I was just hanging out at the local neighborhood pub, having a beer outside in the biergarten on a slow weeknight. The weather was too gorgeous to sit in, and I didn’t really have anything else to do. I looked around the outdoor biergarten from my vantage point on a stool at the outside bar, with its tables for dining. It was too early for the night band, and the happy hour musician had already left. Like I said, it was slow. At least, until I set my eyes on her. She was sitting with a friend. Both were in their late twenties, slender, pretty, she blondish, her friend with dark wavy hair. They weren’t drop-dead gorgeous or anything; in fact, there were three drop-dead gorgeous women sitting at a table closer to the bar. But she got my attention. It was almost perverse in that the three drop-dead’s were smoking Capri 120’s, smoking from the same pack, which would usually get (and keep) my attention, but they were younger, and although they smoked a stylish cigarette, they did so without much style, dragging and exhaling almost immediately. She, on the other hand, was smoking a Virginia Slim 120 (I could see from a later light up) with the most beguiling style I’ve ever seen. She would take a drag, let the smoke waft to her nose for a french-inhale, and then exhale the smoke in her mouth in a stream, followed by a much narrower, steady stream from the french-inhale. I stared.
Fortunately for me, she was absorbed in conversation with her friend and didn’t notice my scrutiny at all. After seeing her smoke a second cigarette, I was a little crazy. Turning to the bartender, I said, “Send that young woman one of whatever she’s drinking—if she orders another.” He raised his eyebrows, because that rarely ever works, and he knew that it was the first time I’d ever done something like that. Buy a drink for a woman I’m talking to? Plenty of times. As a way of introducing myself to a woman I didn’t know? Never. I know it creeped me out to have some anonymous stranger buy me a drink (it turned out OK, we dated for a month—then I found out she was a little more aggressive than I liked, but there was no “Fatal Attraction” action.) I wanted to meet her, but I had no idea of how to introduce myself—it was fairly obvious that she wasn’t looking for anybody, and any action on my part would have been an intrusion. The drink was the most discreet way I could think of to wrangle an introduction. Besides, she was probably leaving soon, anyway, and the drink wouldn’t be delivered.
The whole night was perverse; the usual, reasonable thing wasn’t what happened. She and her friend lingered over dinner, and motioned for their waiter. He returned to the bar and gave the bartender the order. They were having another drink. “Which one is for the blonde?” asked the bartender. The waiter told him that it was the featured wine, causing the bartender to grin at me, “Nice. That’s eight bucks a glass.” I shrugged and handed over the cash, plus a tip for the waiter. He said thanks, and asked me if I wanted her to know who sent it. “You might as well, it’s even creepier if some anonymous person sends you a drink and doesn’t let you know who it is,” the bartender offered. I said yeah, he was probably right. The drink went on its way, and I pondered making a tactical withdrawal to the bathroom.
While I was pondering, the drink arrived. I stopped looking at the table. A minute later, the waiter startled me by saying, “She says thank you, and you really didn’t have to. She offered to buy you something in exchange.” I looked over at their table. Both were looking at me, and the blonde was sort of smiling. Not an invitation, but she clearly felt obligated to respond in a positive fashion. I ordered another beer, and raised my glass at their table, getting another sort-of-smile from the blonde in return. Despite being urged by both the bartender and waiter to go over there, I remained firmly planted on my bar stool at the bar, resolutely not looking at them. The young Capri girls were still nearby, and they were drinking, so I discreetly watched them for a while.
“Thank you for the glass of wine. That was a remarkably polite and discreet way of gaining an introduction,” a soft, honeyed voice said, jolting me out of my self–absorbed musings. I spun to look at her. “My name’s Marguerite.” Up close, she was absolutely gorgeous, in a simple, non-made-up way.
“Umm… hi. I’m… I’m… Nathan. My friends call me Nate.”
“Nice to meet you, Nathan,” she said, extending her hand in a feminine fashion. “Are you here often?”
“Yes, I am. I come here on nice nights just to get out of the house and think.” No ring on either hand. My heart started to beat a little faster.
“My friend and I just discovered this place. Maybe I’ll see you around some time,” she said, with the same sort-of-smile she had when she accepted the drink. Her friend came out, and Marguerite said, “This is my friend Heather. Heather, Nathan.” I shook her hand. “Have a pleasant evening, Nathan,” Marguerite said as she turned to leave. “Next time.”
The bartender and their waiter gave me shit over having wasted money and the best I could manage was, “Hi, I’m Nathan.” No phone number, no nothing. I felt stupid enough without them. I left, the three Capri 120 girls still there, working on a fresh pack.
A month later, I was sitting at the same biergarten, waiting for the special show that night. I’d been looking forward to seeing the band because a friend of mine from high school was singing the blues with them. The equipment sat on the outdoor stage, but the only person there was the sound guy scurrying around hooking up wires and stuff. It was early in the evening, and I thought that I might have a chance to have dinner with my friend if she arrived early enough. “Hello, Nathan.” My jaw bounced off the bar. It was Marguerite. I stammered hello, and she smiled, “You come here a lot, don’t you?” before sitting next to me at the bar. I explained what I was doing there that particular night, and her face fell. “Oh. That’s why they were charging ten dollars at the door. Hmm...” I guess she figured out that my puzzled look truly did mean that I had no idea what she was thinking. “I came here to have dinner with some friends. Guess I’d better call them and let them know.” She dialed her cell phone and spoke with someone for about five minutes. Being polite, I didn’t eavesdrop or interrupt. She put the phone away. “Well, they’re on the way here, running a little late. We’re going to figure out what we’re going to do once they get here.”
“In that case, can I buy you a glass of wine?” The words came out of my mouth before I could think. “I mean, you’ve already paid the cover charge, which goes to my friend so—“
“Oh Nathan, that’s sweet of you, but, no thanks. I can buy my own.” Which she did while I cursed myself for being such an idiot. She removed a pack of More Menthol 120 from her purse while waiting for her drink. I started to feel some blood move south. Out came a lighter. She placed the long brown cigarette between her lips, clicked the lighter on, and took that first slow, steady drag. As she pulled the cigarette from her lips, she tilted her head back, letting the smoke curl up into her nose, leisurely turning her head to the side and exhaling, first, the smoke in her mouth, then the steady stream of smoke from her chest. It was smoking poetry in motion, and it was—exciting. I almost couldn’t stand it. I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding my fetish for gorgeous 120 smokers, though. She gave me a strange look after her next luxurious, slow ritual. Maybe I’m not so good at it. “Nathan, does the smoke bother you?” she asked with something that sounded like concern. I assured her that it didn’t with relief that she had misread my look. “That’s good, but I always like to be considerate,” she said, before doing it again.
I was so happy that I was sitting, because my legs would have failed. Marguerite took a sip of wine. “So what do you do for a living?” I said that I was a sound engineering consultant, my own company of one, and explained what a sound engineer did. I fumbled in my wallet to get a business card to show her, freezing as she french-inhaled her next drag oh-so-slowly, leisurely turned her head to the side with her neck craned, and exhaled, first the big cone, and then the long, narrow stream. PING ! I was now extremely self-conscious and moved to hide my bulge, which isn’t easy if you’re sitting. I prayed that she wouldn’t notice. I held the card for her, hand shaking ever so slightly. I’d never been in such proximity to a smoking goddess who punched every single fetish button I had. To my surprise, she took the card. “Would you mind if my boss gave you a call? You said that you do sound engineering for offices.” My bulge began to fade as it dawned on me that Marguerite had actually been listening, despite the expression of rapture she wore each time she took a puff. “Thank you, Nathan. We’ve gotten a few new pieces of equipment in my office and it’s getting loud. My boss is aware of the problem, but he doesn’t quite know what to do about it.” She delicately crushed out the More, her wine only half-gone. Before we could pick up another conversational thread, recognition flashed across her face, targeted somewhere behind me. “Ah! There they are!” she softly exclaimed, standing to leave. Her friends had arrived. “Maybe I’ll see you around again sometime.” There was that not-quite-warm-smile, and a daintily extended hand. I shook it dumbly, not wanting to embarrass myself any more by making it clear that I wanted to see her again, no “maybe” involved. She left, and I was distracted for the rest of the night.
I saw her the following week, but it was at her workplace. Her boss called me to ask about the cost of a consultation—Marguerite had indeed passed on my card. I could easily undercut the large firms in town, having almost zero overhead, so there I was, walking through her office area with her boss. She saw me as she stepped off the elevator. “Hello again, Nathan. We seem to be running into each other quite a bit as of late,” she smiled. Her breath was a mixture of mint with faint traces of smoke. I had to work really hard to keep the images of the way she smoked, and of her cigarette at the bar the previous Friday night out of my head, since I was there in a professional capacity. I made a brief, light conversation, and then we both resumed our jobs. Sonically, the place was a mess. I spent the day taking careful notes, and then arranged a meeting in a week. The meeting was a little larger than I thought it was going to be, with not only Marguerite’s boss, but also his boss, and the boss above that, along with some dweeb from accounting. I laid out the summary of what I had observed, and told them that it would be a relatively inexpensive fix. They’d have to pony up for details, but I was more than willing to give them the full evaluation, and do another consulting scan after they’d made changes. Apparently, the dweeb from the accounting department was happy with the dollar figure, because he left, and the company took me to lunch. After a three-hour lunch, I had a verbal contract to do the same process on four of their floors, which included the work I had already done for Marguerite’s office space. The signing took place two weeks later, in the afternoon, with remarkably few alterations. I stopped by Marguerite’s cubicle on my way home. “Hi, I just signed a contract that’s... substantial. I’d like to take you out to dinner, because, if you hadn’t passed my card to your boss, I wouldn’t be standing here holding the largest single contract I’ve ever had.”
Marguerite smiled at me, again, that not-quite-warm smile. “Nathan, that’s wonderful. Congratulations,” she evenly replied. I waited for her to decline my offer. “How about tomorrow evening?” Everything about this woman was contrary. She never did what I expected her to do. Caught off-guard and off-balance, I could only stammer a less-than-professional “yes.” “Then where are we going to be having dinner?”
The first somewhat witty thing I ever said to Marguerite was, “Not our usual place, dahling, it’s getting to be so mundane,” complete with accent and jaded air accompanied by a roll of the eyes. She laughed. I mean, out and out laughed, with a smile that was genuine. “Have you ever been to Bobby’s Place?” She nodded, adding that she liked the wine bar. “Then that’s a good place for us to have dinner. About seven, tomorrow?” She said that would be fine, with a definite smile this time. We said our good-byes, and I left with a definite spring in my step, feeling more energetic than I had in a while.
I got to Bobby’s about fifteen minutes early, trying not to get nervous. This is just a thank-you dinner, she really did get you that contract, she’s got to have a boyfriend, she’s not interested even if she doesn’t, blah, blah, blah... I had almost managed to convince myself that this was just a thank-you, even after she arrived and we said hi. I had us seated in the smoking section; she thanked me for being considerate, and I assured her that it was no problem. She took out a More as we were seated, and I started to repeat my mental script to keep things on a professional basis, and she lit it and I began to shout my script in my head, and then she french-inhaled, and the blood started flowing down, and then she did her slow, luxurious exhale… It stopped being just a thank-you for-getting-me-the-contract dinner. I saw almost everything in profile as she sat directly across from me in our booth. She would always exhale towards the aisle to keep from blowing smoke in my face. We were managing to make small talk about the contract when she stopped as she was about to take another drag from her half-finished More. “Nathan? Is my smoking bothering you? Please be honest. We can sit in the non-smoking section if you want.” She was poised to crush the cigarette out.
“Oh! No, no that’s not it at all,” I quickly said, somewhat unnerved by the fact that she had caught me watching her, even if she had misinterpreted what was on my mind. “Actually, you look like you’re really enjoying the heck out of that cigarette.”
The flash of surprise that went across her face worried me for an instant, but she resumed her drag, french-inhaling even more slowly, with a pause before her elegant exhale. PING! I’m so glad the table wasn’t transparent. When she had finished her exhale, she looked at me and said, “You know, you’re right. I am enjoying the hell out of this cigarette.” I didn’t think it was possible for my pants to get any tighter in front. I was wrong. She dragged again, french-inhale, slow half-turn of the head, exhaling noiselessly. I thought it had been bad in the biergarten; inside, with the lighting, it was the stuff of which wet dreams are made. “I like smoking,” Marguerite declared. “I mean, I like the entire act, the handling, the lighting, blowing the smoke out. It’s a relaxing thing for me. I don’t—can’t—hurry it. I don’t like to smoke when I only have a few minutes, like at work. Then it’s all just—too rushed.” I watched her final drag and exhale before delicately snuffing the cigarette, a perfect illustration of what she was saying. “These days, people seem to fall into two groups, the anti-smokers, and the addicted. Neither of them really appreciates the act.”
“You look like you do,” I said, hopelessly erect. Solid wood tables are good. “So, what exactly do you do there?” I asked, hoping to start a conversation that would allow my penis to deflate. I succeeded only partially. She told me all about being one of the lead researchers for the brokerage firm that had given me the sound abatement contract, but had another More with the glass of wine we had before dinner. We chatted throughout the meal, all very casual (except for the trouble I had leaving the booth to go to the bathroom.) After dinner, Marguerite smoked another two Mores in her very distinctive style, sandwiched around another glass of wine. Finally, the live music started, and it became difficult to talk. She signaled that I needed to get the check, and I agreed. As I was filling out the receipt, she was writing something on a piece of paper. I handed the slip to the waitress, and Marguerite handed me a card, signaling that it was her phone number by pointing to her cell phone.
Once we got outside, I told her that I would definitely call her again for dinner somewhere a little quieter. “I’d like that, Nate. “Sometime soon, I hope.” She held out her hand as she had each time we’d left. I took it, but she held it for a brief instant. “My friends call me Meg,” she said, very quietly, before her smile came on full intensity and she brightly said. “See you soon!”
As careful as Meg had been to establish a polite separation between us on our first two meetings, it seemed that once she told me to call her Meg, all of that distance stuff went out the window. She actually paid for dinner the next week, and picked me up in her nice new car two weeks later. She had decided that my minivan wasn’t what she’d like to pull up in front of valet parking at La Cucina Sorrento. I asked her about smoking Mores; most of the women I’d ever seen smoking them were much older than Meg’s twenty-nine. “Well, it kind of goes back to the way I smoke,” she began shyly, pulling one out to demonstrate. “They’re long and slim, and they just feel right between my fingers. I also like the way the smoke feels when it goes into my nose. So what if they’re brown?” After a few seconds, she said, grinning sheepishly, “That’s also part of it. They’re brown. They’re different. I mean, my friend, Heather—you met her briefly at the bar when we first met—smokes Virginia Slim Lights 120’s. I did for a little while, but I missed the looks I got with a brown cigarette. You don’t think I’m a lesbian, do you?” I lit the More in her hand and shook my head, trying not to grin stupidly. After she finished her exhale, she thanked me. “I don’t like to talk before I exhale, and you are such a gentleman.” We had a very pleasant, if somewhat expensive evening at the fancy Italian place. It was almost ten before we left. Meg stopped at a gas station to get a fresh pack of Mores, and then asked where I would like to go. We settled on a riverboat jazz club; it was a quiet, intimate setting with dim lights and indoor smoking. By the end of the evening, Meg and I were holding hands across the table. I’d watched her smoke the entire night, and I was ready to take her to bed. Unfortunately, I truly did not have a clue about how she felt. It was obvious that she was comfortable with me, but would it be trying for too much, too soon? We went outside to watch the river and the city lights, Meg holding my hand, leading me up the gang stairs. As I got to the top of the steps, she spun and wrapped her arms around me. She wasn’t drunk, but her inhibitions were definitely lowered. “What do you want to do tonight, Nate? The night’s still young,” she giggled.
“It’s almost one o’clock on Saturday, Meg,” I teasingly pointed out, still holding her, fighting the excitement from her last cigarette, “the day’s very young.”
“Night, day, whatever,” she carelessly replied, letting go of me and walking over to the rail. She opened her purse and pulled out a cigarette. The soft breeze made it difficult to light, but I managed, and she thanked me as was becoming our ritual. “I need some support here,” she giggled again, moving in front of me and leaning against my body. I had to wrap my arms around her from behind. I saw her french-inhale, neon-backlit from the shore, along with its delayed exhale as she turned her head to the left. PING! I cursed my fetish for blowing my civilized cover. “Oh-ho! I know what you’d like to do, Mr. Nate,” she cooed in a singsong voice, before taking another slow draw from her cigarette. With any pretense of platonic friendship gone, I nuzzled her neck as she exhaled. “Oh... Wowwww...” she breathed, panting quietly before she could finish her thought. “I think... I think I’d like that, too, Nate.”
We were in my bed in the era of safe sex, caution forgotten, me sliding into her with her legs spread on either side of my waist, supported by my hands. “Ohhh... ohhhh... ohhhh. Na-a-a-ate...” she babbled softly, a girlish counterpoint to my guttural moans. I changed positions, releasing her legs so that I could bring my face closer to hers, changing my thrusts to more of an up-and-down instead of a forward-and-back motion. She shot her tongue into my mouth, grabbing my waist, the soft moans as exciting as the rising flush on her chest. I nuzzled her neck in much the same fashion I had on the boat deck. Meg’s eyes shot wide open and her little girl, “Ohhhhh...” became a very throaty, “OOOHHHHHHH!” She grabbed my hips, pulling me very tightly against her and I could feel her lower body begin to quiver. I went back at her neck, this time nipping lightly with my teeth before I pulled away. “NNNGGG!” Meg’s arms flopped onto the bed and her body bowed. I could feel her squeezing me before she collapsed with a loud huff, locking her arms around my back. My thrusts became a lot less gentle, and her soft moans were now grunts of unchained passion as she thrust her hips back at me.
“Oh... ohgod... ohgod, Meg... I’m... I’m...cummm-iinnnggghhh,” I panted, my orgasm approaching very quickly, almost taking me by surprise. She purred loudly in my ear, hanging onto my neck, her legs locked around my back, telling me what she wanted me to do. I vibrated inside her, feeling the searing sizzle of release, and Meg held onto me, squeaking, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” softly. I thrust at her, greedily urging the last bit of feeling through my body, and causing her to sigh loudly and grab me even more tightly. We finally separated with moans, feeling the sweat on our bodies begin to cool us. “Wow,” was all I could manage.
She rolled over on her side to face me, eyes sparkling in the dark, and stroked my chest idly. It had been good for her, too. “Mmmmm,” she began, purring some more, “that was—won-derful, Nate.” We kissed for a little while, and then she excused herself to go to the bathroom. I was sort of sleepy, but still very excited. Meg was a wonderful lover, and I didn’t want to fall asleep on her. I knew that there was more to come, quite literally. When she reappeared in my bedroom, she had a lit More between her fingers, and took that luxurious, elegant, drag, french-inhale, and exhale as she stood at the door. “Can I smoke in here, Nate?” I told her of course she could. “Well, I didn’t see any ashtrays in here, and I wasn’t sure so I thought I would ask.” She retrieved one of the guest ashtrays and set it on the nightstand. Another drag, and the french-inhale was visible in the room’s ambient light. I reached for her, any fatigue conquered by the spectacle she presented. “Why Nate!” she exclaimed. “Ready already? I haven’t finished my cigarette,” she coyly said. “Can you wait?” I couldn’t, but I did, and by the time she finished her last drag, I was hotter and harder than I’d ever been in my entire life.
The next morning, we kissed each other at the door. “Are you sure that you don’t want to stay for breakfast?” I asked, as she lingered. “I am a good cook.”
“I’ll bet,” she said with a smile and a small roll of her eyes. “If you’re half as good in the kitchen as you are in the bedroom…” Meg gave me a wink. “I may have to eat here more often.” She gave me a last peck on the cheek.
The following date, we wound up back at my house at eight—dinner was an abbreviated affair, both of us with more lust on our minds than hunger. After round one, Meg lit up, inspiring round two within a minute of her last french-inhale. She came much harder this time, and I had a brief moment where it was possible to think as I went to get some water. Did she have a smoking fetish—one that involved seduction? When I returned to the room, Meg did not have a cigarette going. She accepted the water, and managed to gasp after a series of draughts, “That was—amazing.” I gave her a wet kiss between my own deep gulps. It was hot in the bedroom, the sheets were damp and soaked where she had been at the end of some of my most frenzied thrusts in years, but I didn’t turn the ceiling fan on. After a fairly silent few minutes, she giggled, “I think I can finally have my after-sex cigarette now. I can hold it without shaking.” It was my turn for shaky hands as I handed her a More from her pack. She had to gently hold my hand steady enough so that I could light it for her. Ohhh… that slow french-inhale, the smoke wafting towards her nose, then disappearing into the nostrils. She raised her head slowly. Smoke began to come out of her mouth, a thick cone at first, followed by a millisecond pause before she expelled the remaining stream of smoke. A dreamy expression filled her face, and I was beginning to feel ready for round three. A silent exhale through perfectly rounded lips, always preceded by a deliberate, and very visible french-inhale. She delicately snuffed the More in the ashtray, and I kissed her immediately after her final exhale, tasting the smoke in her mouth. Meg gave a small, “MMMFFFF!” of surprise, but responded eagerly, and then we fell to the bed, still naked, still very much in lust.
As we lay panting and gasping for breath afterwards, Meg moaned, “I think I may have trouble walking tomorrow.” She made no move for her Mores, for which I was thankful. Without the added stimulus, fatigue sank in almost immediately. I was going to say something to her as an apology for falling asleep on her, but when I turned to look at her, her chest was rising and falling rhythmically, her eyes closed. I struggled, but got up out of bed and turned the ceiling fan on low before collapsing back onto the bed. Meg roused enough to find me, roll over on her side, and wrap her arm around me, giving a throaty little purr as she burrowed into the contour of my body. That was the last thing I remember from that night.
We spent the next morning together out and about. Meg accompanied me while I did some shopping. “Wow, you really do know how to cook, don’t you?” I told her yes while I was weeding through the fresh onions at the farmers market. “Will you invite me over for dinner one night?” her eyes twinkled.
“Tonight?” I asked, more than a hint of lewdness in my voice. I saw no need to be a perfect gentleman.
“Not tonight, Nate. I have other… obligations for this evening,” she said, somehow avoiding sounding mysterious as she spoke. “But next Saturday would be nice. I’ll even come over and help.” She gave me a peck on the cheek. “Although I’m definitely not as good in the kitchen as I am… elsewhere.” We went our separate ways after lunch, she to her evening obligations, and me to my home and wet dreams of my smoking goddess.
My dreams weren’t any less intense during the week in her absence, either. I had fallen for her in a big way; she was everything I wanted in terms of physical attraction. Her whimsical, yet precise nature also had beguiled me, although not as much as her eleven on a fetish scale of ten. I wondered how I could possibly bring up the subject of a more—formal relationship. Four dates into this, I just knew that I wanted to be with her. When my cell phone went off in the middle of the farmers market the following Saturday morning, I knew who it was. “Hi, Meg. How are you?” It didn’t bother me that she hadn’t called me all week, and she hadn’t answered my messages.
“Been busy, and I need some time off, Nate,” she sweetly said. “Can you help?”
“I’m sure I can do that. How does crab-stuffed salmon sound for dinner?”
“I’d love that. I won’t be able to come by until about six-ish, though,” she said. I thought I could hear a note of disappointment in her voice. “I still have some things to take care of from earlier this week.” That was fine with me. I was going to get to watch Meg smoke again. I got hard at the thought, but managed to regain enough sense to finish my shopping. When I got home, I started working on the rest of dinner; the stuffing had been sitting in the frig since Thursday night, and should have been very flavorful. I even spent some time on the presentation of the dish. Everything sat ready for Meg’s arrival.
At seven-thirty, she still had not arrived. I was worried; while she seemed to do the unexpected, she hadn’t ever stood me up. Granted, I had little experience with dating her, but she had always seemed trustworthy. There was a knock on my door an hour later. “Sorry,” Meg said breezing in, a little out of breath as she kissed me on the cheek. “I’ve ruined dinner, I know, but I couldn’t get away as quickly as I had hoped.” She took her jacket off, and I almost had a heart attack. She was in heels, wearing a very sexy black evening dress that stopped just below the knee, and had a very scooped back. She spun quickly, a model’s 360-degree turn. “Do you like it? I just bought it this week.”
“All you need is a cigarette holder and opera gloves,” I said before I could stop it. Damage control was limited to keeping my facial expression neutral, not giving away any of my fantasies.
Meg cocked her head, as if considering my remark. Finally, she said with a teasing grin, “You know, that might not be such a bad accessory for this ensemble.” She waved her hand, changing the mood almost instantly. “Any way, I’m afraid I’ve already had dinner tonight, but you must be starving.” I nodded. “Would you be too terribly offended if I didn’t eat with you? I’d like a glass of wine and a cigarette, though.” I was hungry enough that I didn’t pay much attention to Meg’s smoking. After I had eaten, Meg and I looked at each other, almost at a loss for words. “I’ve seen you briefly at work this week,” she finally began. “You looked busy, so I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“No... that’s fine,” I replied, feeling a little awkward. “You were right, I was busy. Your company is a large chunk of my income, and I appreciate your being—discreet. The last thing I want on my mind is you and—” I managed to cut myself off before I said something about the incredibly sensual way she smoked.
Her eyes twinkled with mischief. Again, she’d misunderstood, which suited me just fine. “Our liaisons of late?” she purred, stroking my leg. “I couldn’t get much done at work if I thought about them, Nate. I have to be discreet.” She narrowed her eyes and started looking at me purposefully. “At work.” Suddenly, we were kissing and I was walking her backwards to my bedroom and—
Aftermath. I’m lying on my back, my breathing having just returned to normal. Meg is not in the room at that moment. I’m thinking about how carnal our relationship is, and just how much of that is due to my fetish. I’d never met anybody as smoking sexy as she was. In fact, that tended to dominate my thought when I was with her. We hadn’t had many discussions that didn’t involve my erection. When would she realize that something—odd—was going on with me and her? There was a part of me that wanted to come clean, but the other part, the part that Meg appealed to, told it to shut up and beat it over the head with a two-by-four for good measure. She came back into the bedroom with her cigarettes. She pulled out one of the long, slim brown cigarettes and lit it as she plopped onto the bed next to me. There it was. That style. That look of supreme satisfaction. That grace. Before I knew it, ping!
This time, she noticed. “Ohhhh... Now I see. You like to watch me smoke.” Any protest I was going to make never made it to my vocal cords as Meg took another drag, slowly french-inhaled, and then leisurely turned her head before exhaling, giving me a profile view. I got a little harder. Kind of hard to deny it with the evidence sitting right there in front of her. Since I had no idea what Meg was thinking, I braced myself for the worst. Seemingly ignorant of my dilemma, she took another deliberate (as always) puff, then looked down at me with an odd expression. Meg reached for me with her free hand, gently wrapped it around the base of my very erect penis, and moved slowly to straddle me. As she settled down, she asked in a very throaty voice, “Hand me the ashtray.” Her next puff made me swell inside her beyond belief and she started to move tentatively, trying to keep her mind on the cigarette. She managed three more drags before we both climaxed. It had been short, but it was extremely intense. Somehow, fortunately for us and everybody else in the building, the half-smoked More had managed to wind up in the ashtray where it had stopped burning, as Mores tend to do, and not on the bed.
“I don’t think I wanna do that again,” Meg said, shakily. “I’m liable to burn the place down.”
“Good idea,” I panted. I was still having trouble getting my eyes to focus, and my legs were jelly. I couldn’t focus enough to try to think about much more than breathing. The room was silent except for the sounds of recovery.
Meg was the first to speak. “Nate,” she softly said, “I wasn’t imagining that smoking thing, was I?”
“No, Meg, you weren’t.” Damn. Still too orgasm-addled to think. The answer just came out.
“It was fantastic.” She rolled over; her eyes were half-lidded and full of that “just-fucked-senseless” aura. “Talk about your 180-degree changes...”
“Oh?” I said. If this was going where I thought it was going, I was going to die—in the middle of sex with a smoking goddess—but what a way to go! “What do you mean by that?”
“My ex-fiancé...” She cleared her throat. “Hated my smoking. Said it was ‘unattractive for somebody as beautiful as I was.’ The sex wasn’t that great, either. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get hot for somebody who makes you feel like he’s looking at you with disapproval? I had to make sure I brushed my teeth before, every time, and after-sex cigarettes were out; I had to stand outside if I wanted to smoke.”
Some things began to make sense to me. “How ‘ex’ is ex?”
“Officially? Tonight. That’s why I was so late,” Meg said, turning over to face me. “You know the night we first met?” I nodded. “That was the night after I’d made the decision, so I wasn’t wearing the ring. I decided that I had enough of the subtle guilt and not-so-subtle ostracization tactics. I was out with Heather, basically trying to convince myself that I’d made a mistake, that smoking wasn’t that big a deal. I didn’t buy any cigarettes before dinner. I suppose it was a Freudian pseudo-attempt to quit, but I wound up smoking a couple of hers.” She sat up, retrieved a fresh More and lit it, but I could tell she wasn’t thinking about sex... at least not yet.
“I tried to keep my distance from you, because I was really still sort of hoping that Barry and I could—make it. I thought you were cute, though, even if you were sort of shy. I just didn’t want to... lead you on. I wasn’t sure of my motivations at that point. Would it have been for revenge? Would it be just because I was horny? Was it for—I don’t know...” Meg’s voice trailed off and nothing happened for several seconds. Then she brought the still-long More to her lips. She dragged, making the tip glow orange in the dim light, before opening her mouth and letting the smoke rise into her nostrils. She turned her head for the exhale, sculpting her lips into a tiny “O”, through which she silently issued a thick cone that gave way to a steadier, thinner stream. It was, as usual, arousing, but Meg chose to continue talking, and I had a feeling that if I paid more attention to what she was saying than what she was doing, I’d get to watch what she was doing more often. “But we kept on running into each other, and it was such a nice change to have somebody light my cigarettes, and not give me looks of disapproval, and I could really enjoy a cigarette around you instead of having to hurry, or hide or, be by myself. I got very comfortable with you very quickly, or maybe I just realized how—uncomfortable I had been before. I decided that was important enough. Besides, I could tell that you thought I was attractive. It’s flattering, and a little—” Her eyes got that mischievous twinkle. “Exciting.” She took another puff, watching my reaction, very aware that she was causing it. “And that is just downright fun.” Conversation ended shortly thereafter.
“Are you mad at me for sort of... not telling you everything?” she asked the next afternoon. “I feel bad about it, but I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“Well, I was a little—disappointed last night when you didn’t show up for dinner,” I answered.
“I apologize for that. I feel so bad,” she said, hanging her head for a silent moment, before explaining, “I forgot that my ex had bought tickets for the Saturday matinée of ‘Beauty and The Beast.’” It was only the hottest show in town for a limited engagement. “We’d had them for a few months, right down in front. And he didn’t want to believe that it was over, and that’s why I was so late. I gave him the ring back a week ago, but we sort of sat and talked for a couple of hours over dinner. He kept frowning when I had a cigarette, and any thoughts I had of giving in disappeared.” Meg put her arm around me, giving me a hug. “Then I came to your place, and discovered that not only do you let me smoke, but it also has—beneficial side effects.” She grinned. “Selfishly speaking, of course.” She pulled away from me and lit a More, her eyes twinkling, and knowing that I was watching her enjoy her cigarette in her customary, incendiary fashion, and knowing what effect it had on me, with an expression in her eyes that said, “I’m getting ready, too.” Meg can be as selfish as her little heart desires when it comes to that.