Addiction: Pixie Dust

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Victoria smiled to herself as she remembered that episode.So much for a turning point in my life.

It was nearly a year before Victoria had dared to take another puff on a cigarette, this time on one handed to her by a friend after a football game during her freshman year which she did not inhale. But she did come to enjoy the social experience of occasionally puffing on a cigarette with friends - and the buzz that would occur from inadvertently inhaling the tail end of any exhaled puff. By her senior year, she had even grown comfortable enough to inhale most of those puffs. And then things changed dramatically her first year at Reynolds Community College when she met Michael Lee.

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Twenty Years Ago

Victoria and her lover sat on her bed passionately kissing one another. She had met this Korean immigrant studying at her community college at a party a month ago where she found him so charming and incredibly handsome. Her mother warned her about dating Asian men from the continent, but Michael had spent the last six years of his life in America. He hardly even had an accent and was as "American" as any Asian, white, or black male classmate she knew. She felt safe with him, but of course took precautions (at her mother's urging) when they became sexually engaged. Victoria reached down to the long shaft jutting out of her boyfriend's shorts, reached inside the underwear, and began slowly stroking the cock up and down with her hand.

"Hold on," Michael said with a slight chuckle. "How about we try something different?"

"Different?" Victoria asked suspiciously. If he was about to suggest anal sex, she was a firm "no" on that. The discomfort of having what felt like a cucumber up her ass was not her idea of pleasurable sex, no matter how powerful an orgasm it produced in the end.

"You're a smoker, aren't you?" he asked mischievously.

Victoria was surprised by the question. "No," she answered what she believed to be truthfully.

Michael had a confused expression on his face. "But when I first saw you at Jill's party last month, you were smoking."

Busted. "Oh, that," Victoria said with some embarrassment at being outed. "On occasion I'll smoke a cigarette with friends. But lighting up every few months wouldn't classify me as a smoker...would it?"

If she had not added the "would it" at the end, Michael would not have pursued the matter further. But with her apparent self-doubt about her smoking status, he saw a small opening that he decided to drive a Mack truck through.

"I think that smoking looks very attractive; and the way you were smoking that long cigarette so elegantly at Jill's party, I'm guessing you do, too."

Victoria had no reply.Of course she thought that smoking makes her look attractive. That's why she started! And then she suddenly realized that her boyfriend might be trying to tell her more than just what he admires about the opposite sex holding a cigarette.

"Wait a minute," she said sitting up straight. "Are you telling me that you also smoke?"

An impish smile formed on his lips.

Victoria slowly shook her head. "I should have known. For a while there, I thought I was dating the only Korean guy on the planet who didn't smoke. I assume that you're a casual smoker, like me?"

"If that's what you want to call it," he said with a grin.

"You got your pack with you?" she asked, very curious now to see what brand her boyfriend smoked.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

"Hah," Victoria exclaimed as she hopped off the bed and ran over to the dresser. "Virginia Slims," she said showing off the pack she had pulled out of the top drawer.

"Benson and Hedges," Michael responded as he pulled a pack out of his jacket sitting on the floor.

"Mmmm, expensive," Victoria cooed as she sat back on the bed with an ashtray, "and very classy." She pulled a 120 out of her pack and grabbed her lighter.

"I think so," Michael responded as he also pulled out one of the all-white 100s. With rising excitement, he watched her light the Virginia Slims freehanded and exhale through her nose. He then accepted the flame from her lighter.

Victoria brought the long cigarette up to the side of her mouth and took a puff. Snapping back a white ball, she said seductively with smoke pouring out of her lips, "So you like to watch a woman smoke."

"Oh, yes," Michael said, gently taking her hand and placing it over the bulge in his underwear.

"Oh, no," she said with the wag of her head as she pulled back her hand. "You said you want something different." She scooted up towards the headboard and leaned her back against it. "Jack off," she said quietly before bringing the 120 up to the center of her lips for a soft puff.

"What?" Michael asked in shock.

"You heard me," she said with an evil smile before another puff, this one just a bit longer. She reached over to the side of the bed, grabbed a small bottle of baby lotion, and tossed it to him. "Jack off," she said in a soft but firm tone with an intense stare.

A wide grin now appeared on Michael's face as he picked up the bottle and squirted the pink lotion into the palm of his right hand. His swelled dick was already bouncing up and down from the excitement of watching this beautiful woman make love to her 120. He wrapped his fingers around the cock, and slowly began an up and down movement. The resulting stimulation throughout his body was instantaneous, and he took a puff to enhance that pleasure and snapped back a mushroom cap cloud of smoke deep into lungs.

"So this is what you have been fantasizing about since you first met me, isn't it? Smoking a long, white cigarette." She brought the 120 up to the corner of her mouth and made the tip glow brightly. She cracked her lips into a wicked smile and let the smoke emerge briefly before snapping it back. Then two white, bubbly jets of smoke flowed freely from her nostrils. "You know that there's a word that describes your desires, don't you?" She looked at him with a gleam in her eye and said mockingly, "Fetish." She brought the white cylinder to the center of her lips, performed a cheek-hollowed puff, and opened her mouth wide to show a wall of smoke which began slithering out in long, white tentacles up into her nostrils.

"Oh, God," Michael moaned, an expression of ecstasy on his face. "So beautiful." And when he watched her inhale the rest of that white wall with a snap down her throat, followed by a thick column of smoke gushing out of her mouth towards him, he responded with a ferocious, "I can't hold it!" A long stream of cum shot out of his dick in an arc across the bedcovers. "Oh,Gawd," he groaned as the cum flowed in spirt after spirt while he gripped the base of the shaft.

Victoria merely sat there with an evil smile, bringing the cigarette to her lips every few seconds for a puff. "I think I'm going to like smoking with you," she said with the tap of her Virginia Slims over the ashtray.

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Despite the obvious pleasure it gave Victoria to play the role of smoking goddess in front of her boyfriend, she remained a casual smoker, lighting up outside of her home only with Michael. She realized now, twenty years later as she sat on her patio, that she could have gone in a very different direction had there been more time for addiction to set in. Time was not something, however, she had in abundance with Michael. She was always forgetting to stay on her pill regiment, and she paid the price for that when she suddenly got pregnant at 19.Now THAT was a turning point, she whispered regretfully.

She considered an abortion, but Michael urged her to carry the child to term; even promised that they would get married. But when the ultrasound revealed that Victoria was likely carrying a girl, Michael's excitement about being a father was suddenly tempered; and by the time of the birth, he had lost all interest. Within a week, he was back in South Korea fulfilling his military obligation to maintain his citizenship status their, and his traditional parents, who were never happy that their son was dating a Chinese American, followed him back. Victoria was a single mother at 20, just like her own mother had been.

And then soon after JoAnn was born, Victoria received the news that her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. For two years she watched her mom suffer, and that experience had squelched any further desire within her to smoke. Victoria had not had a cigarette in nearly 20 years.

Those early years were beyond difficult. She inherited her mother's home which she continued to live in, and an insurance policy helped cover those early expenses for child care, with school loans covering the rest of her financial obligations. She had plenty of aunties such as Auntie Jun whom she could turn to when she really needed help, but by and large she had to rely on herself; and she was determined to instill that same kind of strength within her daughter that got herself through those tough times.

Of course, twenty years is a long time; long enough to erase the pain, if not the memory, of loss. Though Victoria never shared her mother's passion or her ex-boyfriend's fetish for smoking, she did enjoy the experience of being a casual smoker. And so now, twenty years later as she sat on her patio staring at the VS-120 pack and the lighter on the table, she had to admit that she had missed smoking. Is that why she jumped at this assignment when she found out from a childhood friend that Auntie Jun not only still worked at Phillip Morris, but that she was a lab technician in the Black Ops Division? After all, she knew that she would have to start smoking again to go undercover.

Whatever her motivation for pursuing the story, Victoria knew at this moment that time was precious. She had not told her daughter yet about the assignment, and she knew that JoAnn would not be happy that her mother had to become a credible looking smoker to cast off any suspicion at the lab. She looked at her watch. JoAnn would probably not be home for another hour.Good. Because I'll need every minute to practice, she thought to herself.

Victoria reached for the pack and unpeeled the gold cellophane strip. Opening up the lid, she saw the gold wrapper carefully preserving the 20 neatly packed cigarettes inside. Her heart was again pounding, just as it had when she was 13 years old. She pulled off the wrapper and immediately brought the pack up to her nose to smell the aroma of menthol. She smiled as she remembered that that was what she had always done when opening a new pack when she was still a smoker. She reached inside for a cigarette, placed it between her lips, and lit the tip. She was giddy as she saw the orange glow in the shadows of the patio, remembering again how excited she was the first time she smoked.

She exhaled quickly and took another puff, inhaling into the top of her lungs. The billowing cloud inside of her body brought back wonderful memories of those smoking years. Her scalp tingled from the nicotine rushing through her bloodstream and into her brain. She held the smoke only for only two seconds before exhaling, realizing that she had suppressed the gag reflex without even thinking. "Like riding a bike," she said to herself.

She took another puff and began to taste the sensation of burnt paper. She regretted not putting a breath mint into her mouth beforehand, and she made a mental note to put some in her purse for the next day. She inhaled this third puff, but then made a small cough while holding it in her lungs. She decided to practice exhaling without inhaling the puffs, and she realized that Ron was right about how different the smoke looked. She didn't quite know what to do about that and simply hoped that no one would notice. As the 120 shrank in length after a few minutes, Victoria decided to inhale one last puff which she did with ease, and exhaled through her nose. "This is not going to be a problem," she said confidently as she stubbed out the cigarette. She didn't need to light a second one, but she did so anyway.

"How I've missed you," she said looking at the 120 between her fingers before bringing it to her lips. She was inhaling all of her puffs now and successively holding each one longer in her lungs before exhaling a long stream. If she couldn't make her exhales look like the real thing, then she would justmake them the real thing. Besides, it was only for a few weeks at most that she would need to smoke;then I'll stop as soon as I get enough information for a story.

She brought the cigarette up to the center of her mouth for a playful puff which she attempted to French inhale. "I used to be pretty good at these," she said as a wave of smoke curled upwards from a cracked smile and was pulled into her nostrils. She remembered how her mother had taught her that trick; and then she wished that she could have the opportunity to teach it to her own daughter.How did JoAnn ever become such an anti? she wondered. When Victoria came out to her mother in her senior year in high school, it formed an immediate bond between the two.Those were special moments, she thought to herself, sitting at the kitchen table after dinner and talking about their day while exhaling cones of smoke into the air. Again, she wished that she could share those special moments with JoAnn.

"What the hell is this!?" she heard a voice full of venom yell.

Victoria had gotten so lost in her memories that she didn't even hear the sliding door open up and her daughter, now home early from Katie's house, step outside. Immediately she felt ashamed. "It's not what it looks like," she tried to explain.

"It looks like you're smoking!" JoAnn said in disgust. "Put it out."

Inexplicably, Victoria obeyed the command, as if JoAnn were the mother and she the daughter. "Sit down, honey, I need to tell you something."

Anger still boiling inside of her, the teenager did what was requested of her.

"I have a very important assignment beginning tomorrow." She took a deep breath, hesitant to explain the details but feeling she had no choice now that JoAnn saw her smoking. "I'm going undercover at the Phillip Morris lab, and the only way I can do that is if I pretend I'm a smoker. I have a contact there who has told me that something big is happening; like really big."

"What do you mean?" JoAnn asked, her temperature cooling.

"You remember the story we did last year about the nicotine liquid the lab was developing? I think this is even bigger. At least, that's what I'm going to try and find out."

"Mom," she said, "I know that you put everything into your work, and that's why you're so good at it. But smoking!"

"There's no other way, honey, and it's just for show. I won't really be inhaling," she lied, but as an investigative reporter, she was very good at lying.

"Well," JoAnn said pushing the pack away with her finger tips as if it were something diseased, "just don't let anyone see you, okay? You know how damaging it would be if people thought that the mother of the president of the Kicking Butts club was actually a smoker."

"Katie's Mom smokes, and so does Chris'," Victoria responded defensively.

"Neither of them are the club president nor have over a hundred thousand social media followers," JoAnn said as she got up and walked back inside.

Victoria took pride in raising a strong daughter, but she was frustrated at what a selfish little-bitch JoAnn could sometimes be. Rather than caring about whether this undercover mission was dangerous, she only cared about how her own reputation if her Mom was outed as a smoker.

Victoria then heard the sliding door open up again.

"And Mom," JoAnn said sticking her head out, "it sounds dangerous, so be careful, okay?"

What a wonderful daughter I have, Victoria thought proudly to herself.

PART THREE

Chris Forrest drove up to the Richmond suburban home in his Honda Accord and reached for his book bag in the backseat. Every weeknight he spent two hours with JoAnn, the love of his life, as they helped one another with their homework. Due to the unpredictable hours his girlfriend's mother had to work as a reporter, often he and JoAnn would cook together. Other nights they would simply order DoorDash. So he was surprised this evening when Mrs. Gong opened the front door wearing an apron which said, "Kiss the Chef!"Oh, how I wish I could, he thought to himself.

"Come on in, Chris," she said with a smile. "JoAnn is in the kitchen."

Because Victoria was such a young mother at only 38, she could easily pass off as JoAnn's older sister. He always appreciated that she made him, a Southern white boy with brown hair and blue eyes, feel welcome in their Chinese American home (though Chris had to admit to himself that he found it no different than any other American home except for the occasional odor of Chinese spices). The fact that Mrs. Gong was so beautiful also did not escape his notice, but he felt it prudent not to dwell on this.

Not that his attraction for the woman altered in any way his deep feelings for her daughter. He was in love with JoAnn whom he had known since grade school. She had all the qualities he admired in a female. She was tough and as independent as any of their male classmates, but also confident in her femininity. Obviously she was brilliant (very few people get accepted into Yale), and she had a dynamic personality that easily won friends and admirers. Some boyfriends might have felt self-conscious, even jealous, if their partner was a well-known influencer with such a large online following; but Chris didn't feel threatened, for it was obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that she loved him, too.

Now if only I could get her to sleep with me!

JoAnn was not just a rabid anti-smoker. She was also a proud teetotaler and virgin. Such qualities, of course, strengthened Chris' esteem for her, but it wasn't easy for a horny teenager to deal with when his girlfriend refused to go farther than deep kissing. But if he wanted to stay attached to her - which he very much did - then he would need to accept their relationship as it was. Indeed, in time he had even come to admire her self-control.

"It will be worth the wait," she once told him.

"Wait until what?" he asked.

"Why, marriage, of course!" she replied.

With him staying in Richmond for college and her bound for Yale, Chris knew that it could be a long wait....

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When Chris walked into the kitchen, he saw JoAnn setting the table.

"Mom cooked for us tonight," she said with just a hint of irritation. To a stranger, her tone would not have been noticeable, but Chris had by now come to recognize the ups and downs of her mood swings, no matter how imperceptible. Clearly something was bothering her.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly after kissing her on the cheek.

JoAnn saw her mom coming in from the living room towards the kitchen. "I'll tell you later," she said quickly.

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"Later" came after dinner when they were sitting in the kitchen with books and worksheets spread all over the table while Victoria was in her personal study in a small bungalow in the backyard.

"I caught my Mom smoking when I got home," JoAnn said with stern disapproval.

"What????" Chris replied in genuine shock.

"I couldn't believe it," she whined. "She told me she was just puffing on it, but I saw her inhaling without nary a cough. She's clearly smoked before."

"Oh, wow," Chris said, slightly shifting in his chair as he put his hand on her shoulder. "What a shock that must have been for you."

"I know," she replied. "She said it's for some undercover job she's starting tomorrow." JoAnn put the palms of her hands over her face and moaned. "My own mother...a smoker!'