My Chinese Shopgirl

Anywhere you go in the world, you will find Chinese people. They're entrepreneurs, hard workers and obviously not afraid to travel and start from scratch. We may wonder why so many of them have to leave their own country to prosper, but that's another matter. And that's if "prosper" is what they do; most of the small businesses show little sign of success or wealth. They appear to tick along, providing work for their families and a low but acceptable standard of living.

Having just moved to a city in northern Spain, I was inexplicably surprised to find that many of the little supermarkets were run by Chinese people even there.

There was a household supplies store in a back street that sold everything from umbrellas and bathmats to screwdrivers and toys. No food and drink, but everything else. It was small and cramped, or at least it appeared to be small because there were so many shelves crammed in, with dangerous little changes of floor height and tight corners. I found it fascinating just hanging around in there to get out of the rain, because January was a bleak month in that area. I would look aimlessly at the electrical extension cables and adaptors, and then take the next aisle and find underwear. That is where I was one day, trying not to look like a pervert while checking out rows of red lacy bras and panties, when I became aware of one of the shop assistants siting on the floor, tidying up a bottom shelf where jigsaw puzzles were kept. She was a typical Chinese shopgirl: early 20s, short, thin to the point of skinny, with medium length straight black hair and a pale, unhealthy-looking complexion. But this one had a ready smile and sparkling eyes. The way she was sitting, with her back to me, her sweater had parted from her jeans to expose a chilly, milky patch of skin and the waistband of yellow knickers.

She had turned to look at me, swiveling her spine and neck in the effortless way that young people can, but which I, at 41, was starting to find difficult. She caught me looking at her rear triangle and turned herself on the dusty wooden floor, so she was facing me. She pointed at the bras and pants and said something in Chinese-accented Spanish, which I didn't understand. I apologized and asked if she spoke English. She stood up. "A bit," she said, and waved an arms at the underwear. "For wife?"

"I'm just... looking," I replied, feeling like the sicko she probably thought I was.

"She like me?" she asked. "Bigger?"

"Like you," I lied. She picked a pair of big, high, old-lady knickers from the white rack and held them against herself.

"Yes?"

"Thank you but no,' I said, uncomfortable, and made my way quickly out of the shop, past the girl's suspicious family and out into the street. I was taken aback, not so much by her boldness or by the fact that we had been discussing underwear, but simply the fact that one of these people, who normally didn't so much as glance at you, had engaged me in conversation. I felt foolish and pathetic, a grown man reduced to the level of a blushing teenage boy. That was the last time I would go in there.

After wandering around aimlessly for half an hour I went back to my apartment and sat on the settee. She kept coming back into my thoughts: her eyes, her smile, her confidence, her yellow knickers. But was it confidence? Was it youthful innocence? Or wasn't it unusual in her culture for two people of different ages and genders to have a little verbal exchange about what was, after all, only cotton and lycra. Maybe it was my old-fashioned upbringing, my repressed nature, that had made it so difficult. I took a handful of tissues - which I had bought at that very store the previous week - and masturbated into them. Maybe the girl had touched this box, maybe she had wondered what people used them for. Maybe she and her sisters and her mother thought men like me were seedy, getting kicks from their little store and scuttling home to wank over them.

The next morning I had forgotten the rough edges of the incident and found myself thinking about the girl in an adult way. There was nothing wrong with me talking to her. She clearly wasn't afraid of me; maybe I could teach her English. That was, after all, what I did for a living. What I couldn't do was ask her out. There was the language barrier, for a start, and the age difference, not to mention the fact that the Chinese seemed to keep themselves to themselves. They would integrate into the business community, but not the social fabric.

So, I could propose private English classes. Or I could forget the whole game, the subterfuge, the pretence. If I have learned one thing about women in my long and inglorious history of relationships and one-offs, it is that they have the same urges as men do; they just have different considerations when it comes to doing something about it. We ask the questions - they give the answers.

I marched into the store late that afternoon after several changes of mind and had to slow myself down to normal browsing pace. As it was, they probably thought I was in there too often. Maybe I was a shoplifter. I knew my girl wouldn't be doing the jigsaws again, but that was where the underwear was, so I was drawn inexorably down that aisle. She wasn't there. I scoured the whole store and didn't see her. I based myself by the kitchen utensils and was looking at the potato mashers when I heard a toilet flush and the hiss of a water tap and then there she was, coming out of the storeroom. Same sweater and jeans. I wanted to look at her knickers, just to see if she had changed them, but I was ashamed of myself for such a thought, both prurient and insulting.

She ignored me, breezing past the kitchen aisle. Then, as I was wondering whether I would ever need one of those hammers with a medieval pointy metal face for beating the toughness out of meat, she came up the aisle from the other end. She walked right up to me and stretched past me to reach something. As she did so, her hip touched mine and neither of us flinched. She apologized and put a hand on my wrist. I put my other hand on hers and gave it a little squeeze that was both meaningless and full of unspoken lust. She pulled me towards the storeroom and closed the door, then led me through right to the back, to a musty room full of blankets and pillows. She bent over so that her stretched crotch and ass were exposed to me save for a couple of layers of fabric. Then she stood up straight and looked at me, right into my eyes. I put my arms around her and we kissed. She closed that door too and flicked the latch across.

Then she undid the button at the top of her jeans. Just that. I did the same but lowered the zip a couple of inches. We moved together into a clinch, each fiddling with the other's jeans as we kissed. She was warm and angular, not much flesh on her bones but plenty of blood flowing through her lusty female body. My jeans hit the floor with a thud, and she knelt and sucked my cock. It was a guileless, almost innocent performance, as if she thought it was the most natural thing in the world, which of course it is, if you strip away the layers of naughtiness and embarrassment in which man and woman have wrapped our sexual activities.

My Chinese shopgirl simply sucked me, and when she looked up, it wasn't with the unspoken conversation that usually races between giver and receiver. She was simply saying she was ready to move on. She stood again and kissed me, then skillfully extracted herself from her jeans and underwear and leaned over so that her bits were looking at me again, but this time unobstructed. She bent right over so that her natural, unshaven pussy and its little mussel-like lips were inviting me. I knelt, as she had done, and got my face in her crotch. She was salty, spicy, with a trace of vinegar, as if her crotch were a dish on her menu, available for my consumption. And consume her I did, lapping at her and sucking her juices. As I did so, she whimpered quietly in the faux-reluctant way. The whimpers turned to groans and then a growl as I moved up a little and licked her asshole. She muttered to herself in Chinese and then spoke English.

"Fuck me," she ordered. I got to my feet as best I could with my jeans like shackles around my ankles. I plunged my cock not her steamy, demanding cunt and loved the feeling of it, small, soft and delicate, as it clung to my rod. I pumped her gently and then more urgently and in a matter of moments I was cumming uncontrollably. But she was cumming too, so that was fine. I flooded her vagina with my semen and held her close for a few seconds. When I stepped back my stuff hit the carpet with a splat. She giggled and fished in her pocket for a tissue.

As we dressed and composed ourselves, she gave me a shy smile and a polite peck on the lips. She opened the doors, checked that the coast was clear and waved me off into the shop and out, past an unconcerned brother and sister, into the street.