Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Part 6 And so we went to the living room. I sat on the easy chair on purpose. Whatever my reactions, I wanted to be out of her reach. "Would you do me a favor?" she asked, but with some determination, making it quite obvious she wouldn't take a no for an answer. "Well, whatever." I said, expecting some trivial request, like to get her cigarettes or a soda. "Though I'm so ashamed of what I did to you, it will be real hard to tell it, I too want to ask you some things. I mean, yesterday I was, I dunno, like in a dream, but today I kinda woke up and now there are things I don't know what to think of." She said, looking at the carpet, as if she was afraid of what she might see in my eyes. "Sure, whatever you want, I'll try to answer truthfully if I can." I replied, not yet sure where she aimed at, though I already had a hunch and I didn't like it at all. "Can you explain what that smoking stuff does to you? I just don't get it. I know I said I liked it, but it does freak me out a bit. It's not about kissing and smoking at the same time, I mean I still get quite a kick outa every drag and it's, well a bit like a tiny orgasm or so and it does fit in nicely to kiss you at the same time, but I just can't pin it down why you like it so much, cuz' you don't smoke and it smells stinky, I mean I always hated the smell and I still don't like second hand smoke from other people. How come you get so excited about it?" Well she had me. The worst had happened. I had to lay my cards on the table and though I might have been able to maneuver myself out of the corner as I was totally unsure about the outcome, as it could well be she would perceive my sort of "treason" as ten times worse than hers, my instincts told me to go for all or nothing. I had revealed too much of my deviation already, to take anything back. Moira was by no means stupid or dense. She had proven to be very sharp at times, which actually was one of the reasons my infatuation with a gorgeous woman had quickly turned into love and respect. I cleared my throat and launched into the most difficult confession of my life. "God, Moira, this isn't going to be easy and I don't know If you're going to like it, but I owe it to you. I mean, I should've done this way earlier, while we weren't involved in earnest, but I was so fucking afraid to blow it, to loose the one woman I thought would help me into a possibly dull, but clean and straight life. Please believe me when I say that was determined to be a good husband and I still believe it could've worked out that way. But now things have changed in more than one way, so I don't see a way back. Even if you'd decide to quit on the spot and never touch a cigarette again in your whole life, you've done that, err, other thing, so..." This time I had unintentionally crossed into forbidden territory and I could see the clouds gathering on her face. But then it would help to put her back into defensive. So I went on. "Oh well, let's drop that for now. I'll tell you all there's to tell and humbly accept the consequences." I had to clear my throat again, as my emotions all but strangled me. I had only once talked to somebody about this, but without any emotional strings attached. To have to reveal my taunted sexuality, my perversion, to the very woman I loved, was harder than anything I had ever done. "I realized something was wrong with me quite early. I must have been ten or eleven, about the same time I found out that my dickie was good for a bit more than peeing. I haven't found an easy explanation, nor had the shrink I once consulted on the matter." Seeing she lifted an eyebrow, I explained: "Yes, of course I did. I felt like a freak most of my teenage years and for a long time I thought that I'm one of a kind, a monster of sorts. Till I was almost eighteen I never dared talk to girls, unless I had to, the mere thought a girl would be interested in me, scared me shitless. The worst thing was that those days smoking was even more popular among teenagers than it is today. I grew up in small town with conventional people, maybe not quite the hillbilly kind, but square and narrow-minded. The back of the bill was that this made a lot of teenager revolt against their parents and smoke, drink and have sex maybe more and earlier than in a more open environment. It was almost impossible to avoid seeing young girls who smoked wherever they thought they could get away with it. I don't know how it was where you grew up, but where I lived, that's how it was. Well, I was to learn much later that I wasn't one of a kind In fact most men do at times perceive smoking in a woman to have some kind of sexual connotations. Certainly not to the extent I do, but let me tell you that if a woman knows how, she can capture a man's attention by smoking artfully." I had looked aside for a while, not daring to lock straight into Moira's eyes. It would have been too painful and I might not have been able to go on. But out of the corner of the eye, I caught a change in her face. While she had born a quite grim if not hostile expression till then, suddenly she looked puzzled, then more serene, almost happy. "What's wrong?" I asked her. "Well, I hadn't really paid much attention to this before, but I think I do know what you mean, though I can't say I understand it. I did get some looks from men when I lit up. But you keep on talking and you don't explain anything. I'm not interested in your bio, I mean, normally I love to hear you talk about things, but I want to understand what makes you tick." She replied nervously. "Patience, I'm coming to that, but please understand, this isn't easy. I'm stripping my soul naked and I'm about to share things I hadn't dared tell even my shrink." She nodded and then rose, saying: "Sorry, but I do need a smoke, or I can't concentrate on what you say any more. Shall I just go outside, or can you cope with that?" "Oh, well, if you must, you must. It doesn't really matter right now anyway. Talking about this kinda keeps the lid on the worst part of me. But maybe we can swap places. I might feel more comfortable on the couch, you know, and you'll take the chair, sit there and smoke like Dr. Freud. If I'd known what you're plans were, I'd gone for some cigars und you could've made yourself a goatee from a cotton wad." I said, trying to loosen the tension a bit. "Oh c'mon, I'm not in the mood for jokes and I will certainly never ever touch cigars. They stink and I would look like a dyke. I grant you, there might be something to that smoking thing after all, but cigars? Jeez, it freaks me out even to think of something like that." I shrugged and changed over to the couch, laying down on my back to look straight up at the ceiling. That would help against getting overly aroused by the sight of Moira sucking on one of her pleasure-sticks. "I see you've already prepared for the interrogatory. Well, maybe this way my cigarette won't get in your way." I could hear she was still cross at me, but a little more relaxed, now that she could smoke. I couldn't help rejoice on her addiction. She could hardly hold out more than half an hour! That was so good. Whether I would ever have the chance to relish on her smoking again was another question and the odds were falling by the minute. "OK, I'll stop beating around the bush. First, let me explain why I think a lot of men get more or less aroused by smoking woman. I think there are three elements, at least that is how I feel about it. One is the pull. When a woman sucks on the cigarette to pull in the smoke, it makes her sort of look like she's pouting and that is sexy. Second, when she removes the cigarette to suck the smoke down, to inhale it, that looks like she sucks the air in when, well you know, the way you do when I touch you intimately. The third element is the exhale. If a woman exhales in a certain way, in fact quite the way you do, it's like a sigh of pleasure. I might mention that there's something else. I might be imagining things, but when a woman inhales, you can tell how satisfying the nicotine rush is." At this point she interrupted me with a question: "So that's it, I can arouse a man just by smoking lustfully, even if he's not interested in the first place? And you, do you get turned on whenever you see a female smoker?" "Oh c'mon, don't be silly. I'm talking about when a man is already interested. OK, grant you this much, a woman can catch a man's attention with her smoking style, but if anything, it may make him abit more interested, but he has to find her even remotely attractive or at least, err, well beddable. If he doesn't dig her, if she doesn't look good in his eyes, there's no way she can change that just by smoking. Even though I have to be honest and admit that my problem goes way beyond that, still I do feel like a normal male most of the time. Remember how hot I got over you at a time when you weren't smoking at all? OK, I admit that if at that party where we have met, Ana would have held the cigarette and not you, I might have asked her for a dance and we might have never met. You probably wish by now it would've happened right that way." I said, stopping to sigh and catch my breath. Suddenly, Moira was towering over me and she surprised me with a brief but deliciously wet and scented kiss, right on my lips. "Oh Honey, what am I gonna do with you? Freak or not, I still can't resist you." She whispered right into my face, intentionally or not gifting me with the smoky fragrance of her breath. I started to say something nasty about her having quite forgotten me while I had been chained to the oars in China, working 14h shifts for want of anything better to do. But I could halt before I ruined the moment. I thought I was absolved and started to rise. "Ah, ah, ah!" she stopped me kiddingly. "Not so fast. I just wanted to give you a little motivation to go on." Saying that she took in a good lungful of smoke and then she bent down and while covering my chest with her breasts, she allowed me to kiss her in earnest, opening her lips fully. She even breathed a bit of smoke into my mouth, while releasing most of the smoke through her nose. "Thanks Sweety, I could do with that more often." I murmured gratefully. "And so you shall, if you're a good boy and tell Momma the truth." She teased me. "But I'm still waiting for you to explain yourself." She said while returning to her seat. "How does it feel, what does it give you, the whole smoking stuff? I want to understand. You just keep telling me how sexy it is in general, but I don't hear anything about you. I want to know what exactly turns you on so much. And if I hadn't picked up smoking at all? Would you still be sitting here with me, or with your lawyer?" "Oh God, you sure know how to torture me. But OK, I promised and I shall tell you as best as I can. I guess that in a way if a girl lights up, it just triggers the same reaction in me as if she'd lift her t-shirt and show her bare titts. If I like her, it works. If I don't, it's no use, I don't feel anything. When a woman smokes, it feels just as if she would strip in front of me or lap-dance me. If she's sexy, yeah I get high, but if she's plain or in some other way unattractive, my li'l dickie stays limp and that's it. Good for you? And let me tell you one thing and I swear to god it's the truth, the whole truth and I don't even expect you to return this. The sexiest woman I have ever met, earning a twenty on a scale of naught to ten, sits here with me and chooses to drive me crazy. I mean, I went crazy with lust over you from the very first minute and you weren't even smoking. You have seen how I took off when I saw you with a ciggie for the first time. I swear to god, had you been smoking while you humped that guy, I would've rather kissed you hard and then shot myself in the head rather than ass-fucking you to humiliate you. That's about how strong this works on me."