Chapter 3

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 that it had not been an elaborate fantasy that 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. Well, it seemed that there were no hard feelings. She must have had to work this morning, too. 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. Well, some days are like that. I entertained myself between visitors by sketching small details that I could remember from the night before in my sketchbook and discovered that Rita could turn me on without even being in the same room.

As it happened, 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 did call Saturday night and said she would 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. Tuesday morning I would have to deal with brokers' open houses and a new homes tour, but Mondays I reserved to paint. As it happened, 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 I was ready to start on the detail work, so I agreed and Sheila arrived about noon.

She didn't bother to step behind the screen I keep in the studio for changing, but made sure she had my eye first then began simply taking her clothes off in front of me. This was a portrait that showed down to nearly her waist, but she took off considerably more clothing than was strictly required. She stood in a lacey, transparent thong and waited for me to come to position her on the couch in the pose I'd recorded in the digital photo. 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. We 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 for most of the fifteen minutes in just her thong, coming to lean over my shoulder and look at the progress on the painting.

Sheila is in her mid-thirties and has two children, but in true tennis-mom 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, then meeting friends at the tennis club to play and enjoy the spa. She might have a massage scheduled, or just have lunch and a glass of wine. It seemed that at least three times a week she met with a personal trainer who had obviously been doing a great job. She is about five feet five inches tall 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, but 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 that I had a clear view of her pussy as I worked. I tried to keep my focus on the curve of her breast and the nipple peaking from behind the drape that I was painting, but I noticed that the hand that was not in the picture had slipped beneath the sheet and was slowly stroking her 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 that I thought we'd done enough for today.

"Oh Doc," she said as she moved and adjusted the sheet again, making sure I had an unobstructed view. "Would you mind doing just a couple more sketches of me that are full-body and not just upper?"

"Sure, Sheila," I said. I brought my sketchbook out and a bit of charcoal and sat my stool much closer than I had been for the portrait. Sheila moved herself into a reclining pose and positioned the drape so that she was fully exposed. I quickly lay in a charcoal sketch and captured the bare slit that she was showing with her fingers poised just over it. She shifted positions when I'd finished that sketch 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 than it was about her posing.

"What do you think about 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, Shiela," I said as I positioned my stool close enough that I could 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 in each little pucker as I saw it and in a few minutes I had a likeness that only her husband would recognize.

She got up from the chaise and came to look at the sketches.

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

"Yes," I said. "It's really quite beautiful."

"I love it!" she exclaimed and sat down on my lap and pulled the sketchbook away from me. "You could almost reach out and touch it."

"From where I am right now, I could," I laughed. It was very pleasant to have this woman sitting and wiggling on my lap the way she was, and I was beginning to show signs of my arousal.