As I mentioned in a post in November 2011, the “Toxic” series I had run exclusively at SmokingStories.net for a while was to be posted again here at my own blog in the original form, and perhaps with additional material in some chapters if the mood strikes me (this chapter includes two new scenes…one to follow up on the Lana Lang/Cat Grant thing I got started in another new scene earlier, and Nicoletta smokily dealing with some problems of the non-superheroic kind). The entire series spans 15 chapters and features a number of familiar DC superheroes and supervillains, as well as some new scoundrels.
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Toxic

By Smokedawg

>>Chapter 8<

“Wonder Woman poses potential challenges,” Beth noted over a light dinner with Nicoletta, as they reviewed plans and strategies—the first time they’d had dinner alone in the past week, as her mistress kept at Green Lantern’s heart and loins. “I know you’ve considered some of them, but we don’t have the same advantages with her that we did with Superman, and all the knowledge you were able to access on Kryptonian physiology. Granted, she’s also not as powerful, but she’s a conundrum. We know from our debriefings of Superman that while she seems mortal in some ways, she is supernatural in so many others.”

“Yes, a gift from the gods to her mother, quite literally,” Nicoletta noted. “And, like the other Amazons of Themyscira, she is immortal for all practical purposes—at least in terms of aging—though not entirely invulnerable. We cannot even be entirely certain any of my chemicals will affect her sufficiently, if at all, and the studies of the purloined samples of her genetic material cannot be fully trusted as she may have mystical defenses that won’t show up on genetic examinations.”

“Yes,” Beth said, “and so I propose some slight alterations to your plans, if you like.”

“You of all people can speak freely to me; you, and one day the two whom I intend to join you as equal partners for my affections, and companions to each other as well.”

“You should add another, I think. One man and two women to be your innermost circle seems inherently unbalanced,” Beth said. As much as she loved both Nicoletta and the idea of being naked with Wonder Woman down the line, Hal Jordan wasn’t entirely her type. He was certainly good enough to take the edge off at times, she suspected, and he was handsome, but had it been her choice, she would have picked a different hero than him. Then again, it wasn’t about her needs; it was about Nicoletta’s, and much joy was to be found in making her mistress happy.

“Three is a good balance for me, Beth, and stable as a good solid tripod. To juggle more than that would leave someone wanting. And with my level of aggressiveness and arrogance, I’m man enough for any of you, particularly when I strap on a penis—and Lord knows we have some awfully advanced dildos thanks to our robotics and cybernetics teams.”

Beth blushed at that, then laughed.

“Enough of that, though; you’re distracting me from the core topic. What are your suggestions, Beth?”

“I think we should lure Wonder Woman into some conflicts that will allow us to give her some exposure to our smoke. At first, something that will simply tag her so we can track her, and give us some data about distribution. Give us an idea of whether her body can simply reject any chemicals or nanos we may introduce.”

“How will we maintain a steady follow-up?”

“Small drones, possibly disguised as small birds or large insects. If her body doesn’t somehow reject the tags, we can follow her anywhere and keep her on an almost constant scan. Get her into one or two other encounters, with exposure to drugged smoke, and monitor her vitals to see if the proper physiological effects are in play. If it works, it might even soften her up for when we go after her officially.”

“And how, Beth, will these encounters introduce her to the smoke without us having to show our entire team as the cause of these heroic disappearances lately?”

“Hire some minor villains through third parties,” Beth said, “and have bystanders introduce the smoke. Perhaps a pretty, helpless-looking young woman in our employ who can light up nervously after the horrible encounter, while crying on Wonder Woman’s shoulder. Or, once a conflict is over, have someone nearby who can simply pass near her while smoking one of our products. All of this might add a few days onto our schedule, but I think we can keep Toxine from losing her cool entirely. If we coordinate things right, we might not even lose any time, and perhaps we can even get to Flash early if we can get better intelligence on Wonder Woman.”

“Good ideas, Beth, though admittedly I had already thought of 80 percent of them,” Nicoletta said with a smile, lighting up one of Beth’s favorite cigarettes, and exhaling a thick cloud toward the blonde.

“Sorry, Nicoletta. Wasting your time isn’t on my priority list,” she answered, joining Nicoletta by lighting up a cigarette of her own.

“You didn’t waste it at all; in fact, you’ve shown me how insightful a strategist you are. It would have been hard to out-think me, my dear,” Nicoletta said, with smoke in her words and smoke in the air between them. “To keep up with me, more or less, and add some new twists to what I had already considered, is ample proof of your worth…and evidence that my affections on you aren’t misplaced.”

With that, Nicoletta motioned Beth to her side, and then between her legs, and set her on more pleasurable, and less wordy, pursuits.

* * *

Nicoletta Teena was lounging on a sumptuous Queen Anne chair before Hal Jordan, his green power ring sitting on a mahogany side table to her right. She had ordered his apartment here in the Teena International headquarters redecorated a couple days earlier, and it reflected 40 percent of his preferences and 60 percent of hers, but he had to admit she had good taste.

As he looked at that side table, Hal was reasonably certain he had a 50-50 chance of being able to grab that ring, and make an escape.

He was convinced that the woman who was Nicotina had roughly the same odds in mind.

There was also little doubt in the Green Lantern’s mind that she knew he was doing those mental calculations.

But while there might be even odds for success, the man known as one of the most famous and most powerful members of the Green Lantern Corps had only a miniscule bit of interest in making the attempt.

Certainly, he still had doubts about Nicoletta’s intentions and plans. Hal still worried about whether a huge conflict of interests was about to occur between his ideals and her desires. He knew also that while much of his willingness to listen to her and consider her views was intellectual, much of it was also due to her influence on his mind with the ever-present smoke—whether from her or one of her associates.

Having had sex with her three different nights now, as fantastic as it was, didn’t change his reservations.

But he did know that he couldn’t challenge her directly. The notion was fundamentally absurd to him, and he knew she must be responsible for that somehow. He wanted to make sure the Earth—and the sector of space he patrolled—remained safe, and wanted to avoid any entanglements with his comrades-in-arms, but he knew that he would be unable to lift a finger against Nicoletta herself, whether in her civilian garb or as Nicotina. He might be able to fight her team, though he wasn’t even certain he could do that.

He wouldn’t obey her blindly, though. He wasn’t under her total control. If he were to snatch up his ring he could try to escape, even though he would not try to capture her. He probably couldn’t even bring himself to reveal her whereabouts to anyone else, he realized.

But he couldn’t fight her. He didn’t want to.

“You know, it would be a lot easier for both of us if you just subjugated my will, Nicoletta,” Hal Jordan said, mostly—but not entirely—joking as he spoke those words.

“Much less interesting, too, Hal,” she responded, then took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew a huge, perfect cone-shaped cloud toward him, making his lungs tingle and his cock begin to throb before she continued. “Life is about decisions. It’s about giving up some things, and demanding others. Even I know about having to give things up, or delay gratification.”

“You certainly expedited your seduction of me with a little chemical help, and who knows what else. I’m so thoroughly handled, I don’t even know how much of my feelings are really me, and more to the point, I don’t care,” Hal said. “That hardly indicates patience on your part.”

“Well, I’m patiently awaiting my chance to snare another of your comrades for my personal needs, to be my special lover along with you and Beth,” Nicoletta said. “I have patiently used the most subtle and least mind-blowing ways of wooing you, when I could have simply blasted your will. But that wouldn’t be gratifying, and that is something I reserve for those heroes I must quickly bend to my needs, and not to my heart.”

“As much as I’d like to think otherwise, Nicoletta, with talk of ‘your heart,’ you will tire of me. You want to subjugate the powerful, I think, but the novelty will wear off, and I’ll be left with my desire while you toy with someone new. Who knows how many, after you start replacing me with this comrade of mine whom you won’t name.”

Nicoletta released a huge cloud of smoke, and pointed the tip of her cigarette at him. “It’s a surprise whom I am hunting, Hal. But in the end, it’s a very good surprise, and I’ll tell you very soon,” she said. “And I won’t bore of you, most likely, Hal, nor your comrade. The thing you still don’t understand is that I very much admire your nobility, your dedication, your willpower and your imagination, which are all things needed to use this power ring well. I am attracted to what you stand for and who you are, not to your power itself—believe it or not. To be honest, the more I get to know you in person and not simply through publicity and private intelligence I have on you, the more I want you. I hope you can say the same of me.”

She got up, handed him his power ring, smoke swirling about them both, and then she retreated back to her chair and leaned back a little, drawing attention to her breasts in their corset-like top, and blew a long, cone-shaped stream of smoke into the air above her.

Hal Jordan considered the ring in his palm, then put it on his finger, and leaned back into his own chair.

A minute or two passed in silence.

“I know you’re not against me, Hal,” Nicoletta said, “but are you with me?”

“Nicoletta, I don’t think it’s possible, or even my choice, to be with you,” Green Lantern answered. “Remember that there is at least one other Green Lantern based here on Earth and patrolling this sector of space: John Stewart. Kyle Rayner could conceivably be brought back into the game as well. The moment I start trying to help you in any obvious way, even though your aims aren’t overtly and devastatingly evil, the Green Lantern Corps throughout the galaxy will be against me, and the heroes of Earth, too.”

Nicoletta let smoke spill slowly from her lips, and blew him a smoky kiss, but said nothing.

“I can agree with much of what you’ve presented, but it still means that you’re coercing people and forcing your agenda,” Green Lantern continued. “Even if you’re not trying to destroy anything and even if your idea of conquering is somewhat benign, you are still an aggressor. To side with you means that I will likely be relieved of my power ring in due time, unless you seriously think you can take down every Green Lantern in service to Oa, and every hero of this planet too. You might be able to, but that means you’d have to cross a line, Nicoletta, that would make me have to abandon you, even if I would be unable to fight you.”

“I’m not crossing any such line, and no one is going to try to take your ring, Hal,” Nicoletta said, “The Guardians of Oa will have no reason to be displeased with your work.”

“How can you be so confident of that?” Green Lantern asked. “I care for you deeply, Nicoletta, and I want you badly, and I may even be capable of falling in love with you over time, but let me just say that your arrogance is going to be your undoing.”

“I’m not arrogant, Hal,” she said, then laughed in the midst of her next inhale, coughing out a bit of smoke. “Oh, all right, I’m very arrogant. But not foolish or foolhardy. Hal, my plans are very carefully orchestrated. I might fail, but where I am not wrong is in the matter of you and your ring. No one will challenge you, because you are going to go back out and continue to do what you did before.”

“And I’m to believe you won’t call on me?”

“If I think I need you, I will ask for your help,” she said, moving over to his chair, sitting in his lap and feeling his hardness press against her ass. She stroked the side of his face, and then gave him a slow, searing, bittersweet kiss. “But I already know if I ask you to help capture one of your friends, you will refuse, at least in the near term. I know that if I ask you to defend me against them, you will either refuse or hold back much of your power. But the truth is, I have Superman to achieve those kinds of ends, and I doubt you’ll be able to bring yourself to intervene in my plans. I’ve assured that.”

“So, I go fight evil, and ignore your schemes,” he said, and his brow furrowed at that. “You certainly know how to create cognitive dissonance, Nicoletta.”

“The world will be skewed to my needs, Hal,” Nicoletta said, kissing him again, feeding him smoke. “That is the way it must be. If you need to work out some of your confusion and frustrations on some nasty villains, you just go ahead and do that.”

She kissed him again, long and deep and wetly, and ground her ass into his lap, her fingers in his brown hair and white smoke wrapping around them. Then she disengaged slowly from his mouth and blew a cone of smoke above his head.

“Isn’t it going to be rather awkward to explain to everyone where I’ve been? I do know where you live, and it is possible for my mind to be read or the truth to be pulled out of me.”

“I know, and that’s why I want you to go do your good works far away from Earth. You have a whole sector to patrol, my dear. Stay away from anyone who might ask questions, at least until after I have my second special prize, and the one for my cousin. After that, you can come out of the closet, so to speak, and with a new name and costume, I think.”

“So go fight evil, and be sneaky about it,” Hal said, and had to laugh, both at the absurdity of all of this and the fact that none of it bothered him. Was that a sign that he had been corrupted more by Parallax than he knew all those months ago? Or that Nicoletta controlled him more than he thought? Or was it a sign that Nicoletta was more honest than he thought, and it just made sense to let her carry out her plans?

“Yes, go fight evil stealthily, but only after you and I have a little fun. I want to see how you can use that power ring to enhance our lovemaking,” Nicoletta said. “I want to see that imagination in action. And then you go off to work. Just make sure that your ass is back here every few nights at least to warm my bed should I so desire.”

* * *

Cat Grant awoke groggily and turned on the reading light next to her bed. She ran one hand through her blonde hair and blinked the sleep out of her eyes. Glancing at the alarm clock, she realized it was only 3 a.m., and she probably hadn’t nodded off until 1:30.

No wonder I feel so fucked up; I probably just barely fell asleep and I’m up in the middle of the night, she bemoaned.

As her wits slowly gathered in her head, she realized the room smelled smokier than usual, and she frowned—not in distaste but in confusion. Then she remembered, and looked back over her shoulder to make sure the memories were real and not some half-remembered dream that only felt like reality right after waking.

Lana Lang was there.

Blankets drawn around her and a lock of red hair across her face. Her features were a little silly looking in sleep, scrunched and with her mouth half-open on one side, but it looked adorable all the same.

Adorable.

Cat took a deep breath, and was reminded of the smoky air and how many cigarettes each of them had put away over a two-hour, perhaps longer, period here in Cat’s bedroom in Cat’s apartment.

There is a naked woman in my bed. Someone I once ridiculed and looked down on. She’s sleeping on my sheets in our comingled sweat and juices. And here I thought I was 100% straight. Lana Lang as a friend and sex with a woman—and people all over the city smoking up a storm. The world has gone deliciously topsy-turvy.

Cat thought back over the earlier part of the night, and tried to figure out exactly what they’d done and how much of it. As best as she could remember, Lana had licked her to two orgasms and fingered her to another. For her part, Cat had licked out Lana to a screaming crescendo once and then fucked her to a growling, shuddering second climax with her vibrator.

There something wonderfully filthy in the thought that my personal toy has been inside another woman, Cat thought, and saw in on the bedside table. She reached over, lifted it, and sniffed. Then took a long, deep, shuddering inhalation. God I never knew how good pussy could taste and smell, she thought, and drew her tongue slowly along the length of the sex toy.

Such tastes and smells—pussy and smoke combined—and that made Cat want a cigarette very badly. She found her pack, pulled out one slim, white, tobacco-filled tube and lit it quickly and fiercely, filling her lungs as hard and fast as she could.

She hit the cigarette hard and fast again, and then sighed and slowed her pace of smoking. She shifted in the bed, grabbed her ashtray and then turned to look at the sleeping form of Lana.

I sometimes thought I’d bed a reporter who grew up in Smallville, but I would have figured that would be Clark Kent, not Lana Lang, Cat thought, blowing smoke onto the thin, satin sheet draped over Lana’s torso. She saw the other woman’s nostrils flare slightly, and heard the tiny, murmured moan.

Cat continued to smoke, more and more calmly—more and more slowly. She blew the smoke out gradually, tracing a path from Lana’s feet to her head, or blowing the smoke in swirls around her ass and pussy or her breasts. Then she started blowing it just barely above the woman, admiring the way it seemed like a misty roof or blanket above her, slowly drifting away as it perfumed the room.

Cat still couldn’t wrap her mind around it all, she considered as she neared the end of her cigarette and Lana continued to writhe unconsciously in her sleeping stupor—perhaps dreaming of more smoky loving as her mind processed the scent all around her. They’d become sudden friends thanks to smoking—or, more accurately, Lana inexplicably taking up the habit and the woman’s Persuasion perfume making Cat’s own smoking so much more wonderful. They’d become something more that day Cat had impetuously and smokily kissed Lana and they’d ended up with a quick make-out session outside the Daily Planet building. Then getting together later that night and making out even more, both with and without smoke, though their clothes had never come off.

Twice since then that they just played around with kisses and licking each other’s necks, and smoking, and often mixed the two, but with no sex. Just an occasional brush against a nipple or a drifting of a hand to briefly stroke a hip or butt cheek that remained safely protected by panties and skirt or panties and slacks.

Then tonight—the fourth time they had decided to hang out together for an evening—when Cat’s face so briefly drifted down to Lana’s bosom as she finished kissing the woman’s neck and exhaling smoke across it, before getting ready to go back up and share smoke with their lips and tongues.

And as my cheek drifted across her chest, I realized she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Shortly thereafter, as they traded smoky kisses, Cat’s hand drifted to Lana’s ass.

And I realized she wasn’t wearing panties, either.

Cat didn’t need any more evidence than that as to what effect their making out and smoking over a few days had made on Lana. She didn’t need any more clues that Lana had hopes, however vague, that something might develop.

Being a naturally aggressive and assertive sort, and having quite warmed to the idea of pleasure with a woman as they’d gotten to know each other, Cat hadn’t needed anything more to encourage her.

And so, while she smoked, she had unbuttoned Lana’s blouse and then pulled down her skirt. The eager but almost frightened look in Lana’s eyes was adorable, and even more so as the look in them turned slowly and inexorably toward lust and passion.

After that, a couple hours at least of serious playtime and five orgasms between the two of them.

Three for me, two for you, Cat spoke silently to Lana’s sleeping form, as she pulled out another cigarette, lit it, and began to blanket her new lover’s body in smoke again.

This time, Cat concentrated all the smoke around Lana’s face, and moved ever closer, inch by inch, until she was almost nose to nose with her. At that distance, it took only two more slow, thick exhalations for Lana’s eyes to flutter open and her mouth to form a groggy, “Whhuuuu?”

Then Cat kissed her, slowly and firmly with smoke in her mouth, and Lana sucked down the fumes and sucked on the tongue and moaned.

When their kiss broke, Lana was fully awake. A bit confused, but awake and slowly growing more horny as Cat smoked and kissed her and stroked her naked breasts and then her ass and then let her fingers trail through Lana’s rust-colored pubic hair.

“What’s up, Cat? What time is it?” she asked, just a hint of grogginess in her voice.

“Way early or way late depending on how you look at it,” Cat said. Then she gently pushed Lana back to lay on the bed and began blowing smoke across her chest, sucking at the woman’s nipples slowly. After a couple minutes, she moved on to the belly, and kissed and nipped at that flesh through clouds of tobacco smoke. Finally, she hovered over Lana’s pussy, blowing thick plumes over it but touching nothing with her fingers except Lana’s thighs.

The woman was writhing and whispering near-desperate pleas for more smoke. More touches. More kisses.

As Cat finished the cigarette, she lit a new one off the old, and descended upon Lana’s vulva, warm and wet lips meeting the tender skin there at the same time as thick smoke enveloped and stroked it. Cat’s tongue dipped inside, and then she lifted her head to look into Lana’s eyes. She blew smoke toward that lovely face and said, “I still owe you an orgasm to make us even.”

Lana’s eyes were full of gratitude, but Cat’s gaze didn’t linger there. She had more fragrant and darker places to fix her gaze, as she blew smoke and burrowed her face into Lana’s dripping cunt.

* * *

Looking up from the paperwork on her desk, Nicoletta watched as the man was led on the relatively long walk from the door of her office to her desk, her lovely receptionist Claire’s delicate hand just barely touching the man’s elbow to guide him. The office was huge enough that it took more than 10 seconds for them to reach her desk next to the enormous glass panes that gave Nicoletta an almost unobstructed view of roughly half of downtown Metropolis.

She smile warmly at the man, though in her mind she smiled more arrogantly, enjoying the trappings of power she had here. Not only a large office but one appointed with many very costly antiquities and pieces of art, not to mention a long, imposing desk and a leather chair that was easily twice as substantial—and probably five times more comfortable—than the chairs for visitors, one of which Claire guided the man to.

Good for people like you to know your place, and to realize, however subconsciously, who really calls the shots, Nicoletta mused.

Nicoletta said nothing and simply looked at the man, her elbows on her desk as she rested her lovely lips on steepled fingers with exquisitely manicured nails. She waited until Claire had left—and Claire knew under circumstances like this to exit more slowly than she had entered—to finally acknowledge the man with anything more than her eyes.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Prentiss,” she said finally. “To what do I owe the unexpected awkwardness of a visit from someone at the Metropolis Fair Employment Bureau?”

“Well, I see you want to cut straight to the point,” he answered. “I suppose that’s refreshing.” Prentiss sniffed at the air a bit, and frowned. “Looks like perhaps I should put in a call to my colleagues at the Occupational Health and Safety Department about smoking in a workplace.”

“Let’s stick to the topic you’re here for, why don’t we?” she said sweetly, but with an edge.

“To put it simply, we have a series of complaints about your company that, if true, put you in violation of the Fair and Safe Workplace Act…”

“Hold up,” she interrupted him. “Fairness?! I have a whole department of statisticians who monitor the hiring patterns at all our offices and facilities, look at the distribution of people throughout all the layers of hierarchy and compare that to current demographic data. With almost no exceptions, this company represents the gender, race, religious and every other category of the population to within a percentage point or two. We even try to represent lifestyles in a population-reflecting manner. The only two groups who probably aren’t well-represented here are anti-smokers—given how prominent the tobacco part of our business is—and animal rights people because of our food products division and the animal testing in our pharmaceutical group and other divisions.”

Nicoletta sat back in her chair, crossed her arms and looked Prentisss in the eye defiantly.

“As wonderful as that diatribe sounded, Ms. Teena…”

“Dr. Teena. I earned my Ph.D. credentials.”

“…Dr. Teena,” Prentiss relented. “As nice as that well-rehearsed, probably oft-repeated and I imagine even accurate portrayal of your fair hiring and promotion practices was, that’s not why I’m here.”

I already know what you’re here for—at least in general terms, though the specifics are what elude me, she thought. After all, Claire is very good about getting people to say or hint at things they ought not to—especially when I keep them waiting 20 minutes—and she keeps me well-apprised via texting and email from her desk. But I’d like to stall a bit to make sure we won’t have any problems later.

“Then why are you here?”

“Well, I don’t know why I’m here in your office, frankly, since I think your head of human resources could handle this, but as it happens, there are numerous complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace in this building, Ms.—I mean, Dr.—Teena.” The man shifted in his seat a bit, and ran one finger underneath the buttoned collar of his shirt as if it felt too tight.

“Complaints from whom and about whom?” she pressed.

“I won’t talk about who might be the perpetrators, as I cannot comment on and am not required to comment on investigations that are ongoing. As to who the complainants are, there are whistleblower laws that protect those identities, as well as other laws to protect victims’ identities until official charges are leveled.”

“Yes,” Nicolleta agreed, trying to piece things together in her mind as she talked and kept him occupied and distracted. “But whistleblower laws protect workers within the company who reveal information about misdeeds in their company. No one in this company has made any such claims; I know this to be true.”

“How can you possibly know…”

“I know my people.”

“This is a very large company; you…mmmm…can’t know everything that’s going on,” he countered, readjusting himself yet again in his chair.

“You’d be surprised,” she responded. “Also, this company has a very open policy when it comes to registering complaints without fear of repercussions. If there was sexual harassment, the victim or victims would have come to me directly or through Human Resources and I would deal with the problem.”

Granted, I would deal with it by ensuring that the offended party was either softened up in terms of their morals and inhibitions or, more likely, provide a more willing and very distracting person to get the harasser’s mind off the victim, Nicoletta mused silently. Except that it would be hard to find harassing workers—much less victims—in a place where I keep certain behaviors in check and regular employee training sessions keep people…open-minded.

“You can’t possibly…ummm…believe everyone trusts management to…uh…to do the right thing,” he retorted haltingly.

As she thought about recent workplace issues, Nicoletta was pretty sure she knew what was going on now. One of her newer hires among the mid-level execs had turned out to be very popular among both the men and the women. Employee orientation sessions were designed to surreptitiously encourage a little loosening of morals among new hires before they started, to help ensure they fit in. Apparently, this woman had been a veritable gold mine of sexuality with a ton of erotic potential buried deep down. Once she had been freed to let that out, she’d rapidly hooked up with a number of people, and distanced herself from a controlling boyfriend.

Unfortunately, that controlling boyfriend is rich and connected—though not smart enough to realize I’m far more connected, smarter and potentially vengeful—and I bet he’s the one throwing out the fake harassment charges, Nicoletta thought as she looked at Prentiss and noted the slight dilation of his pupils. The subtle slowing and deepening of his breath. Since I know none of my employees would scream sexual harassment, since almost all of them are equally guilty and innocent of it, someone has to be pushing this from outside my company’s walls.

There would be time enough to deal with the source of the problem; now she had to focus on the weapon he had unleashed. Disarm the boyfriend first by dealing with Prentiss, and then take the rich asshole down. The only question was whether to ruin the boyfriend who’d caused all this or turn him.

Such delicious dilemmas I’m able to enjoy in my position, she thought, as she pulled a long cigarette from a mahogany box on her desk.

“You’re not…er…going to…uh…smoke in here, are you?” Prentiss asked warningly but with an unsteady note in his voice.

“Why not?” Nicoletta asked with faux innocence.

“This is a workplace. There are…laws…against things like…umm…that.”

“This entire building is designed as a live-work space—did you know that, Mr. Prentiss?” she responded, playfully rolling the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger and licking her lips. “This office connects directly to the suites in which I live. Roughly 25% of my workers live in this building and have offices in or adjacent to their apartments. That rather blurs the line between workplace and living space, you see, and will make it quite hard for you to enforce anti-smoking laws except in spaces that are clearly designed for work only.”

“You’re splitting hairs…and…I’m not sure you should be lighting up,” he said weakly.

“Not sure? You’re not so demanding about it anymore, are you, Mr. Prentiss?” she cooed, and placed the filter to her lips teasingly. She saw a wavering in his eyes—a desire to contradict her but growing confusion as well. All hail odorless, colorless gases and subliminals in the subdued background music. No time for subtlety with this one, so he’ll probably be having dementia issues by his 60s with the concentration of chemicals in the air right now. With my cybernetically and nanotechnologically enhanced body, though, I’m safe as houses.

“Rules are…uh…rules,” he said.

“My company. My office. My rules,” she said, lighting up slowly and never releasing the confused yet challenging gaze of the man across from her. He seemed poised to open his mouth and complain. Instead he ended up inhaling the plume she sent his way, and he blinked, and closed his mouth.

“We really do need to discuss…the…ummmm…matter I came…”

“You came? So soon, Mr. Prentiss? Oh, I’m sorry, might that be sexual harassment? A pity you’re not an employee and really wouldn’t have a case. Instead, it’s just bawdy, smoky flirting,” Nicoletta said. “As I noted before, this case is baseless. I know it’s coming from outside the company, not within it.”

Prentiss leaned forward slightly to emphasize the words he was about to speak, and Nicoletta noted how he seemed slightly off-balance even sitting. She smiled and blew smoke in the air above his head, smiling even more as she watched his eyes roll upward slightly and a little dreamily for a few moments to watch the swirling smoke. “As I…said…before…Dr. Teena…I uh mmmmm…can’t see how you’d know that.”

“We’re like family here at Teena International,” she answered him with haughty authority, smoke spilling from her perfect lips. “I work my people hard but reward them accordingly. There is mutual respect. More than half of my workers work 10- to 15-hour days regularly on my behalf. They are paid well for it, they get great benefits, and they are allowed frequent breaks”—so many of them smoke breaks, of course, Nicoletta mused silently—“and they are afforded very generous vacation time and other amenities. Each floor even has several small sleeping rooms with very comfortable beds if they need a little catnap during their very busy days.”

Or if they need to have sex in those very well-soundproofed rooms to take off the edge in a hectic day or celebrate a victory in their work-related projects, she finished in her head, inhaling deeply and blowing the smoke toward Prentiss as she stood up and made her way over to his chair.

“I think I know who is causing me the inconvenience of your visit,” Nicoletta said, coming around behind Prentiss and running the back of her cigarette hand lightly across his cheek as she did, both her skin and her smoke stroking him delicately. “The question is: Do you?”

“I don’t…hhhhh…understand…nnnn…what you mean.”

“Do you know who is fabricating the complaints and thinking erroneously that he might be able to bribe certain of my employees to bring false charges?” Nicoletta whispered at his ear, her smoky breath warm on his neck. She grinned as she felt him shudder and let out an almost inaudible sigh.

“I…that is…”

“You can tell me, Mr. Prentiss,” she said warmly, the hand with the cigarette delivering a filter to her mouth as her other hand tickled lightly at his shoulder and chest through his suit coat. She filled her chest with smoke and blew it across the back of his neck, reveling in the sudden sigh he let out as the smoke swirled up and out to engulf his face. “Just between us. You know it’s the right thing to do; to tell me. If you know. If you did know, it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to keep that to yourself.”

“I shouuuuldn’t…”

“Oh, you should,” she said, blowing smoke slowly and thickly across his ear and toward his face.

“I’ll lose my job if I dooo,” he almost moaned.

“You’ll be there long enough to help me sort things out, Mr. Prentiss,” Nicoletta said softly. “And there will be time enough for me to secure you a job you’d love here if that’s the case.”

Of course, I could make you love any job I gave you, even if it was minimum-wage janitorial work—or perhaps making you be a human ashtray in one of the building’s many smoking lounges.

“Who’s trying to make my life difficult in already trying times?” she pressed, another cloud of smoke surrounding his head. She could hear his deep inhalation now as he tried to suck up all of it—the smoke that was complementing and enhancing the effects of the mind-bending gas flooding the area around her desk. It would take hours for the filtration systems to make the office safe for other visitors.

“Harrison Banchek,” Prentiss said softly.

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” she answered reassuringly and almost maternally. Indeed, the name sounded familiar—she recalled her new hire’s boyfriend had a unique-sounding name. “You’ve been such a good boy, Mr. Prentiss,” she added, stroking his head and coming around in front of him to blow smoke in his face.

“Thank you,” he said, clearly confused as to why he would say such a thing but also clearly in the throes of the wonderful sensations the smoke was weaving throughout his body, all of it flowing to his cock ultimately.

Nicoletta strolled to one of the other nearby guest chairs, pulled it near his, sat down and put her legs up on Prentiss’ lap as she put out her cigarette and prepared to light a new one.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked, wiggling her expensively shoe-adorned toes slightly.

“Please. Ohhhhh. Please smoke.” He was undoing her designer shoes without realizing it—at her subtle signal—and he was breathing the misty remains of her earlier smoke as if his very life depended on it.

“Good boy,” she said as she slowly lit and more slowly exhaled. “Now, let’s talk about any and all other things I might need to know about your office and any other issues it might have with me.”

As Prentiss began to massage the warm, damp, nylon-clad toes of his new mistress, he smiled dreamily and said, “Whatever you need to know…”

* * *

Toxine looked at the dead man on the bed, and sighed. “Yet another,” she said.

“I’ll have him removed,” Nicoletta said. “Like the others, he went with a smile, though.”

“We wouldn’t have such a string of corpses if you’d get me Flash now,” Toxine pointed out.

“True, but he’s the fastest man alive, Justine,” Nicoletta countered. “I need you to help Sarina secure that second side project, and then I need to get Wonder Woman in my clutches. Then we’ll have three of the most powerful heroes in our service, one or two of whom can help with Flash, along with Zatanna and hopefully Black Canary, assuming that you and Sarina can get her. If we try to get Flash now without all that help and he escapes, which is entirely likely, everyone will be on guard, and everyone will know who to watch for.”

“Sounds like a justification, Nicoletta.”

“Yes, but it’s also truth. I don’t get any pleasure from making you wait, Justine. I know you crave living flesh for your sexual gratification too much to settle for anything else, and I know you’d rather have someone you can love and have to love you, for decades to come. But…”

“…my needs continue and my desire grows without a partner…”

“…and your toxins grow and build with that unspent desire,” Nicoletta finished. “I am almost certain I can modify Flash so that his physiology, along with our technology, will allow him to satisfy you, bleed off your toxins, and do so for the duration. He’ll be your lover and your filter. In the meantime, others like this man will have to fill the gaps.”

“If you’re so confident that you can make the Flash sturdy enough to serve all my needs, why not just keep me sealed away from everyone until we catch him?”

“I’m confident, not foolhardy,” Nicoletta said. “I can make it so that Flash will be able to serve you over the normal course of things. If I let toxins build up in you for weeks and then give him to you, you might burn him out just like this latest lover.”

Toxine sighed. “All right, then, but I’d prefer to stop piling up corpses, no matter how enjoyable I can make their fates. I’m not so certain that your new heroes, with the exception of Superman maybe—since you’ve bent his will so much—will stand by you as allies or lovers if they know what we’re doing. Beth might even abandon you.”

“I know,” Nicoletta said. “Everyone thinks that we’ve stopped giving you men after our previous attempts to protect your lovers failed. But on the bright side, you’ve helped give some otherwise terminally ill men a nice exit who didn’t want to linger and waste away anyway, and you’ve given a few die-hard killers and sexually abusive creeps a much nicer end than the executions they deserved.”

“I wonder if such distinctions would be appreciated by these heroes of yours, without you needing to completely subvert their wills,” Toxine noted.

“Probably not,” Nicoletta said, “which is why it will stay our little secret. Because I want my two favorites to be as much themselves as I can leave them while still binding them to me, and not have to wipe them totally clean of their wills.”

* * *

Once Nicoletta had left, and the latest body was gone, Toxine got herself into a nice, meditative lotus position and focused her thoughts.

It took a while. She was agitated still, and impatient. She already knew all the things that Nicoletta had told her about the difficulties with netting Flash, of course, and she agreed with them mostly. Also, she would never let slip what they were doing right now and undermine her cousin’s plans. But at the same time, Nicoletta could forget other people’s needs, and so reminders were often in order.

I won’t allow her to wallow in pleasures with Green Lantern and then Wonder Woman and delay getting my Flash, Toxine thought. Everyone needs to get what they want, as soon as feasible.

Of course, part of the problem was going to be making Flash want what she wanted, Toxine considered. In some ways, though Nicoletta’s plans were complex and tricky, she had an advantage in leaning more toward seduction and love with her two prizes so that she could keep their real personalities mostly intact. She could work with the kinds of things those two heroes probably already valued, by twisting those values slightly.

Toxine, on the other hand, had to not only secure Flash’s devotion, but also make him solely fixated on her, and make sure he would desire sex as often as she did. Essentially, she had to make him comfortable with having what amounted to a full-time job as her sex toy.

Oh, he will love me, and unlike Nicoletta, it doesn’t matter to me if that love is from his soul or a result of totally enthralled neuroreceptors, Toxine thought. Such distinctions don’t really matter to me, and I have no problem being in total control. I don’t want a mindless automaton—he’s got to keep his personality—but I couldn’t care less whether he truly wants to be with me or simply thinks he does.

But that posed a challenge for her. Nicoletta’s drugs, in relatively small doses, would work well for Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, but the Flash would cycle them through his system too fast. And Nicoletta was also making subtle genetic changes to those in her thrall to ensure that her heroes couldn’t turn against her later. But Nicoletta couldn’t use those kinds of genetic modifications on Flash because of the many other genetic changes she was going to have to make to allow him to survive Toxine’s embrace indefinitely.

Nicoletta would provide Toxine with enough drugged Steampunks and other special cigarettes and cigarillos to do the job of arousing and controlling Flash, but as much as Toxine liked to smoke, she wanted her hands to be free for something other than constant chain-smoking—even if it was theoretically possible for her to make some extra arms for herself—and she didn’t want to have to work that hard just to keep Flash loyal.

I had assured Nicoletta that I could keep him under control, and I wasn’t sure how to do that, but now I am, Toxine mused. Now I can make my little pets. I understand my new body better. I’ve also figured out enough about my mind control chemicals now—and new ones I didn’t even know I could make—thanks to all these men sacrificed to my needs. No one died in vain. I now know exactly what to do.

The problem had always been what to do when she wasn’t going to be around Flash. Once she was fully stable, emotionally and physically, she’d probably need to get back to work in the labs. As much as she liked sex—adored it in fact, even more so than before she mutated—even she didn’t want to spend every hour of every day in such activities. Five to eight hours was quite enough.

Certainly, she could have Flash kept in a room being constantly pumped with one or more of Nicoletta’s chemicals, but as a long-term measure, that didn’t sit well with Toxine. Her lover needed to have her chemicals in him. She craved the idea of being inside him at all times, even when she wasn’t around.

Meditation and relaxation were always difficult for her, but at least with her having sated herself on this latest man, and purging herself of her most noxious toxins, she had some calmness of mind. It took Toxine an hour to get the right frame of mind, though. It took two more hours to extrude and reshape those parts of her body she needed for this task.

I never really had much of a maternal streak, anyway, Toxine considered. And there is no way that any fetus could survive in my body—or if it did, I don’t want to know what kind of creature it would turn out to be. And if I find myself wanting to raise a kid someday, I can adopt.

Toxine and Flash, sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-N-G…first comes his corruption, then comes marriage. Then comes super-kiddo in a super-carriage.

She giggled to herself at the ludicrous train of thought, wondering not for the first time how much of her sanity she had left behind in the chemical vat that had shaped both her and Vitriol, then looked down at the parts of her that she needed to work with, still attached to her by tiny umbilical strings, but not for much longer.

She pulled out a Steampunk cigarette, and heated up her fingertip to light it, then drew thick smoke through the faux-wooden filter, admiring the bronze-colored metallic-looking shaft, and blew the smoke—thick with extra nicotine and other chemicals for her pleasure—over the extruded tissue before her.

Ovaries and uterus and all the other stuff that men couldn’t boast in their reproductive systems, plus a few other tissues she could always regrow later, just to round things out. She willed the tissues together, homogenized their cellular structure as much as possible, then willed them into two separate little globes.

She smoked as she did it, to calm herself and center herself some more. In many ways, the hard part was over. She had removed the parts she needed, and prepared them. The next stage, programming and loading them, would be the easy part, actually, drawing on her powers more directly and on her thorough scientific knowledge of biology and chemistry.

Both masses of tissue would become her “pets.” Not thinking creatures, really, but alive and ambulatory. Something more than remote-controlled toys, but something less than animals. They would be her tools, to attach to Flash and feed him tiny but constant doses of her most potent mind control drugs to keep him hers forever; to keep him in the right state of mind both when he was with her and not. All she would have to do is have one of them take the “day shift” and one take the “night shift” and keep them healthy and loaded with her chemicals.

So much easier than trying to keep tabs on Flash constantly, she considered. And there will always be a little part of me with him, even when I’m not.

In the end, she smiled at her final results. She stroked them as if they were little housepets, then fed them each a long, tight stream of smoke from her Steampunk and watched them quiver ever so slightly. She very much liked the modifications Nicoletta had made to the cigarettes at her suggestion.

She was so proud of her designs, too. One of her little minions had eight soft, warm, spider-like legs and a tubular body. She’d call it Thing One. During the day and early evening, it would hug Flash’s balls gently, and massage them, while its body entered his anus and fed him her biochemical drugs like a suppository. And she could make it do other delicious things in there too to make his passions run hot. Then the other minion, Thing Two, which was a flatter, more oblong shape, with four little limbs and a needle-like proboscis. It would take the later nighttime and early morning shift, hugging the back of Flash’s neck and feeding Toxine’s essences to him while he slept, so that he could wake as in love with her as he had been when he lay down.

She’d test them first, of course, on whatever men Nicoletta would bring her between now and when the Flash was hers.

Toxine breathed deep of smoke, and then two more times before she exhaled a thick cloud across her bed. She slipped several fingers inside herself, and let them spread deep inside her as she widened and thickened them. As she rode her altered digits, she mentally started counting down the days when Flash would be hers—even if she didn’t really know the exact number it would be.

* * *

“I have a surprise for you, Nicoletta,” Annabeth Shields said as she entered her mistress’ office and closed the door behind her, locking it. “The kind of surprise that may just make you want to let me be on top tonight, over you and Hal Jordan.”

Nicoletta grinned wickedly, thinking to herself how nice it was that Beth was warming up to Hal, and she lit up a cigarette, leaning back in her leather office chair and crooking one finger in a “come hither” motion. Beth came over and sat in Nicoletta’s lap, breathing deeply of the smoke blown her way.

“You think so, eh?” Nicoletta said. “What kind of prize could you be offering that would make you think that?”

Before Beth could answer, Nicoletta’s fingers dipped under the woman’s skirt, gratified to find that no panties were in her way, and began to massage the blonde-fringed vulva.

Beth moaned a little, but squared her shoulders and looked at Nicoletta with a mix of girlish innocence and supreme haughtiness. “Why, mistress, I bring you news of Captain Marvel’s secret identity.”

“Oh, my,” Nicoletta said, and let one finger press just beyond the lips of Beth’s cunt, to begin massaging the damper, softer flesh there. “That is good news.”

Captain Marvel had been one of the stickiest problems facing Nicoletta. Probably as powerful as Superman, maybe more so in some ways, but Clark didn’t know who Captain Marvel was, and it seemed no one really did. Furthermore, Captain Marvel boasted not only tremendous power—and from an apparently mystical source, no less—but also possessed a maddeningly goody-goody optimistic streak that seemed even more Boy Scout-like than Superman’s.

Having a hero like that still loose and not under her control was unacceptable. There were already enough problems posed by such powerful heroes as Martian Manhunter, Firestorm, Plastic Man and Captain Atom without having to worry about Captain Marvel. But at least Nicoletta had discovered the secret identities of those other four through Lois and Clark, and would figure out how to neutralize their threats or at least minimize them.

“I just got back from my lunchtime reprogramming of our lovely fishnet-wearing sorceress Zatanna, and in doing some mild debriefing of her at the same time, I tripped across the fact that she, like a few other mystical heroes, knew who Captain Marvel was, though they didn’t share that knowledge with the other heroes,” Beth said proudly, but with a gasping little hitch in her voice as Nicoletta filled the air around her with smoke, and her pussy with three nimble, sticky fingers.

“And who is the Big Red Cheese, then?” Nicoletta asked.

“Ahhhh…Mmmmm…Billy Batson, mistress.”

“Billy? Not the most manly name.”

“Billy Batson….oooohhhh…is a teen-age boy. Fourteen years old, give or take.”

“Really?” said Nicoletta, craning her neck to give Beth a smoky kiss, and adding a fourth finger to the digital fucking of her lover. “That’s odd.”

“He says…oooooo…um…he says a magic word, ‘Shazam,’ and that turns him into a full-grown, super-powered man…ummmm…ahhh…although he still has the idealistic principles of the good boy he really is.”

For several minutes, Nicoletta was silent, as she smoked and diddled Beth. Beth tried to keep her moans subdued, knowing that her mistress was thinking.

“Oh, I have a most wicked little idea, Beth.”

“Please, mistress, tell it to me to make me come harder. Please…and then I’ll lick out your dripping pussy in this smoky office while you tell me again.”

“Why not, dear Beth? Why not?”

* * *

Two days after the revelation about Captain Marvel, Nicoletta Teena had her 15-year-old niece, Alexandra, in her office, fresh off a plane from France. After about 10 minutes or so of small talk, the younger Teena decided to cut to the chase.

“OK, I love you, I’m glad to be here, blah blah blah,” Alexandra said, rolling her eyes. “We both know you’re not all emotionally gooey and you haven’t missed me that much and you were really fucking mysterious on the phone about why you wanted me to visit the old company HQ all of a sudden.”

“A little mystery is good in life,” Nicoletta said, pointedly not contradicting her niece, and quietly proud that she was already shaping up to be a credit to the family, unlike her father, Nicoletta’s brother, who publicly shunned the family business while privately benefitting from its wealth.

“A little smoke is good in life, too, and they don’t let you do it on airplanes anymore, and I can get the good cigarettes in Europe. May I?”

“It’s family tradition, your father being one of the few exceptions. Please,” Nicoletta said, taking out a cigarette of her own and lighting up. “But please don’t denigrate your own family’s cigarettes by suggesting those pretentious European ones are any better.”

“I call ‘em like I see ‘em, Aunt Nicky,” Alexandra said, cigarette bouncing between her lips as she spoke, and then she lit her own, exhaled a cloud into Nicoletta’s own, and slumped in the chair in a most unladylike fashion.

“That’s terrible for your posture, dear,” Nicoletta said.

“And yet you encourage me to smoke,” Alexandra said with a little chuckle. “Ironic or hypocritical? Oh, how you corrupt the morals of young folk.”

“Only the ones I like, Alex,” Nicoletta responded with a smile. “And I was hoping I might enlist you to corrupt the morals of another youth.”

That got Alexandra to sit up straight, as she took another drag of her cigarette and gave her aunt a long, lingering gaze. “Oh? Really?”

“Your father may not know it…or at least not want to admit it,” Nicoletta said, “but you know I’m grooming you to have a place in the company once you get through university.”

“Jesus, that’s like…what? Six years away? Can’t you fast-track me or something? Blood being thicker than water and all that jazz.”

“More like eight years, Alex. I think a master’s degree would serve you well. But I do have something you can do for me—and the company—now that would get you a nice little allowance and bank account that your father wouldn’t know about.”

“OK, that’s even better than a fast-track to a cushy job,” Alexandra admitted. “What do you have in mind?”

“I’ve trusted you with a lot of secrets, Alex, and this is a big one. I need you to keep it,” Nicoletta said. In truth, she wasn’t worried. While she tended not to mess with the minds of family members much, she really did see a lot of potential in Alexandra, and had taken her under her wing. But at the same time, she knew that teen-agers weren’t always good at controlling themselves or holding their tongues, and so she’d planted plenty of post-hypnotic triggers in the girl’s mind that would keep her lips sealed about certain things.

“You can trust me, Aunt Nicky,” Alexandra said earnestly, almost breathlessly. “What do you need me to do?”

“Help take down one of the most powerful superheroes around.”

Alexandra’s eyes widened at that. “Well, I heard Superman is already missing in action. And why do you need a superhero taken down?”

“I’m talking about Captain Marvel, dearest. And I need more than one superhero taken down, as I’m trying to reshape the world.”

“That’s a big favor to ask of a teen girl,” Alexandra said, smoking almost furiously now in a combination of excitement and fear. “And I thought LexCorp was the company that tries to take over the world.”

“I said reshape the world, Alex, and in some rather specific ways. As for the favor, you know all too well the kinds of chemicals I can put into cigarettes, and the kinds of ways I can ensure that you’re protected from their effects, but your quarry isn’t.”

“Captain Marvel? Shit!” Alexandra put out her cigarette, lit another, and smoked for a minute more before she asked, “How much of an allowance? And for how long?”

Nicoletta wrote a number on a Post-It note, held it up and said, “This much, and for the next eight years, give or take, until you finish all your schooling and come work for me for even more money.”

The teen whistled sharply and took a deep breath. “What do I need to do?”

“You need to transfer to a nice private school in Fawcett City, my dear, and get to know a nice, wholesome young teen-ager named Billy Batson who doesn’t live far from it. You need to smoke for him, Alex. You need to seduce him. You need to make him wholly yours, make sure he never says the word ‘Shazam’ ever again and never wants to. And you need to make me and your father proud by getting very good grades at school.”

Nicoletta paused, blew smoked toward Alexandra, and smiled. Her niece smiled back.

“Daddy?”

“Don’t worry about him. You’ll be watched over by someone he knows is very wholesome and trustworthy at our Fawcett City offices. Fortunately for you and I, this very wholesome and trustworthy person can be put into a fugue state with a special codeword, so that you can come and go as you please. You’ll have to be prim and proper around him, though, most of the time so that your father doesn’t pull the plug on your new plans for schooling.”

Alexandra took a nice, calm, slow drag on her cigarette, looked at her aunt slyly through the haze of smoke between them, and said, “I’m thinking I’m going to like Fawcett City even better than Paris.”

(To read the next chapter, click here)

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By the way, if you want to see one of the old Nick O’Teen television commercials (as well as my basis for Superman having been so violent with the villain as to cripple him), just check this Flash [.flv] video out: Superman_versus_Nick_o_Teen_2