“Welcome aboard Sedentia Airlines. I’m your pilot, Krista Sanchez and we’ll be together about four hours …”

Tom had heard a version of this same sentence a thousand times in his travels. He promptly tuned Pilot Sanchez out and began to browse the magazines in front of his seat. Two minutes to take-off and no one had occupied the seat beside him – hallelujah!

Then he heard the clomping that signified a late passenger coming down the aisle and knew he was doomed. Harry Q Obnoxious it would surely be.

Harry kept right on walking. Tom exhaled gratefully and closed his eyes.

Was it the sweet perfume or her voice that reached him first?

“Excuse me.”

He looked up. And into the eyes of the most beautiful brunette he had ever seen. Her hair shone even in the dim light of this shabby airplane. Her features were petite and exquisite, her lips soft and full. She wore a business pantsuit but she wore it well.

He smiled at her and she sat down beside him and he cheered inside. This was going to be a great flight after all, even to this backwater Sedentia country.

“Gum?” she asked, handing him a stick. He accepted and their fingers touched momentarily and they both felt the spark. He felt the heat rising within him but she just smiled and stretched out her legs.

“Mind if I … take off my shoes?’ she asked. “These heels are killing me.”

Why the hell would he mind?

“Go right ahead,” he said, and she wiggled her feet out of her pumps. A little too vigorously, perhaps, for one of them collided with his own ankle.

She could have apologized perhaps. Instead, she giggled.

Which freed him to gently pick it up, give it a playful, punitive pat and then set it beside its twin. For a brief instant, his fingers felt the heat inside it where her little feet had been and everything in him wanted to kiss that sole to his lips and inhale the faint scent of her perspiration.

The plane shuddered to life and climbed to altitude.

“You realize,” she said suddenly, “that you are the only guy on this plane?”

Shocked, he looked at her. What was she talking about? Since when could such delightful demographics be possible? And what about Harry Q Obnoxious back there somewhere?

As if reading his mind, she poked out her pretty tongue at him.

“Okay, there’s one other guy. The coach.”

He was still puzzled. She punched his arm playfully. “You sure don’t pay much attention to your surroundings, shoe-fetish boy. This little prop-job is carrying the Lady Lightups Club of North Carolina to the international Lady Smoker’s Competition in Sedentia. You only got on because one seat happened to be empty.”

He sat stunned for a moment. Finally, his tongue formed words. “So you, are you a member –“

He began to tremble. For she was answering without words, lifting from her purse a beautiful box of Misty Lights and extricating a slender cigarette.

Sedentia allowed smoking on planes?

He realized she was waiting on him, the cigarette dangling unlit in her lips, her lovely brown eyes fixed upon him. He took the lighter that she had laid upon the arm-rest and held a flame to her cigarette, trying not to shake like a wet dog.

All over the plane, other lighters were clicking and soon the air of the plane was thick with sweet smoke exhaled from dozens of beautiful lips. But Tom only had eyes for this lovely creature. She dragged that first inhale so deeply into her lungs that the cigarette cherry glowed like a campfire coal.

Her lips parted as she pulled the cigarette away and he glimpsed the swirling smoke in her mouth before she swallowed the last of it down.

“I was stuck in that damn non-smoking airport two miserable hours,” she said.

Then, as calmly as one might blow cool air onto hot soup, she exhaled. She pursed her lips to shape a perfect cone, thick enough to scoop with a spoon. It spilled in front of her and danced upon the air.

“Can you blow smoke rings?” he asked. She turned to him and smiled. She laid a hand upon his knee.

His mind was reeling and his heart was pounding.

Looking him in the eye she lifted her cigarette to her lips again and formed a perfect O. She closed them tightly around the filter, already stained with her lipstick. She leaned towards him so that the burning cherry was not a pinky-width from his nose. She half-closed her eyes and began to inhale. The swirling curls of smoke from the cigarette tip vanished as she diverted the burning tobacco into her mouth. Fine lines of concentration formed around her lips as they clamped tightly, sealing around the cigarette. Her cheeks caved in as she continued to draw in smoke.

For a full three seconds she inhaled. Then finally, with a distinct pop, she broke the seal, pulling the cigarette free. She held the smoke in her lungs, savoring its warmth deep within. Then finally, she pursed her lips and formed four perfect rings – each aimed exquisitely at his face, as if his nose were the stake in one of those ring-toss carnival games. As the fourth ring left her lips, she pursed her lips tightly and expelled the remainder of the smoke in a jet-stream directly into his face.

He inhaled it, still warm from its sojourn in her lungs, sweet and rich.

She tapped off the ash that had formed. Then she inhaled again. This time, she exhaled through her nostrils, twin streams that he also inhaled as they left her delicate nose.

Her non-cigarette hand was holding his now, shared desire sweetly expressed.

For four hours he rode in bliss, the eager recipient of every exhale from six cigarettes that she smoked almost down to the filter. She teased him with French inhales, tormented him with tight corkscrews, bathed him in loose clouds barely exhaled, tickled him with nostril exhales as his lips waited expectantly at her nose for the smoke to emerge. He held her smoky exhales as deep inside him as he could, exulting in the secondhand pleasure.

The vodka that she shared with him, turning the plastic cup so that he could drink from where her lips had left their mark, only fired him up more.

By the fifth cigarette, he had made his decision. The hell with his sales conference. He was going to her Club convention instead. He was going to cheer this goddess on to smoky victory. And then he was going to marry her, in Sedentia, which must certainly be the most beautiful place in the world.