All Ports in a Storm

Of course, I didn't know anything about the typhoon until a couple of hours before it hit. Sure, the girl who always liked to practice her English on the bus had told me about the 'big rain' coming tonight, but apart from remembering to bring an umbrella on the journey back from the office, I hadn't paid it any further mind. I spent the whole of the afternoon in my cubicle in the middle of our large open-plan office and it was only when I started to notice my colleagues heading home an hour earlier than normal that I found out what was happening. This was common enough. During the six months that I'd spent working in China, I'd been in a near-constant state of obliviousness to most of what was going on around me.  

By the time I got off the bus, the winds were starting to pick up though the rain hadn't yet begun in earnest. I battled the elements as I made my way up the tree-lined street that led to my apartment. I lived on the edge of town in a newly built development project and, while my apartment was spanking new, the gated community had yet to develop much of an actual 'community'. Half the apartments were still either empty or in the process of being decorated and there were another two blocks to the east and north that were still being built.  

As I turned into my road, I waved to Mr. Liang, the noodle-shop owner who was busy stacking the plastic tables and chairs onto his little three-wheeled electric cart from their usual place in the middle of the road. 

"No food?" I asked him in my broken Chinese. He moved his hand in a motion that indicated he was closed and then pointed to the sky.

In reply, I put my hand to my stomach feigning hunger, and said, "My home has no food. What to do?"

It made sense. His shop constituted the first in a line of concrete structures, no bigger than a one-car garage, with the others mostly vacant. A heavy storm could presumably do some serious damage to it. The place did not even have its own electricity. Instead, an extension cord ran from who knew where into his shop, powering the lights and fans. The noodles themselves were cooked using big gas canisters which, when they needed to be replaced would be rolled along the floor from the back of his cart. They were the best I'd ever tasted.

I had nothing in the apartment -- possibly a bag of frozen carrot and egg dumplings if I was lucky. If I'd have known about the typhoon, I'd have stocked up, but now it was essential that I get home as soon as possible. The app on my phone suggested that the typhoon wouldn't hit my region directly, but things were likely to get bumpy. As a typical bachelor, I mostly ate outside: at Mr Liang's when I wanted something simple, or else somewhere in town if I wanted to broaden my horizons. I was probably his best customer, my only real competition for that title were some of the construction workers who occasionally dropped by. From what I'd been able to ascertain from practising my rudimentary Chinese, he'd been one of the villagers before the ever-expanding city had swallowed the village up. He'd gotten a fairly reasonable settlement for his land, which he'd squirrelled away for a rainy day, but it was not in the local character to retire early even when you could afford to and so he'd expended the minimum possible capital to set up an ad-hoc business with his grand-daughter.

Xiao Ting had dragged me into her grandfather's restaurant on my first full day in China. I probably would have gotten around to trying it sooner or later - I was pretty adventurous and it was the only ready food within a half-kilometre radius of my home. The city I was working in was not one that hosted many foreign visitors and her eyes had grown wide when she first saw me. She'd immediately rushed out of the shop, grabbed me by the arm, and insisted I try a free bowl.  It had been made very clear that I wasn't allowed to say no, but, having taken one look at her, I'd decided I might have a certain amount of appetite after all. Though, obviously, I put up some token resistance, so as not to appear too keen.

Xiao Ting was short, even by Chinese standards, and though she was plump enough that her father called her 'Little Fatty' as a term of endearment, a lot of the extra weight was on her hips and chest. This gave her a figure that was very noticeable regardless of how she dressed, and she seldom dressed to hide it. I'd been surprised when I'd arrived by all the short skirts and loose tops, but this far south people dressed for the sweltering summer and modesty be damned. I'd often found myself enjoying both the taste of her grandfather's spicy noodles and the sight of her well-stuffed dumplings at the same time.

On that first day, we communicated mostly with smiles and nods. Since then my Mandarin had improved significantly, though I struggled with the local dialect which was practically a different language. Like a lot of mainland Chinese, she'd studied English at school for nearly a decade, but struggled to produce anything more complicated than a 'hello'. She was delighted that I spoke enough of her language for us to be able to engage in rudimentary communication. She'd told me that she was twenty-one, though with the bizarre way the Chinese counted age that could actually mean as young as nineteen. I wasn't sure about her parents, they obviously weren't in the picture, but I felt my Chinese currently lacked the sensitivity I'd need to ask about them properly. I'd gotten the impression that they had the nest egg saved that would have allowed her to go to university, but she hadn't had the grades. As such, a husband was probably somewhere in her close future, but she didn't currently have a boyfriend. I'd have volunteered for that role myself, but the language barrier and the fact that a casual relationship with a foreigner probably wouldn't help her long-term prospects had made me wary.

I wondered where Xiao Ting was today. Usually, she would come and go with her grandfather. He never seemed to let her out of his sight for very long. Perhaps he had asked her not to come in such bad weather. He could be very protective of her. She, on the other hand, could be a little vain. Maybe she hadn't wanted to mess up her hair.

I went into my apartment building. I'd been shocked the first time I'd been shown the place the company was renting for me. The stairwell was a mess, not yet fully painted a year after opening, and the tiles were already partially cracked. Every week someone new came around when I was out and slapped a brightly-coloured and impossible-to-remove sticker for lock-smiths on everyone's door. But that seemed to be a universal rule of China - little attention was ever paid to the common spaces, but inside, the apartment was actually very nicely presented, as were all the neighbours' that I'd visited in my time here.

I put my bag down on a chair, went through into the bedroom, and quickly gave my hair a once-over with the hair dryer. My jacket had protected my clothes from the worst of the rain, so I didn't need to change. I went through to the kitchen and checked the cupboards and fridge. It was exactly as bad as I'd expected. I had half a tomato, an almost untouched tub of margarine, some dried noodles, and the remains of a bag of cucumber-flavoured crisps that had been bought earlier in the week out of a morbid curiosity that was sated after a single bite. I guessed I'd just have to go hungry until the storm blew over.

I powered up my laptop, activated my VPN, and stuck a film to watch on while I munched the crisps. They now tasted stale as well as unpleasant. A few minutes later the rain started in earnest, battering the sides of the glass of the covered balcony. The winds were now playing the stairwell like a flute. My heavy security door was solid, but the frames of my windows rattled. I ignored the sounds, much as I ignored my growing hunger, and returned my attention to the movie.

About five minutes later, with the storm in full swing, there came a knock on the door. I was surprised. The neighbours occasionally called round to try and communicate something helpful to me in a friendly but usually incomprehensible way, or else just push some dumplings or a bag of mooncakes into my hand. I could really have used a moon cake right then. I'd even have eaten round one of the ones that had salted egg in the middle. I opened up the door.

Xiao Ting stood there with a bag full of takeaway under each arm. "Special delivery," she announced proudly.

God, she was a lifesaver! I hurried her in. She looked around my apartment full of curiosity. She'd never been up here before. "Very nice, very comfortable," she said. In truth, there wasn't much to see. I hadn't really bothered to get anything to make it homelier and it only contained the bare essentials I needed to live here. She dumped the bags on the low table in front of the sofa.

"Look at you, you're..." I started. Then I realized I didn't know the wordsoaked. "It's raining," I finished, indicating her clothes.

"Yes, big rain," she agreed, as always dumbing down her language for me. She peeled off a see-through plastic poncho that had been her main defense against the rain. It clearly hadn't worked as even the lower layers were completely drenched as was her hair.

"That's a lot of food," I said, pointing at the bags.

"Yours," she said indicating the first one and then, "Mine," to the second one.

"Thank you very much," I said, repeating one of the first rote phrases I'd learned in China.

Okay, so this was to be a dinner date. One that it wouldn't be easy for either of us to run out on. What was she playing at?

"Make yourself at home," I said. 

"Okay," she replied. She must have taken the phrase as more than a pleasantry as she suddenly moved with purpose, picking up a bath towel I'd put out to dry on the balcony.

I expected her to wipe her face with it. Instead, she pulled off her soaked sweater over her head. Her plump breasts jiggled back into place in her bra as she disrobed. "Shower," she announced heading into my bathroom. She hadn't quite gone through the door, but she already unhooked her bra and pulled it off and I got just a glimpse of side nipple as she disappeared.

I had a feeling tonight was going to be a lot of fun.

I heard the shower water start and a few seconds later the refrain of a Chinese song that I didn't recognize started up. I wondered if my move was just jumping straight in the shower with her. Somehow, I doubted I even needed a move. Xiao Ting clearly had plenty for both of us. Still, I waited a minute and then gently opened the bathroom door. "Can I get you anything?" I asked.

She pulled open the frosted shower door. If she wasn't going to be shy, neither was I. "Can I get you anything?" I repeated poking my head around.

There she was, completely naked and wet apart from a towel around her hair. She had the detachable shower head in her hand and was obviously working round her body area by area, rather than just standing under the main spray. She stood tall and straight on, not hiding her nudity at all. She had large round breasts with big puffy nipples. As my eyes wandered lower, her figure went in and then out again, to those big round thighs. Between her legs was a small delicate mound of pubic hair, not yet completely flattened out by the shower water. She was a short girl but with strong, thick thighs. She watched me watching her.

"Soap," she said after allowing me ample time to get a good look. I entered the bathroom and, rather than give her my own bar that was nearly completely worn through, reached under the sink and got her a new one.

"Thanks," she said and then pulled the shower door closed again.

"You're welcome," I said, standing there not quite sure what to do. I'd been seconds away from joining her. I considered, for just a millisecond that it was all a cultural misunderstanding and all this was somehow perfectly normal here, then rejected it out of hand. The Japanese apparently sometimes did mixed-sex bathing. Communist China most definitely did not. This was bad girl behaviour.

"Do you need some help in there?" I asked hopefully.

A moment later the door opened again and she said, "Maybe later. You go and wait outside, please."

I returned to the living room bewildered. I sat on my couch and waited. She was clearly one of those girls who could take a mystifyingly long time to shower. Even if I had watched her, I bet, I would have had little idea of what she was actually doing with the time. The anticipation was killing me. I considered eating my noodles, I was certainly hungry enough, but it seemed rude to start without her.

Eventually, the shower stopped. Eventually, I heard her come out and go straight into my bedroom. A second later, I heard the hair dryer start to blow. Eventually, even that stopped. I waited some more.

Finally, I got up and, gently knocking on the door, went into my own bedroom. I was grateful that I'd done a bare minimum tidy-up over the weekend. "Are you ready to eat?" I asked as I entered.

Xiao Ting was lying under the covers. Her clothes were hanging over a chair.

"No. Let's fuck now. We can eat later. Then we can fuck again."

I felt the best answer to that suggestion was to pull my shirt off and drop my trousers. Xiao Ting watched me hungrily from her place in bed. She could clearly see enough through my boxer shorts that she gave me a big smile and a thumbs up.

I left my boxers on until I'd climbed under the sheets and then whipped them off. There we were, the two of us, side by side. I lay on my side to face her.

"You're very beautiful," I said, trying to inject at least a minimum level of romance into the encounter.

"Yes," she said. "Your cock is very big."

She used the Chinese word for cock which also has the meaningchicken. It made me smile. Why, yes, my chicken is very big. I wondered how much she meant it. I was also kicking myself for not having spent more time learning the all-important sex words. If I referred to herpussy, or hercat, or herkitten, would I just get blank stares in return?

I was just about to lean in for a kiss when her phone went off. 

It was her grandfather. She rolled her eyes and a ten-minute call in fast Mandarin ensued. My language skills were nowhere good enough to keep up but I caught a few words. Firstpengyou said a few times - friend -- I doubted I was the friend she was talking about and a few seconds later I heardXiao Meng - Xiao was an honorific for young ladies. No doubt she was lying about where she was trapped in the storm. Her grandfather didn't appear to be pleased, but there was little he could do but blame her for not coming home earlier. As she talked, with her body twisted away from me, I snuck a hand onto her thighs and then slowly up to her rear cheeks. She squirmed a little, but it didn't interrupt her talking. 

After what seemed like an interminable wait, she finally hung up the call. Immediately she turned to me. "Are you still hard?"

"Yes," I said. I was.

"I'll check," she said and her head suddenly disappeared beneath the covers. I felt a hand push my torso down on the bed and without any warning, I was suddenly being blown.

My God, that girl knew her way around a penis. There was no build-up, no teasing -- she went from naught to a hundred miles an hour instantly, taking me with an intensity my most enthusiastic girlfriend had only approached when I was moments away from coming. Having reached maximum revs, she stayed there. And the noise! There were no moans, it was all slurps and grunts as she worked. Every so often she would stop, lean over the bed, and spit the mixture of pre-cum and saliva onto the hard floor. 

Without warning she stopped, announced, "Okay, enough," and lay herself down on the bed pulling her legs up and apart till her ankles were vertical to her hips. It was probably just as well, there was only so much of that a man could take. I rolled over and brought my face level with her crotch.

Her body tensed for a moment. She hadn't been expecting that. Maybe she thought we were going straight into fucking. Maybe her boyfriends didn't normally return the favour. It was essential that I took a break before entering her. She clearly had expectations of my prowess and, if I was to make these come anywhere near true, I'd need to back slowly away from the edge. I set to work lapping at her pussy and a second later I felt her thighs relax and a hand behind my head helped keep my mouth in position.

I tried as much as I could to match her intensity, eating pussy like I'd never eaten one before. As I did so, her hips went up and down, bucking and pushing into me. As I worked at her, the moans came, but strangled and low -- the sounds of a woman who had to be careful where and how loudly she fucked. Nonetheless, they all left me with little doubt she was getting what she came here for.

As I came up for breath again she grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me up on top of her, and then I felt her hand searching for my cock. Having grasped it, she guided it in between her legs. For a moment, I was in heaven, pushing myself deep into her sex.

Then I realized, stopped, and tried to pull out. She put both hands straight behind my arse and held me in place.

"I should just..." I said. I kept condoms in my work bag, as I'd always presumed that if I was going to get lucky it would be in one of the bars the lads sometimes went to after work.

"Shh, shh," she said. "Real men fuck with no glove." It took me a moment to realize what she was referring to with the wordglove. It was stupid, of course. I imagined us at the wedding her grandfather holding a shotgun as we said our vows. No, this was China. It wouldn't be a shotgun; it would be that huge cleaver he used for chopping the chicken. Still, pregnancy or not, we'd be in trouble if he found out what we were doing and, anyway, it felt way too good to stop.

So I didn't. I pushed her down on the bed, grabbed both her legs, and keeping them vertical, gave her the hard fucking she'd come here for. And within three sharp thrusts, I knew it was going to be the best fuck of my life too. It wasn't just that she was tight, though she was and divinely so. It wasn't the energy she brought to the fuck, even lying on her back. It was the look she gave me with every motion.Fuck me harder, her eyes clearly said. I liked that challenge.

When we'd started, I'd been planning to pull out at the finish. I had no idea of her birth control situation, except that I was aware it was harder for young unmarried women than it was in the West. As my orgasm built though, I knew there was no way it wasn't ending with my seed inside her. And as I got closer and closer, she had to know and did nothing. Instead, moments after my eruption, we lay beside each other on the bed, laughing and struggling to get our breath back at the same time. She leant over and gave me two big thumbs up. God, we had to learn to communicate better than this if this was to be any kind of relationship, but it seemed to sum everything up with naïve enthusiasm.

"Right. Now we can eat," she announced.

We cleaned up. I found her one of my T-shirts for her to wear and offered her underpants which she refused. I pulled them on instead. The top was long enough to cover her down to the middle of her thighs anyway and we sat and ate the food she'd brought.

"It tastes different," I said.

She seemed disappointed for a moment. "I made it."

"Still as good," I said quickly, though in truth it wasn't, not quite. "Just different." Of course, she wouldn't have asked her grandfather to cook my usual order of noodles before leaving. That would have given the game away.

Once we'd eaten, she dumped the cardboard bowls in the bin, sat on the couch, and turned the TV on. I had no use for Chinese programmes and did everything through my laptop and the HDMI socket so I had to help her get the setup back to the normal broadcasts. She found a period drama and was immediately engrossed in it.