaculate care of her body. She chatted as we worked through the next session about her busy schedule of getting the children up and off to school and meeting friends at the tennis club to play and enjoy the spa. She might have a massage scheduled—with Enrico, her favorite therapist—or just have lunch and a glass of wine. At least three times a week, she met with a personal trainer, who had obviously been doing a great job. She is about five-five and her body is lean and trim. Almost too lean for my tastes as, like most artists, I like to see curves in a woman. Nonetheless, there is nothing unpleasant about looking at her.

In the third and final forty-five-minute session, there was something slightly different about her pose. Checking the digital photo, I didn’t see what it was at first. A slight movement after I’d started painting, however, drew my attention downward. Sometime during her last break, she’d lost the thong and the drape had been pulled up far enough to expose a clear view of her pussy. I tried to keep my focus on the curve of her breast and the nipple peeking from behind the drape, but I noticed the hand that was not in the picture had slipped beneath the sheet and was slowly stroking her cleanly shaved pussy.

I had a new admiration for Sheila. In fact, I was beginning to think I might call her to model for me professionally sometime. She was holding her upper body perfectly still in the pose we’d agreed on, even while fingering her clit. That takes some concentration and I was losing mine. I managed to complete the curves I was working on and then said I thought we’d done enough for today.

“Oh, Doc,” she said as she moved and adjusted the sheet again, making sure my view was unobstructed. “Would you mind doing just a couple more sketches of me that are full-body and not just upper?” She was lying naked in front of me, so I had no difficulty agreeing.

I brought my sketchbook and a bit of charcoal and sat my stool much closer than I had for the portrait. She moved herself into a reclining pose and positioned the drape so she was full exposed. I quickly lay in a charcoal sketch and captured the bare slit she was showing with her fingers poised just over it. When I’d finished the sketch, she shifted positions and the drape fell away entirely with no pretense about using it for modesty. She arched herself backward, spreading her legs slightly and I tore through another rapid sketch. I had a feeling this was less about me sketching and more about her posing.

“What do you think of my ass?” she asked, getting on her hands and knees for the next pose. She pointed it pretty directly at me and I could see her labia open, exposing her channel and clit. “I’d like you to do one that is just a close-up of my derriere.”

“It’s a lovely ass, Sheila,” I said as I positioned my stool close enough to smell her and see the fine details of her ass and pussy. Between the posing and her earlier fingering, moisture glistened around her pussy lips. I sketched each little pucker as I saw it and, in a few minutes, I had a likeness that only her husband would recognize. Or perhaps her masseur.

She got up from the chaise and looked at the sketches.

“Is that really what I look like from that angle?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s really quite beautiful.”

“No wonder George likes it so much!” she exclaimed. I had to assume George was her husband, but perhaps it was her personal trainer. She sat on my lap and pulled the sketchbook from my hands. “You could almost reach out and touch it.”