Author's note: This is the first story I've posted to this site in some years, but since I long ago forgot my old password, I'm using a new but related name.
All characters are at least 18 years old. This is pure fiction, although as with most of my stories, it draws on personal experience. All background described is both real, and accurate.
The story stands as it is, but is intended as part of a longer work, some of which has been written. Your response to it will in part help determine whether it continues.
Embedded dialogue is used, instead of quotation marks. This gives dialogue more reality in my view. It is standard in much French and modern Scots and Australian fiction, and is used by such literary giants as Cormac McCarthy, so should present no problem to literate US readers. This is after all 'Literotica', not 'Porn for the illiterate'.
All comments, however critical, are very welcome, as are personal messages. It helps me write better if I know how readers find my work.
*****
He eased himself back to consider the girl more carefully. And think about the question she had unexpectedly asked him. Kamaljit had been volunteering in the charity shop for some months, but until May it had only been at weekends; she was a final year school student, and had been working hard for her exams, hoping to gain admission to the university course she wanted. Now exams and schooldays were over, so she was a more frequent volunteer. This was the third shift on which they'd worked together.
She was slight, newly eighteen, short and slender. Beautiful in ways for which he had no appropriate words in either English or Scots. Like many other women with origins in the Indian subcontinent, her face was slightly hirsute, a fact of which she seemed unhappily self-conscious. Almost every time he looked her in the eye, her hand rose automatically to cover the few wee black hairs on her upper lip. He didn't understand this; she was just lovely, in ways only girls of Indian heritage can be.
He glanced at the book before him which had occasioned her question: 'Helen & Desire', by Alexander Trocchi. He had just purchased it in the shop in which they worked together. He was interested in Scottish literature; knew that Trocchi was an almost forgotten author from the nineteen-fifties, and despite his surname, firmly in the Scots literary tradition. He was delighted to have found this rare treasure of erotica on the shelves of the Oxfam second-hand bookshop on the edge of Glasgow University's large campus. And was disconcerted by Kamaljit's question.
She'd heard of Trocchi from her literature teacher; wanted to know what the book was about. The till was quiet; a few folks were browsing the shelves, so right now there was no reason he couldn't answer her, although a diversion would have been welcome to him. He really didn't want to get into a discussion about erotic literature with an exquisitely attractive Asian teenager many years his junior. So he dissembled:
- It's about... a girl's first sexual explorations. I bought it because it's both unique, and something of a rarity, and I'm interested in Scottish literature.
Then he had a thought... Kamaljit's an intellectual and most attractive girl, drawn to literature, and at an age of burning curiosity about sexual matters:
- If you're curious about it, do you want to borrow it? I won't read it for another week or so. It's less than a couple of hundred pages, so it won't take you long.
Her hand rose to cover her lip, but neither hand nor her darker skin could conceal the blush which suffused her face. And this time, her upper arm rose so he could see the wisps of black hair at her oxter - she was wearing a sleeveless top on a day uncharacteristically warm for the west of Scotland:
- Oh... could I really? Borrow it? - Her voice faltered - It... does sound... interesting. Her voice was educated Glasgow Scots, with barely a trace of the characteristic Indian accent to which he was accustomed; most of the Asians he'd met before were first generation immigrants.
- Sure, put it in your bag now if you want, so you don't forget it?
But at that moment she was distracted by a customer asking a question, so the book remained on the shelf behind the counter where he'd placed it. Then they were both busy; it was Saturday, and the West End Festival had started, so there were plenty of customers. They barely had a chance to speak until the shop closed, and they were waiting for the manager to clear the till. Kamaljit was fixing her voluminous dark hair ready to go when he remembered the book. He picked it up, and when her hair was sorted to her satisfaction, he handed it to her:
- Don't forget this!
She glanced at the manager, but the woman was by now preoccupied with the till:
- Oh... thank you Sandy. See you next week.
Her blush was just delightful. He hoped she would indeed find the book interesting. And arousing.
His diary wasn't so busy during the next few days that he could forget about the engaging girl's literary-sexual interests. When she returned the book to him, he wanted to be able to discuss it with her, should she so wish. So one evening, he borrowed a copy from a friend. And immersed himself in it. Wondering as he read, and became aroused, what effect it was having on his new young Sikh friend. Would it get her cunt wet? It was very brutal in places. But that had been the life of the girl the strange author had sought to portray.
Well, she had it now; if it aroused her, it aroused her... He was certain, from her face, forearms, and his brief glimpse of the oxter growth, that her cunt was delightfully, blackly hairy. His cock rose at the thought of her driven by what she read, to play with her black bush and the beautiful cunt it concealed. He knew his thoughts were inappropriate, and this excited him further.
*****
He didn't share another shift with her till the following Saturday. She was already there when he arrived; having hung her wet rain-jacket in the staff area she was fussing with her hair. She blushed when he entered, and was uncharacteristically nervous when he joined her at the till to start their shift. He understood why; she was embarrassed that he knew she had been reading erotica. The best thing he could do was behave normally. There was no reason between them why he should appear in any way concerned.
Maybe the normality of his behaviour reassured her. After more than an hour during which they had both been dealing with customers, she relaxed with him. Then the custom thinned, and when they were both, for the first time that afternoon, free for a wee while, he started chatting. But very deliberately not about the book. He was of course most interested in the effect it had had on her, but he wasn't going to ask about that. Yet. So he enquired about when she expected to have her exam results, which would determine whether she had gained a place on the university course she wanted. He knew that was the question weighing most heavily on her mind.
She smiled broadly, no doubt relieved that he didn't mention the book. Explained that she'd sat most of her Highers in her fifth year, and was only waiting on the results of the one she had just completed at the end of her sixth year. She only needed a 'B' pass in it to have her entry to Glasgow University in September confirmed; even in the arts faculty it had fairly stringent entry requirements. It was, after all, the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world. And yes, she responded to his question, she was fairly confident she'd get the pass she needed; she already had five 'A's. So she wasn't biting her nails.
