I first saw Maria in my third year of college. I was an Engineering major, but I was also taking classes in Art to get my electives out of the way. I had signed up a class called Developmental Figure Studies because the girl I was engaged to was taking the class and she had talked me into it. It is amazing how naive you can be sometimes; I thought the class was going to be charcoal and pencil drawings of figures like bowls of fruit and vases and the like so image my surprise when a young woman wearing a bathrobe came into the room, dropped the robe, sat down in a chair and struck a pose. She was extremely attractive and I found myself thinking that I was going to really like this class. Sarah, my fiancée, dug her elbow in my ribs, "Hey! Save those looks for me."

I wasn't sure but I thought that the model witnessed the exchange and had smiled.

Two weeks later I showed up for my last class of the day and found a note taped to the door of the classroom; the instructor had been called away on a family emergency and the class had been canceled. I headed on home to the apartment that I shared with Sarah and when I let myself in I found that she was currently sharing the apartment, and a little something else, with the student who lived across the hall from us. The apartment had been Sarah's to begin with so I walked past the surprised couple and started moving my stuff out of the apartment and into my car. It was a little awkward what with the guy trying to get his pants on while trying to apologize and Sarah grabbing at me and saying, "Wait - you don't understand, I can explain" and drivel like that. I mean, how much explanation does a mouth on a cock need?

I got a motel room that night and moved back into the dorm the next day. The next thing that I needed to do was to cancel both classes that I took with Sarah, but as it turned out I only dropped one of them. On my way to the Registrar's office I stopped at the cafeteria at the Student Union for lunch and as I sat down at a table I noticed the model from the art class sitting at the next one over. She looked as good in her clothes as she did out of them. I started eating as I reviewed the notes that I had taken in my last class and I heard a voice say, "Excuse me" and I looked up to see the model. "Can I ask you for a favor?" I motioned her to take one of the vacant chairs and she sat down. "Actually, that was the favor. I wanted to know if I could sit with you."

I put my notes down, my curiosity in full play, and she said, "I recognized you from the afternoon art class and you were the only one in here that I recognized that had an empty chair at his table." I looked over at the table she had just vacated and then back at her. She caught the look and said, "I know, that's why I needed to move. There are two guys coming through the line and they would have headed right for my table. They are crude, obnoxious and they are constantly hitting on me. They apparently think that just because I pose nude that I'm a slut or something. I just want to avoid them. Do you mind terribly if I hide behind you?"

I grinned and told her she could take cover behind me any time she wanted. We introduced ourselves and started making small talk when we were interrupted by two jock types who sat down at the table uninvited. Ignoring me they both turned their attention toward Maria and she looked helplessly at me. One of them said, "So sweetie, thought about it? You gonna give me a taste?"

I stood up and back handed him as hard as I could and he and the chair he was sitting in went over backward. I put my foot on his throat and pushed down hard and pointed a finger at the other guy who was just starting to come out of his chair and said, "Sit! And stay there unless you want me to crush this asshole's larynx."

The guy sat down and I said, "If either one of you assholes ever comes near my fiancée again or if I hear that you've said even one word to her I'll come after the both of you with a baseball bat. Do you understand me? Are we clear on this?"

The guy sitting at the table wide-eyed nodded his head yes, "Then get this piece of shit out of my sight" and I took my foot off of the guy's throat. He started to scramble quickly to his feet and I pointed a finger at him and said, "You had best come up slow and easy unless you want to go back down hard again."

The look on his face was murderous, but he apparently got the message. After the two of them had walked away from our table Maria said, "I guess I found the right person to hide behind, but tell me - was I asleep when you proposed and I said yes?"

I grinned, "Don't knock it, it worked and not only with them, but with everybody who heard it. When word gets around about your violent boyfriend you should have a lot less trouble with the creeps. Now, I got to go so lean over the table and kiss me and that will convince the doubters."

She leaned toward me and I leaned toward her expecting a quick peck on the lips, but the tip of her tongue teased my lips and I held the kiss about three times as long as I had expected to. When we broke she said, "Maybe I knew what I was doing when I said yes to your proposal."

For some reason when I got to the office I didn't drop the figures class.

I was both dreading and looking forward to the figures class. Dreading it because I'd have to be there with Sarah, and looking forward to it because of seeing Maria. That little peck on the lips had affected me more than I would have thought possible. Sarah was waiting for me in the hallway outside the class room, "Why did you leave? I can explain. It was all just a mistake." She started to say "If you'll just give me a chance..." but I cut her off, "There was a mistake and you made it. There isn't any way you can explain away having another guys cock in your mouth."

I pushed past her and into the classroom. I took my seat at my easel and about two minutes later Maria came in and took up a pose. The truth of the matter was that I was wasting my time in the class. No matter what I drew it never looked like what I was trying to draw; it always looked like something Salvador Dali might have done. When class was over Maria put on her robe and walked over to me. She looked at my drawing, looked at me and then back to the drawing, "I see that you have captured the essence of the real me."

Then she smiled, "Buy you a cup of coffee at the union?"

I said yes and she told me she would meet me there. Sarah was in the hallway waiting when I came out, "So that's it. Got the hots for that slut."

I turned to walk away, but then stopped and turned back, "The only slut I know is you!" and I headed off to the student union.

Maria and I started dating and the day before graduation I asked her to marry me and she accepted. We were married in a small civil ceremony and then with newfound job and new wife I set out to catch the golden ring, to get my share of the American dream. Two years later the economy was in free fall and I was out of a job. I was working two part time jobs trying to hold things together and barely managing when Maria told me over dinner that she was going to start modeling for art classes again. My first instinct was to say, "Like hell you will! No wife of mine is going to take off her clothes in front of strangers."

But even before I opened my mouth I knew how stupid it would sound. God knows how many people had already seen her naked and who had nude drawings of her hanging on their walls. Two days later I came home from my morning job and found Maria nude on a chair in our living room. Sitting in a semi-circle around her were seven people and they were all busily sketching away. I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing; there would be time to talk about it when every body was gone. Her arguments were persuasive. The college paid her one hundred dollars an hour to sit for art classes three times a week so she made three hundred a week. If she freelanced she could charge each student twenty dollars an hour, which meant that she made one-forty from just the one class today. She had set up sessions of one hour for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday with a limit of eight students per class. "I've already got at least six students signed up for every class and all it cost was the effort it took to move the living room furniture into the dinning room. Give me a couple of weeks and you can quit one of your two jobs."

I wasn't too keen on the idea. When she was doing it at the college there were some built in protections like campus security and lots of people around if she had to holler for help. I asked her what she would do if one day only two or three males showed up and decided that they would rather play than paint? She laughed at me, "I've been doing this for over five years and I've never had a problem."

Yeah, I thought, except for the one you had the day we met.

Maria was a very popular model and as word got around more and more people wanted to use her for live studies. She expanded to two one-hour sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and started a one-hour session on Wednesday and Friday for still photographers. Once a month on a Saturday she would schedule a three-hour session at an outdoor location for the still photographers and we would make it a picnic. It wasn't all good of course; there was always someone who wanted her to pose seductively, or do some mild porn, but for the most part all the artists she dealt with were good people.

Six months went by and then one day I noticed a change in Maria. Following her late Monday class she always seemed to be irritable and out of sorts. I began to pay closer attention to her moods, but on all other days she was fine; it was just on Mondays that I saw her upset. I tried to ask her about it once, but she said that nothing was wrong and so I let it go. By then I was back to working full time on a pretty good job and it got a lot more of my attention than my two part time jobs had and I put Maria's Monday mood out of my mind. I figured if she had a real problem she would come to me with it and until she did there wasn't anything I could do anyway.