Better With Smoke

PICTURE PERFECT, PART 21

So, it’s been a long time. Between a recent restructuring of my marriage that has resulted in an explosion of sexual activity, some additional writing duties (such as reviewing sex toys for Eden Fantasys and writing articles for EdenCafe), and various important personal and financial things to address in real life, I just haven’t been as able to write fiction.

But I’m back, and here we start pretty close to where we left off with the previous chapter. Chloe is back in action but also still working on repairing things with Leslie, and Leslie is slowly forming a life that exists in addition to her one with Chloe. Non-smokers beware! 😉 Oh, and a guest appearance by some characters you might not have expected to see again.

Click here to find the earlier installments, if you haven’t read them already, since failure to read those might make this story a bit confusing at first.
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Picture Perfect 21: Images of the Future

By Smokedawg

Still barely entering into wakefulness, Leslie’s face was buried deep in her pillows as she sensed a presence and then began to smell something. Coffee at first. Then the emergence of egg- and spice-related scents. Then the familiar fragrance of the scented oils Chloe had been using for a few years now. African musk today?

Her brain beginning to fire normally and curiosity priming her attention, Leslie emerged from the pillows, sheets and blanket to look at the unexpected sight of Chloe holding a tray with breakfast. Instinctively, Leslie sat up, and Chloe set the tray over her lap.

“Um,” was all Leslie could manage. Chloe was not the serving-breakfast-in-bed type.

“That’s all?” Chloe teased, pulling out a cigarette from a pack on the bedside table. “I’m not sure how often I’ll manage this level of considerate and above-and-beyond behavior in the morning, so you might want to enjoy it and give me a little more of a response.”

As smoke began to mix in with the smells of the coffee and food, Leslie smiled, finding it comforting rather than off-putting. Her fetish interlaced with even something so basic as breakfast.

“Why so romantic? Or sentimental. Or sensitive or whatever,” Leslie asked, lifting the cup of very hot coffee and sipping at it.

Chloe blew smoke toward her gently and smiled. “I still have a lot of making up to do to you. Eventually we’ll get back to something more like the old days; in the meantime, I have to go to some extra effort to show my love for a while.”

“So you cooked me breakfast in bed?” Leslie asked, a dubious note in her voice.

“Well, I had Gail and Joe cook it, actually, but I was very involved in the oversight of the process, I bought the stuff and I told them what to make. And I made the coffee myself, like I do most days, since you make it way too weak. I do have some kitchen skills, you know.”

Leslie chuckled at Chloe’s mostly amused but slightly wounded tone. “Of course you, do, babe,” She smiled vaguely and poked at the omelet on her plate curiously.

“Eggs are still OK, right?” Chloe said, a faint note of concern in her voice—in that, Leslie could sense how important it was for Chloe to mend their relationship. “I mean, I respect this crazy vegetarian thing you’re doing—even though I hope it’s just a phase—but you are still doing dairy and eggs, right?”

“Oh, yeah, Chloe,” Leslie said, touching her lover’s arm and stroking it, and then lifting to toward her to take a drag off Chloe’s Virginia Slim. As she exhaled, she added, “Hell, with all the smoking, even if I am protected from health problems thanks to the vita function from your camera, I figure I should have at least one healthy and environmentally aware lifestyle choice, and avoiding meat seemed the best choice. No, the stuff looks really tasty. Just still waking up, and finding my appetite and curious what veggies were in it…and…and just thinking, frankly.”

“About?”

“About us,” Leslie said, breathing deep to fill her lungs with the ambient smoke, waiting for Chloe to produce more tobacco-perfumed clouds. “About why you think you need to pamper me with breakfast in bed and so many other little things you’ve done lately. Not that I don’t like them, of course. But you don’t have to try so hard, Chloe. I know you love me.”

“It’s not enough for you to just know it,” Chloe said, leaning over the tray and kissing Leslie firmly and slowly. “I’ve done enough of taking that knowledge for granted. You need to see it. It’s time for me to show. I may be queen of this roost, but you’ve never been a vassal, and I need to let you know that I really know that you’re special to me and don’t just say it.”

Leslie smiled, and began to eat, and Chloe wove smoke through the spaces around and between them to feed their shared fetish, as Leslie filled her belly.

* * *

“It’s intolerable, really,” Hannah huffed, fondling her smart phone absently in her lap, and the device throbbing and almost purring with the mild but intimate contact. “We are shackled and fettered. We can barely take the edge off our hungers and we should be feasting on decadence and cruelty and dark pleasures.”

“Dangerous to complain,” Holly noted, holding her own phone to her breast, where it hummed and pulsed and caused her nipples let out tiny trickles of fluid like bittersweet breastmilk to lightly stain her shirt. “We never know when the good doctor might be listening.”

“Oh, let’s not be that paranoid, sister,” Henry chided, then sighed a little as his own phone, in his pocket, sent lovely tingling pinprick sensations to his cock and balls. “That’s why we came out this far. He doesn’t need us right now for any tasks, and so we go far to bitch and moan. We’re far enough out of his reach, though, that we should be spending our time finding playmates to tease and torment and damage. So that we have time for the miasma of sin to waft off of us and leave us seeming clean to the doctor.”

“He knows what we do; he simply ignores it for now,” Hannah pointed out. “Once he has achieved his goals, or enough of them at least, he will neuter us fully and put an end to our enjoyments.”

She took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse and looked at them longingly. The doctor had made changes to them so that smoking, drinking alcohol, taking hard drugs, and consuming soft drinks and junk foods would leave them feeling violently ill, and she hated him for those changes—longed for the moment when they might be reversed. She despised him for the way she, Henry and Holly suffered the agony of wondering what other changes and chains he would impose on them.

“We are creatures of hungers,” she continued. “We are Cerberus. We are Hydra. We are the Sirens. Born anew in three bodies. Pieces of them, at least. We must be freed.”

“The Hydra and Cerberus were guards, Hannah. One to keep the Underworld clear of the living and the other to keep people away from the Golden Fleece. They had no freedoms either,” Henry pointed out.

“True, but they could have been let loose, and perhaps they were free once before those duties, and think what they would have been if they were free. Cerberus would have sniffed out every bitch-in-heat hellhound and fucked them while nipping at their skin with all three heads. Hydra would have bit victims just enough to paralyze them with venom and then severed her own heads to regrow a multitude of them and tickle and taste the skin of the helpless victim with dozens of tongues before devouring him. And the Sirens, luring people to their doom, as we can with a simple phone call and our honeyed voices and combined lusts.”

“Pointless to dream, sister,” Holly said. “We bound ourselves to him because he could give us our freedom and return our precious phones to us. He chained us to him as the price of that.” Her eyes flicked to the pack of cigarettes in her sister’s hands and felt her own pang of regret that they could no longer enjoy pot, or cocaine, or meth or any of a multitude of other wicked vices.

Hannah stood up, snorting her derision and spitting on the ground, asserting her role as the most dominant of the triplets. “That is not how we behave! That is not our way! We will not surrender. It is a pity that we had to serve the doctor in abducting Chloe. Our playtime with her before delivering her might have set the stage for our freedom; we set hooks in her and might have been able to use her somehow to free us later. Her love of vice could have served us well. But her bitch-lover freed her, and now Chloe is an enemy who hates us. Now that we have assaulted her, we cannot make her an ally. But there are others.”

“Dangerous talk, Hannah,” Henry said. “Dangerous game to plot again the man who has taken such pains to prevent us acting against him.”

“He is careless at times, and doesn’t think things through,” Holly noted. “He prevents us from acting against him, but that doesn’t mean we cannot act in our own interests to protect ourselves.”

“Exactly,” Hannah said, stuffing the cigarettes back into her purse before she could be tempted to light one, knowing that the first initial rushes of pleasure would be followed by an hour or more of nauseated sensations. “We will go to the doctor now. I have questions.”

“Are you insane? Are you going to provoke him?” Holly said. “We must be careful.”

“There is something we must know. We have to know if he has any conception of what he can become,” Hannah said. “You two will work with me and not hinder me. We go to him now.”

Her brother and sister simply nodded, and each began to access menus on their phones. Within a short span of minutes, they were in the doctor’s office, hearing the clicking of keyboard keys as staff members did the work of his healthy lifestyle campaigns, most importantly his flagship Live Life Well program and the newer Clear the Air program. They went to the office of their master and Hannah knocked politely.

“Come in,” he said, and they entered.

“If I may, I would like to ask you a few questions about the cause we serve and the goals you have,” Hannah said politely. “Would that be all right?”

The man whom Chloe had dubbed Dr. iPad nodded.

“Doctor,” she continued, “I know that Chloe is your primary opponent right now, and I know that you are making smoking a special focus. But what happens when you have vanquished her and that habit? What next?”

“I don’t know what the next target will be, but it will be one of the other many goals of my Live Life Well campaign, of course,” he answered. “I will wipe out unhealthy behaviors one by one until people live as they should, both physically and morally.”

His eyes lingered on the three of them, and Hannah in particular, as he spoke the last word, and let it hang in the air for a while.

“Understood,” Hannah said sweetly, “but something confuses me. Once you’ve cleaned up the world of all these bad habits, what then? Will your healthy living campaign have any meaning? Aren’t you worried that without a Chloe or someone like her, there won’t be a point? Good has no meaning without evil, and so what meaning or power will health have if there is not sickness? More to the point, do we want a planet of billions living forever?”

“No one will live forever,” the doctor said in a voice he might have used with a four-year-old. “Except perhaps myself. It is the nature of bodies to wear down. There is a need for bacteria and viruses and such to survive for the greater natural order. But I will eliminate unnatural behaviors and thus some of the diseases that nave no place in the circle of life, like many cancers. Cancers, like Chloe, are not necessary. They are a sign of things gone mad and cells gone wrong. In fact, there are parts of the world I may need to cull millions of the weakest and most worthless humans for the greater good, but that is a more long-term goal.”

Hannah smiled. “I understand. Thank you for clearing that up. I was a bit worried about a world of immortality and it’s comforting to know that you are refining human nature rather than rewriting nature itself. But once you have everyone behaving as you like, I worry that you may become bored.”

“No, you worry about the day that I will eradicate the hungers of you three triplets. You wonder how much longer those hungers will be needed in my mission. I can tell you that you will be relieved of those vile desires that drive you soon. Years from now, but still far sooner than you’d like. You will thank me for it in the end, though.”

I will thank you for nothing but freeing us from that psychiatric institution and getting our phones back to us, Hannah thought acidly, though her eyes betrayed none of her anger toward him.

“Yes, I expected that would be your intent but I do wonder what you’ll do to occupy your time once everyone is behaving properly,” she said instead. “I do believe you’ll be bored.”

“Ridding people of unhealthy habits overall is the primary thing the world needs, but there will be plenty of flaws in individuals. Plenty of hundreds, and thousands—even millions—of people to change as I refine humans into something more ideal.”

“One at a time,” Hannah said with a mild smile. “That would keep you interested and occupied. Endless special projects, every one of them a work of art.”

“Your feigned interest in my well-being is wasting my time, Hannah. You and your siblings should leave me be and enjoy your time off. Just don’t try slaking your appetites; I’ll know. You do that at my behest only. Goodbye.”

Hannah quietly led her brother and sister out of the office and once they were transported again to the seacoast cliff where they had been before, Hannah broke out laughing. She motioned her siblings to get on their phones so that the three of them could speak with total privacy.

“He’s going to continue to rely on his campaigns and his ability to manipulate politicians and business leaders to enforce healthy and moral behaviors. He still thinks in terms of manipulating and twisting people one at a time and enjoying the prospect of continuing to do so for centuries if he can,” Hannah said in a rush. “Do you know what this means? Do you understand the implications?”

“Although he won’t admit it to himself, he’s as self-indulgent as we are and glories just as much in deviant and cruel behavior,” Holly answered, “except that he has the addition of megalomania on top of that to make his personality way more heinous to everyone else than ours.”

Hannah frowned. “Please don’t tell me that you’re as short-sighted as the doctor is. I will assume that your inability to properly satisfy your hungers is to blame and we will correct that soon and cover our tracks so that the good doctor doesn’t sense it. Henry?”

“The implications are that he doesn’t understand his potential for power. Unlike Chloe, he has no idea how to truly feed his power—a kind of power that we don’t have access to and never will. Chloe comprehends and makes her plans accordingly. He thinks he is plotting in a similar and effective way as her but really, he’s not seeing the bigger picture.”

“Exactly,” Hannah said. “It’s a pity that we let our hungers blind us before and failed to see how much the doctor’s power could be lorded over us even in his ignorance. We’ve alienated Chloe by helping to capture her before and using her so hard for our own enjoyments, and she is best positioned to free us.”

“So what do we do?” Holly asked. “Can we apologize to her somehow? I don’t think so.”

“We find another with potential for such power. We find another fledgling and negotiate for help,” Hannah responded. “We will find someone who is at the doctor’s level or at least in the neighborhood of it, but whose morals are more flexible.”

“And with Chloe out of the running for us, who might that be?” Henry asked rhetorically.

Hannah smiled broadly and he realized she had an answer—or the beginnings of one. It was something he hadn’t expected.

“Why, we find the individual who helped Leslie get past the good doctor’s defenses to save Chloe, of course.”

* * *

One of the most conservative and connected members of the U.S. Senate was at Chloe’s feet in his office in Washington, D.C. The door was locked and smoke filled the air. She’d let him deal with figuring out how to explain the presence of cigarette smoke in a non-smoking facility, assuming of course anyone among his staff had the balls to challenge him about it and risk their jobs in doing so.

It gave her intense pleasure to have a man who so arrogantly trumpeted family values and tried to force-feed Christian morality through legislation to grovel at her feet. She had enough information on him to know just how hypocritical he was about sex when it came to his own secret trysts, and enough suspicions about other things he probably did, to despise him immensely.

She blew her smoke down upon on his head and pushed her toes into his mouth, forcing him to the floor and demanding in a harsh whisper that he suck them hard and make her happy or suffer the loss of her attentions. As she took a deep drag on her More to cover him in her sacred smoke once more, she considered her options. He was her devoted slave now. She could make him do anything but it wouldn’t be smart to have him abandon all of those prudishly moralistic standards he upheld. That would be too suspicious and draw attention to him and perhaps to her. Besides, it wasn’t like the Republican Party was going to be able to stop people from being sexual no matter how hard they tried. Might be good to soften his stance on birth control a bit, though, she considered.

What was of most importance to her, though, was attacking tobacco-related laws and policies, she reminded herself as she filled her chest with the comfort of a sweetly burned tobacco product. For all their talk of less government and lower taxes, she’d yet to see any conservative politician push back against tobacco legislation. They knew people would continue to pay higher taxes on their smokes and find places to smoke no matter how much their freedoms were restricted, and didn’t care if they screwed them over as long as the rich could get richer and corporations could get more breaks. It was just a different form of screwing-over than the health fascists were giving out, but the smokers got screwed over all the same.

That’s intolerable, Chloe fumed silently. Intolerable for what I want, intolerable for my smokers, intolerable for my plans.

The old, bitter man suckled sloppily at her toes and pulled her foot as deeply into his mouth as he could. He bathed her feet and swallowed back his own spit and drooled a little as he also breathed her in and accepted the smoke that was hers and hers alone. His mind a fog of desire, subservience and devotion. From time to time, she would withdraw her foot slightly, tap off her lengthening ash so that it dropped to the top of her foot or her toes, and let him consume it.

He did so gratefully, and made himself more her creature.

She didn’t speak to him. She had spoken enough earlier when she had cemented her control and built her walls around his will after the days and weeks of foundation-building. He knew his place; all of this was just symbolic to reinforce her dominance and satisfy her own desires.

When she was almost done with the cigarette, she pulled her foot out of his mouth, ordered him to open wide, and put the butt out on his dripping and frothy tongue. She dropped the spent cig into his mouth and made him swallow it. The smoke in the air would remain as evidence of the vices that had taken place here, but nothing else would.

“I will send one of my representatives to you, senator,” Chloe said. “You will know that person to be one of mine, because you will feel my power on her—or him. That person you will obey and, if necessary, grovel before as if it were me.”

She left his office looking every bit the professional again, if a professional with some modestly Goth leanings in her makeup and choice of colors, and headed for her next target on the other side of the political aisle.

She lefts hint of smoke in the air in her wake—her primary perfume of choice—and let some of the energies from her encounter with the senator infuse those wispy traces of vice, wondering what things might be sparked slowly and over a long time in the people who breathed that into their lungs. What deviant and wonderful flowers might grow from such tiny seeds over time.

The walk to her next quarry was relatively short. He was from the Democratic Party and a member of the House of Representatives instead of a Republican in the Senate, but one with a ton of connections and who was unlikely to be voted out of office for a while. Also, he had influence on the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the House. Moreover, he was a powerful voice in terms of healthcare policies, and she needed him to start defusing some of the more specious claims of the research tying smoking, particularly second-hand smoke, to so much of the ill health in the nation and the world—labeling it as the primary cause of diseases in which it played only a part and downplaying the other causes. She’d move him more toward nutrition and other health issues, and get him to begin undermining the junk science against smoking, as well as reducing the impact of the more legitimate science against it.

I don’t need to lie to people, but it is time to reduce the power of the propaganda used against smokers,  she thought as she approached his office for their appointment.

Once they were alone, she kept to her normal talking points for her smokers’ rights campaign and kept it businesslike. This was their first face-to-face meeting, following several phone calls and e-mails, so she wanted to tread somewhat slowly. Better to make the more extreme changes with the camera over a few days before she left the nation’s capital to go back home, and just get the basic groundwork laid today.

So, she cajoled and complimented him. She charmed and she joked. She put him at ease over a span of about 20 minutes, and then decided that since they were at the halfway point for her allotted time to meet with him, it was time to pick up the pace a bit and sow her first seeds of control.

Chloe surreptitiously hit the “send” button on the screen of her smart phone to transmit her text message to Zeke, who helpfully punched a few buttons on his computer hundreds of miles away and put his magical server to work. Within moments, the politician had an important phone call that called him out of his office briefly. That gave Chloe the time to pull out everything she needed. Her cigarillo was poised and a cigar lighter was ready, along with an ashtray. She’d be a bit merciful with this politician—he might be a bit of an ass with regard to supporting anti-smoking policies, but she agreed with most of his other positions, so she’d spare him the human ashtray treatment and completely debasement like the senator had received.

When the man returned to the office, apologizing for the interruption, he didn’t notice the ashtray  at first, nor the cigarillo, as Chloe was turned away from him slightly. As he shut the door and made his way to his desk chair, he heard the click of a lighter and realized what she was doing.

“Ms. Savoy, you can’t smoke in here,” he said politely but sternly.

She puffed the cigarillo to a fierce heat, and turned to him with a look as if she didn’t understand, and blew out a plume of sweet, thick smoke. “Of course I can,” she said.

“No, I’m afraid this is a non-smoking building, Chloe,” he answered, looking around almost frantically for something she could put the cigarillo out in and then reaching for a glass on a side table, getting ready to fill it with water from a nearby pitcher.

The streamers of smoke had slowly begun to spread, and his nostrils flared. His face registered slight disgust though his eyes registered something that seemed more perplexed.

As he paused, Chloe took a deep pull on the cigarillo and blew more smoke in his direction. “Why wouldn’t I be able to smoke?” she asked sweetly, as if genuinely curious and taken aback.

It took the politician a moment to respond, and he took slow breaths and set down the glass. “Why wouldn’t you be able to smoke? Why…”

The words from his mouth sounded almost like the beginning of a lecture but also like a reflection of his own inquisitiveness. Chloe had known it would happen like that. Her smoke carried a power of its own now as it invaded people’s bodies. It gave her some small measure of influence over them. Enough to spur small desires, confuse them or prepare them to be receptive.  Nothing lasting, but it made it easier to work her way to permanent changes. In this case, it would plant the seeds for confusion and let her take some photos without having to go through convoluted schemes to make the photography seem natural.

She sauntered up to him, blew smoke at his tie, and smiled. “You were a good friend of President Clinton’s, weren’t you?” she asked in a sexy half-drawl. “I seem to recall he liked cigars—and sliding them into the vagina of a certain eager intern—though they were bigger than my little ‘ol cigarillo here.”

The U.S. Representative seemed stunned and dazed, like a deer caught in the headlights, and she kissed him lightly on one cheek, pausing just a little to exhale a bit of smoke and let him smell the lingering perfume of it on her skin and clothing. His breathing had become deeper and there was no longer disgust in his eyes. Only a mix of confusion and longing.

As she pulled away, she took out the camera, cigarillo still poised between her fingers, and said, “Say ‘nicotine,’ sir,” Chloe said teasingly, and he smiled awkwardly, wondering why she was taking a picture but finding it difficult to form a coherent thought, much less a sentence right now. He realized with embarrassment that he had a slight erection and was about to apologize when he felt a sudden overwhelming feeling come over him in the wake of the photo Chloe had taken.

He was suddenly seized with a revelation of how much he respected her decision to smoke—to stand up to society’s restrictions. How inspiring she was even as she engaged in an activity that wasn’t healthy. His respect for her sharpened as she took a long drag on the cigarillo and then exhaled the smoke in a stream almost straight upward into the air, her lips pursed and head tilted in a sexily impertinent manner.

“Is there are reason I can’t smoke?” she asked simply.

“I don’t know that I can think of a single good reason why you shouldn’t,” he responded without rancor and with just a trace of remorse, “except for the law.”

“Laws are often wrongheaded sometimes—or even abusive,” Chloe answered, sucking slowly on the cigarillo and releasing smoke again. He watched it almost dreamily as it wove through the atmosphere of his office.

“I have plenty of voters who aren’t smokers, Ms. Savoy, and they have rights, too.”

“That they do,” she admitted, holding his gaze and smoking taking short, strong, slow puffs on her cigarillo as she spoke. “But when did they get so many more rights? Look at what’s happened. Bans on cigarette ads. Then banning smoking in restaurants. Banning them in bars of all the fucking idiotic places to ban a vice. Now bans going up for large public spaces outdoors. At some companies, you can’t smoke in your own car in the parking lot. How long before a person won’t be allowed to smoke in any apartments, despite paying rent? How long before people with kids are banned from smoking at all, even if they keep the smoke away from their kids? How long before people are denied health insurance or Medicare benefits for being smokers? The non-smokers make the smokers feel awful about themselves to shame many of them into quitting, and they peel away one freedom of adult choice after another.”

“It does seem a bit unbalanced, doesn’t it?” he admitted, nodding.

“It’s time to balance them again. And I mean truly balance the scales. I can get behind restaurants being non-smoking for the most part, but there need to be exemptions for those that are willing to have a separate rooms and air filtration system. Things like that. And outdoors? Please! If people are going to argue it’s about litter, then let’s make sure there are plenty of receptacles for cigarette and cigar butts in smoker-friendly zones. Make atrocious fines for tossing a butt on the ground. But banning smoking? That’s ridiculous. Would you sanction the banning of some kind of consensual sex act just because you didn’t like it or thought it was dirty?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t,” he answered, breathing her smoke. She took another picture of him, and he realized he very much liked the smell of that smoke. He felt stirrings of curiosity, and something else…arousal?

Chloe put out the cigarillo, and touched him lightly on the arm. “Let’s talk a bit longer, open the window and let the air clear a bit so that more judgmental and ignorant people won’t be asking you all sort of uncomfortable questions. And then let’s start planning for ways that such questions won’t need to be asked at all of people like us.”

* * *

Chloe looked at Joe sternly, and then gave Gail the very same look. She looked away from both of them suddenly, and smoked furiously. She aimed all of her exhales away from them, and denied them their own desire to smoke along with her. She used her power to keep the smoke around them and near them, but let only the barest wisps reach them. She left them desperate for the benediction of her smoky breath. When she finished her cigarette, she looked at them again, ignoring Leslie’s silent plea—through her own eyes—to show them a bit more solicitude.

“Are you mine,” Chloe asked with a cruel and sardonic edge to her voice, “or are you your own?”

“Yours, always,” Joe said with an almost panicky undertone to his words.

Not a heartbeat later, Gail added, “We belong to you, Chloe. You’re our mistress forever.”

“If I continue to have you,” Chloe said. There was confusion mixed in with her anger now. “This is a terrible breach of conduct. Planning behind my back. Plotting independently.”

“What have we done that isn’t in your service? What have we done that harms you?” Gail asked.

Chloe stood up, taking her pack with her to the window, and lighting up again. She looked at them only as reflections in the glass pane. “You are setting into motion plans that could call attention to me from my biggest enemy!”

“Are you afraid of the doctor?” Joe asked.

“How dare you!” Chloe said, spinning toward him and pinning him with a stare.

“It isn’t an accusation. It’s not even an opinion,” Joe answered quietly, his voice almost a whisper. He looked ready to whimper and crawl away, perhaps to wither and die somewhere. Chloe felt a pang of remorse, then clamped down on it.

Before Chloe could say anything, Gail cut in gently: “He is your enemy. If you are concerned he can harm you, then we’ll stop what we’re doing. We haven’t done anything to draw his attention to you, really; we’ve only begun the foundation of giving you a chance to infiltrate his operations.”

“Mistress,” Joe said, “we serve you. We wouldn’t do any of this if we didn’t. But we’re not mindless drones. You have plenty of people who serve you without question. You say that those of us who lived in this house with you during all your years of planning are your special minions—you say we are the ones who help you by not simply only saying ‘yes’ to you.”

Chloe waved him to silence, then glared at Gail in a way that told her to shut up as well.

She smoked, and paced the room, and motioned Leslie to come to her.

“Baby, what am I going to do with them?” Chloe asked. “This is…”

“This is necessary. Listen to them,” Leslie said gently. “They’re right. They’re useless to you if they don’t have some autonomy and you’d be stupid to have them helping you in your work if you don’t trust that they will do right by you and that you can fix things if they misstep. But I don’t know that they have done anything wrong. Listen.”

Chloe shook her head, but it was hard for Leslie to tell if it was because of resistance to the idea or confusion and acceptance. Leslie touched her lover’s arm, leaned in close, and kissed her fragrant mouth gently. Since Chloe had no response yet, she continued. “Chloe, Dr. iPad shook you bad,” she said in a whisper for Chloe’s ears alone. “You’ve bounced back pretty well, but you’re still acting like a wounded animal sometimes. You’re willing to bite him if he comes at you, but you won’t admit that you need to hunt him down. You’re not as vulnerable as you fear, and you need to find out if this is the start of fighting back with more than just mind-controlled politicians and smoker’s rights slogans.”

She didn’t answer Leslie, but Chloe put one hand behind her lover’s head and pulled her close, touched their foreheads together, and smoked slowly, fiercely, quietly. Their breathing was as one, and Leslie took in her smoke, said nothing more, and felt the way the fingers at the back of her skull quivered a little. When the cigarette was done, Chloe sighed as she made her final exhale, released Leslie from the embrace, and turned back toward her frightened charges.

“What do you have to say for yourselves?” she asked the pair.

“Only that we are working in your interests, Mistress,” Gail began.

“And that if you have to release us to suffer life without you, we will accept that, whatever the cost to us,” Joe finished.

“Fuck,” Chloe muttered. “I’ve put too much work into the both of you to just toss you out. Tell me why you think it’s a good idea to go on the offensive now.”

Hope glimmered in the eyes of both her minions, and Joe nodded to Gail, saying, “It’s mostly your plan. I just put on the spit and polish.”

“Before you start, Gail, get a cigarette. You, too, Joe,” Leslie cut in. “You both look ready to jump out of your skins right now, and Chloe needs you to make sense and be calm.”

They both looked to Chloe for confirmation, and with her nod of approval, they both lit up. After a few puffs, Gail put her cigarette in a nearby ashtray, and leaned forward toward Chloe.

“The problem is that when you’re not making forward progress on your campaigns, you’re doing damage control or reacting to that sonofabitch,” Gail said. “He hasn’t been able to take you down or really even reverse your gains, but he’s slowing your progress down. And given enough time, he’ll begin to whittle away at everything you’ve worked for.”

“Tell me exactly what you’ve done and why—especially since I know you’ve moved at least one of my workers in the Share the Air campaign to Dr. iPad’s programs while I was out in D.C.,” Chloe said, her voice slowly gaining an irritated tone the closer she got to spitting out those last few words.

Gail flushed in a combination of anxiety and shame, and Joe swallowed hard; they both knew this was going to be an uphill battle but also knew they couldn’t have told Chloe before this stage in their plans or she might have made them call it all off.

“We didn’t give him anyone we needed,” Joe pointed out, pulling slowly on his cigarette as he considered his next words. “In fact, we didn’t send him to Dr. iPad directly. He and a few other workers who weren’t actually bound to you through the camera were told of opportunities at the Live Life Well and Clear the Air campaigns Dr. iPad operates. It’s just that Dennis Morgan was the one least committed to working for us and took the bait first.”

“I put you two in charge of leading Share the Air, for strategy and staffing,” Chloe said through a slow-drifting dense ovoid of white smoke. “I want seats in my cubicles and offices filled, not emptied.”

“Our plan is multi-layered,” Gail said quickly, breathing out her own thick tobacco-born cloud. “We wanted to see if we could get people into Dr. iPad’s operation subtly, so that we could move on to plans to place people we can use in his operations and get intelligence or sabotage things if that became necessary.”

“You gave him someone with inside information on us,” Chloe noted.

“Actually, no. The very people we had identified know barely anything more about our operations than a good investigative reporter could already figure out,” Gail responded. “And what we did to lure them toward Dr. iPad was to set up a fake LinkedIn account. The ‘person’ attached to that account has no connection with you or Share the Air. Just a random communications and marketing consultant making connections with other people—hundreds of other people. Among those connections on LinkedIn were Dennis and two other Share the Air workers. Our fake person, ‘Alan,’ has connections with all sorts of people, not only in your group and Dr. iPad’s but lots of other companies and organizations.”

“Even if he were able to figure out that ‘Alan’ is a fake person,” Joe added, “which is pretty unlikely the way we’ve done things, there’s no reason to investigate that LinkedIn account at all, since Dennis isn’t likely to have dropped the name of a guy who passed along one of hundreds of job leads that ‘Alan’ doled out while networking with people. We may never need to use ‘Alan’ again, in fact, now that he’s served the purpose of naturally leading someone to Dr. iPad from our side, but we’ll keep the LinkedIn account active just in case.”

“Still, someone from my group going straight to one of Dr. iPad’s is going to be seen as suspicious. The doctor will assume we’re trying to infiltrate him, will see this as an attack, and may retaliate against me—against us,” Chloe challenged them.

“That’s the beauty of it all,” Gail said, actually beaming a little. She was still worried about Chloe’s ultimate reaction, but she was warming up to telling their mistress about the plans as she smoked quickly in between her statements. “You don’t exert a direct influence on all of your workers. We screen all of them through Zeke, so that we can figure out which candidates have actually been compromised by Dr. iPad before we hire them, so there’s no reason for you to waste time catching everyone with the camera. Dennis hasn’t had any taste of your magic. Dr. iPad will suspect he’s a plant by us in his group, and he’ll drive himself crazy trying to figure out where the trick or trap is, but he’ll never find one because there isn’t any.”

“He’ll be so focused on trying to milk Dennis for whatever inside info that he has, and so focused on him as a possible Trojan Horse, that it will make it that much easier to slip people past him in the near future, if you agree to that, Mistress,” Joe offered.

Chloe let out a slow stream of smoke, stood up, and wandered back to the window again. Framed by the sunlight from without and the mixed light and shadows within the room, the smoke swirled around her as both a highlight to her form and a cloak for her expressions. Swirls of white and gray like ethereal adornments, enhancing her beauty visually even as they scented the air and reaffirmed the woman’s power with every breath her minions took.

She finished the cigarette and started another, standing pensive and quiet by the window. Leslie, smoking an Eve, gave both Joe and Gail some encouraging and comforting looks, and quietly bade them with hand motions to stay seated and quiet. She could almost feel the metaphorical gears turning in Chloe’s mind, and wondered how closely her lover’s thoughts and concerns mirrored her own.

As Chloe made to return to the pair of minions, she paused near Leslie, kissed her slowly with a mouth filled with smoke, and then licked her throat. “Lezzie Les, it just get more complicated every day, doesn’t it?” she whispered, then smiled and received a smoky kiss in return from her bespectacled lover.

Then Chloe sat back down, and faced Joe and Gail.

“I am concerned at the level of detail and even deceptive actions—or at least sneaky ones—you pulled off. Even in service to me, I don’t like being blindsided. I will forgive this time. Don’t let there be another. If you feel I can’t see one of your future plans with an objective eye, then bring it to Leslie and tell her. I trust her to know what to keep from me; you two don’t get that option—ever. Do we understand each other?”

Both minions nodded and said “Yes.”

“Be totally honest: Which one of you is the source of all this?” Chloe asked.

“I came up with the original plan, and recruited Joe to be on board with me,” Gail admitted. “He came up with great ideas, but I started it all.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted you to know I could think on my own. Both of us, since Joe and I are primary lovers, but mostly me. I wanted you to know that even though I serve you with total love and without question, I don’t want to be another face in the crowd. Leslie will always be your primary, and should be. But I want to stand out from the other minions. We may all be close to you, but I want to be closer than most.”

“Breaking trust with me isn’t the best way to do that.”

“You’re right that I should go to Leslie in the future, and now that I know you give her the latitude you just said you do, I will—and gratefully. But I didn’t know that she wouldn’t just take my plans straight to you, before we could show you some good results, and I wanted you to know that I’m good for more than just being your voice at the Share the Air offices. I want to help you in ways that no one else can. We brought this to you, Mistress, of our own free will. Neither Joe nor I waited for you to find out and confront us. We started the process, in a way that wouldn’t likely come back to bite you, and we told you everything. Your trust wasn’t broken; it’s your trust that we want—both in knowledge of our loyalty and trust in our judgment, discretion and intelligence.”

Chloe looked to Joe, who merely said, “That’s it in a nutshell.”

“If I were to give you the go-ahead to continue, what would you do or suggest that we do together?” Chloe asked solemnly.

“At some point, send in someone as an actual mole, but someone we’ve simply hired for the task,  not someone who already works for us or is touched by your magic,” Joe answered. “Maybe two or three somebodies like that. We’d do that in part to get information from inside his operation, but also so that Zeke could tag and track them. See what Dr. iPad does to people he has no reason to suspect; see if he routinely controls everyone in his office with his magic or not. That kind of thing. That would be step two.”

“What’s phase three, then?” Chloe prodded.

“We send in someone who you have touched with magic lightly and who knows you have some sort of influence over them but who isn’t devoted to you fully,” Gail answered. “Maybe a pair of such people spread out over a short period of time, so we can see if he seems able to sense people you’ve influenced automatically or not. Without Zeke, you wouldn’t be able to know who Dr. iPad’s reached into unless perhaps you tried to influence the person and found your power was being blocked or diluted or the person was going crazy from dueling influences.”

“I’m guessing there’s a next step after that?”

“Yes,” Gail continued. “If he uses his magic on that person or people, we try to monitor the effects through Zeke and find out more about what happens to people touched by both of you. If he hasn’t tried to influence those people you’ve used magic on to lightly control, we make sure he finds out about one or both of them and then see what happens when he does try to take control from you or blunt your control.”

“You’re suggesting we sacrifice one or two people knowingly,” Chloe said. “Toss them to the wolf.”

“Yes,” Gail said without hesitation, and Joe nodded.

“I approve. More ruthless than I gave either of you credit for, but I’m glad to know you’ll do truly dirty deeds on my behalf when needed. Is there more?”

“In our current framework, there is just one final phase after that,” Joe responded. “Once we have a better handle on how much he can control someone under your influence who knows you’re their mistress but isn’t fully devoted, we prepare one or two people who you’ve used magic on in a way to ensure they will report back to us, without really knowing they’re doing it, and without openly knowing you have control over them.”

Chloe considered for a few moments, smoking slowly and now, they realized, almost sultrily. The prospects were intriguing her—flames were beginning to be stoked in their smoky mistress. She passed by the rear of the couch on which they sat, and stroked each of their heads as she passed, smoke trailing and weaving around them as she did. They sighed, and she noted how they pushed closer to each other and how their hands now interlaced with each other.

“As we advance in stages, it may become clear to Dr. iPad that we’re moving on him,” Chloe pointed out, remaining behind them and ticking and stroking them lightly as they began to become not just calmer but more quietly aroused. Where their thighs touched, she could see Joe and Gail moving their legs against one another subtly, the smoke weaving its fetish-laden power over them.

“That’s true,” Gail admitted in a distracted voice, trying to keep her thoughts focused to answer her mistress, even as she succumbed to smoke and desire. “But he’s already moving against us and will keep doing it. We need to be on the offensive now, even if not full force or full time. This guy is relentless, and ruthless, but he also sucks at strategy. Everything he does to you is blunt force and with almost no finesse. Time for us to take advantage of that personality flaw, before he either develops a strategic streak or brings in an ally or servant who is more strategic.”

“Agreed,” Chloe said, leaning across the back of the sofa and between them to lick at Joe’s ear and then Gail’s neck, exhaling smoke as she did. “Now, let me work on some of your tragic flaws—or rather your sexual weaknesses—to make me happier and you as well after all this unpleasantness we’ve had to endure today.”

* * *

Gwen reached into the bowl of popcorn Leslie had in her lap, and Leslie felt a tiny twinge of light desire not only at the notion of Gwen’s finger between her legs—no matter how innocently—but also at the mild sheen of greasy butter on her friend’s fingers. At the delicate way she put the popcorn into her mouth and then licked and sucked lightly at her fingertips to remove the salt and butter from them.

Leslie thought about how much she’d like to feel those lips on her own fingertips. Or nipples. Or mouth. And elsewhere. But too soon for that. Her seductions of Gwen were toward smoking, and seeing if she could lure the woman to take up the habit willingly and happily. That took too much of her attention right now to even figure out how best to woo the woman into bed with her. Time for that later; this was enough to pleasantly distract her from the recent, though blessedly brief, tensions between Chloe, Gail and Joe.

To the best of Leslie’s knowledge, Gwen hadn’t smoked since their lunch together a couple weeks earlier, when the woman had taken her first small tastes of smoke and found them intriguing at least, and perhaps even enticing.

Today, watching a movie, Leslie hoped to spark the interest again. She’d picked a movie she knew would be only mildly engaging at best, and hadn’t smoked at all in the 40 minutes she’d been in Gwen’s apartment so far. But the pack of Eves sat there on the coffee table in plain sight, along with a lighter. Leslie knew that her failure to light up could only call attention to her lack of smoking, and her lack of smoking could only draw attention to the as-yet-untouched pack.

Awareness might breed remembrance; and remembrance breed desire. Or so Leslie hoped, as she grabbed several kernels of buttered popcorn herself to drop into her mouth.

They continued to make fun of the movie when it slipped into ridiculousness, and they snacked and chatted about miscellaneous things. Finally, after another half-hour, Gwen turned, looked at Leslie meaningfully and said, “I love that I’m good enough company that I distract you from your vice, but am I going to have to be the one who puts that poor pack to use or are you going to light up any time this year?”

Leslie smiled, feeling that little gnawing hunger in her body for the nicotine, but ignoring it. “Ha ha. Oh, I’ll get to them eventually. No rush for me. I’m enjoying our time together.”

After a few minutes more, Gwen said, “You know, in all seriousness, it’s kind of weird to see you not smoking for so long.”

Leslie simply shrugged and smiled innocently.

A few minutes later, tentatively, Gwen offered: “Leslie? Do you mind if I try one again?”

“Oh,” Leslie said, trying not to let her satisfaction and pleasure creep into what should be a surprised tone. “Sure. You’re welcome to have one any time. Just never expected you to ask. Want me to light it for you?”

Gwen considered for a moment, and then shook her head. “I’d like to try it myself. Promise you won’t laugh if I cough like a complete noob?”

“Never.”

Gwen took out an Eve gingerly. She picked up the lighter, and fumbled with it, unable to get it to spark.

“Harder than it looks,” Leslie said, taking the lighter from her gently, fingers brushing warmly as she did, and producing a flame for her once she had the lighter in her own fingers.

Taking short, tentative puffs, Gwen managed to get the cigarette lit, but barely.

“You’ll want to take a few quick drags before that goes out,” Leslie suggested.

Gwen did, taking three quick drags in succession, blowing out her smoke uninhaled each time. Then she looked at the Eve between her fingers, paused for a moment, and wrapped her lips around the filter, took a long, slow drag, then sucked the smoke into her lungs. Her eyes widened a bit in rediscovery of the strange and enticing sensations that brought. After that, she smoked a bit more but mostly without inhaling or inhaling only very small amounts of smoke.

That went on for a few minutes, and Leslie laughed just a little.

“Gosh, you’re never going to get yourself addicted at that rate,” Leslie joked. “Might as well join you now that you’ve broken the ice,” she added, pulling out a cigarette for herself and lighting up with a casual, sexy grace.

“That’s probably a good thing, then,” Gwen joked back, taking another tentative drag and blowing the smoke out again. Then she took a deeper pull that she inhaled and followed it up with a tentative uninhaled drag again. “Just nervous about getting dizzy, I guess. Or sick. Taking your earlier advice. Not sure how often I want to do this, but certainly don’t want to feel queasy doing it.”

Leslie looked at her with a warm gaze and said, “Well, I can give you a way to inhale and get used to the taste and the feel, but with less nicotine so you won’t get sick. It would help your body get used to the idea and the chemicals. You know…if that’s what you want. I don’t want to seem like a drug pusher or something. Just…I don’t know…if you’re curious I want it to be good for you. If you want to keep doing what you’re doing, that’s fine, too. I’m…oh nevermind…I must sound weird.”

“No. No, not at all. Les? What did you have in mind? Really, I’m curious. It’s kinda neat smoking. Not so sure about addiction but no one says I have to smoke often, right? Maybe I’ll like it enough to take the plunge but for now I’m just playing around. What’s your idea?”

Legitimately feeling nervous, and not simply affecting a behavior as part of her plan—This really is a seduction, and it’s always so nerve-wracking taking the first steps and fearing rejection, she thought—she said, tentatively, “I take a big, deep inhale and then blow it into your mouth. You’d inhale that, and it would be more of an inhale that you get doing what you’re doing, and you could breathe it in really easily—more so than a deep drag when you’re still just starting out. I mean, if I blow it right in up close. But not as much kick as you would straight from the cigarette yourself. And you could take you own little puff in between my smoke-sharing for a little hint of the taste you get direct from the source. Best of both worlds for those who don’t want to dive into the deep end yet.”

Leslie felt her heart hammering, wondering if she’d gone too far. Would Gwen sense that Leslie really did want her to become a smoker? Would she realize that what Leslie was suggesting was almost like a kiss, and in some ways just as intimate as one?

But instead, Gwen said, almost shyly herself, “Sure. OK.”

Leslie took a deep, deep drag on her cigarette, then a little drag after that for a sort of double-pump, then got to within a couple inches of her friend’s face and blew a tight, dense stream of smoke into Gwen’s mouth. Leslie was certain she felt some hint of power and magic, as the stream was so much more coherent, condensed and focused than it had any right to be.

Gwen sucked down the smoke, held it for a few seconds, and then blew it out in Leslie’s face. “Oh! I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. I don’t mind at all,” Leslie said.

Taking a quick, light pull on her own Eve, Gwen smiled in a sort of demure way, and said, “That tasted and smelled nice. Better than what’s coming off the end of my cigarette.”

“Well, even though you’ve only been ‘sipping’ at it, it’s almost done, Gwen, so the cherry is pretty close to your face. Takes a while to get used to the smoke from the end of the cig, especially early on and when it’s so close to your nose and eyes. Here, take the one I’m smoking now…if you want it, that is. If you want to keep taking little puffs of your own.”

“Sure,” Gwen said, putting out the one she had been smoking and taking the one offered by her friend in its place. “I’m kind of liking this ‘bad girl’ rebellious smoking thing while watching a movie. The coming-of-age teen-age things I never did when I was a teen-ager.”

Leslie lit a new Eve, filled her lungs to capacity, and leaned forward again, just a hair closer than before. As she blew out the smoke, the bowl of popcorn tilted in her lap and spilled some of its contents into Gwen’s lap. She sucked in the proffered smoke from her friend and then released in after a couple moments, laughing and spreading the smoke in a scattered cloud between them. Gwen brushed the buttery popcorn off herself as she stifled her laugh and took the bowl from Leslie’s lap, setting it on the table.

“Girl, you are gonna get me all greasy and slippery. I thought you were trying to get me high on nicotine instead,” Gwen joked.

You have no idea how slippery I want to get you, Leslie thought, and as for greasy, that sounds good, too. But not tonight. Dammit, not tonight. Have to focus.

“Clumsy me,” Leslie said as Gwen took one of her now-signature weak drags with no inhalation. Leslie took a cheek-hollowing drag on her own Eve, and leaned forward again, just a little closer. As Gwen accepted another dose of smoke, she held it in and then let it out, spraying a plume against Leslie’s throat and chest.

Gwen sighed a little, and said, “This really is nice. A shame we can’t do this every time you smoke.”

“We can do it any time you want when we’re alone, Gwen. In public, we’d probably attract a crowd of horny guys who think we’re about to make out.”

“OK,” Gwen said, chuckling, and breathed deep an another plume from her friend’s mouth a few moments later, following up with a pair of light, quick puffs on her own Eve.

This continued back and forth over and over, until Leslie was down to her last couple drags.

She loaded up her chest with rich, thick smoke, and leaned forward so closely that their lips were almost touching. As she released the sweet-sharp-smelling cloud into Gwen’s mouth, she touched her lips to Gwen’s for just a split-second, then pulled away.

“Oops. Sorry,” Leslie said, not feeling sorry at all but nervous at what the response would be.

“About what? Kind of hard not to bump lips being so close,” Gwen said. Leslie thought she detected just a hint of breathlessness in that voice, and not from the consumption of smoke. Gwen’s pupils seemed just a bit dilated and Leslie thought she saw a spark of something brewing there. Something to be cultivated and developed soon—but carefully.

“One more, m’dear,” Leslie said as she looked at the hot cherry poised so near her filter, took a hard pull on it, and shared one last cloud of smoke with her friend. She didn’t touch those lips again, but she was near enough she could have made that ‘mistake’ again. But she didn’t. She just smiled as she sat up straight, and said, “So, I guess we should finish watching this movie. Hope I didn’t disgust you with that filthy smoking.”

“No, it was nice,” Gwen said. “Yeah, even though we’ve missed the past 10 minutes or so, I guess we owe it to ourselves to find out how this piece of crap ends.”

A few minutes later, back to nibbling on salty buttered popcorn, Gwen said, without looking Leslie in the eyes, “Do you think you could share smoke with me like that again before you leave tonight? If it wouldn’t be weird or anything, that is.”

Leslie smiled, reached over, and gently turned her friend’s face to look at her directly. “Glad to, Gwen. Not weird at all. We’re friends, and friends share wonderful things. As long as you find it fun, I’m glad to do it, and to stop when you don’t find it fun anymore.”

For a few moments, Gwen said nothing, then looked back toward the TV screen. “I do find it fun. I don’t think that’ll stop, Les. I’m just wondering at what point I will stop at. How far I’ll go. It scares me a little. Make me excited, too, though—the unknown factor.”

Leslie considered those words, and hoped that they applied to more than just the smoking.

Posted in Author: Smokedawg, Cigars, Mind Control/Hypnosis, Picture Perfect Series, Smoking Fetish Fiction, Supernatural/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Tags: smoking, smoking erotica, smoking fetish