The Devil’s Sperm is Cold Read online

  “Well, do you still want to talk business now?” she said.

  To the surprise of both of them, Margaret began to weep, without making a sound.

  Joan went over to her, and held her until the crying stopped. Margaret pushed the hair away from her face, reached over for a cigarette and lit it.

  “What would we do without tobacco?” she asked. And answering her own rhetorical question, went on, “We might have to face some awkward moments.”

  Joan shook her head in puzzlement. She was confused, but did not want to intrude. After three deep drags, Margaret looked up at her. “It’s extraordinary how much is repressed inside us, isn’t it?” she said. “I sometimes wonder what we would be like if we blew it all out, once and for all. What kind of creatures would we be if our motivation was something other than the release of tension?”

  Joan listened to the words and heard their meaning. But the other woman had left something out.

  “That’s not what made you cry,” she said.

  Margaret glanced away, pursed her lips, looked like she was deciding whether or not to reveal herself further, and then looked back. “You’re right,” she said. “What made me cry was something else altogether.”

  “What was it?” Joan asked her.

  “Just the realization that I could really love you,” Margaret said.

  The words hung on the air between them. They were to have two more rounds of sex before they fell asleep in one another’s arms, but the word “love” was not used again. It was too frightening to both of them, who were used to handling sex and power, and who would want to think a good while before taking the shields off their hearts.

  THREE

  The rest of the staff had left. It was the way Joan liked the office best, empty and still. Having arrived late that morning, a half hour before Margaret, she had some catching up to do. The two women had decided to come in separately, for at parting they were unable to keep their hands or their eyes off one another, and couldn’t go into work in that condition. Sitting at her desk, Joan sagged inwardly at the thought of having to finish the manuscript in front of her. It was one of those moments when life seems nothing more than a progression from one wearisome task to another, and existence appears as a broad path leading directly to the grave with no interesting distractions along the way.

  “How odd it is,” she thought, “that each mood is so total, even when it is wildly different from the one that preceded it.” She was not conscious that this quality she possessed, of becoming fully the immediate vibration, was her most powerful faculty. She did not yet perceive that very few people had the instinct of living in the present still intact.

  Her attention drifted away from the task at hand to reviewing what had happened with Margaret. Joan ran her tongue over her lips in a conscious imitation of Margaret’s habitual gesture, and remembered their good-bye.

  Kissing her softly, Margaret had said, “I’ve done things with my body that were like what happened last night, but I’ve only felt that much with one other person before. I don’t know if you realize how deeply you’ve touched me.”

  Joan had been at a loss. “It’s still all so confusing,” she said. “You’re the first woman I have ever had sex with, and I’m still reverberating from the novelty. But I feel that I could give myself to you totally, easily.”

  “I know,” Margaret said. “And I wasn’t prepared for this. I wanted to bring you in with me on the changeover, if I can push Lou out and step into his place. And I also wanted to make love to you. And now, it’s all mixed up, and I’m not sure what’s happening with us.”

  “Will our being lovers make it awkward at the office?” Joan asked.

  “It doesn’t have to,” Margaret told her. “Especially if I take over. Then if people find out, we won’t have to be coy about it.”

  “It’s all going so fast,” Joan said.

  “Right now, the only way I can count time is in waiting to hold you in my arms again,” Margaret said. And right after, Joan had left for work.

  Now she tried to shake the memory out of her head and concentrate on the book in front of her. It was a two-hundred-and-thirty-eight-page manuscript that had to be gone over with an editorial fine-toothed comb, its spelling corrected, its punctuation made uniform, and any discrepancies in internal consistency straightened out. The real trouble with that kind of work was that if the story was interesting, she became so engrossed in it that she forgot to pay attention to the mechanics; and if it was dull, then there was no pleasure perusing it so closely. This was one of the latter, a rather pedestrian tale about a good girl gone bad, “destroyed,” as the author put it, “by the insatiable fires of lust.”

  “Insatiable fires,” Joan thought. “What can one do with a phrase like that?”

  She forced her eyes to the page. “Laura was in trouble,” it read. Joan wrinkled her nose. “Considering that she’s tied naked to a cot with seventeen motorcycle Nazis closing in on her,” she thought, “I’d say that’s a reasonable description of her situation.” She read on. “Laura tried to scream, but realized there was no one within miles of the deserted shack she had been brought to.” Joan applied the tip of her pencil, and in a moment “brought” was changed to “taken.” She let out a low growl. “I’ll never finish if I keep going at this pace.” She lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, stretched and read on.

  “The men feasted their eyes on the succulent flesh in front of them. Laura was totally defenseless. Her arms were tied at the wrists and fastened to the wall behind her. She tried to twist her lower body to hide from the relentless eyes that bored into her, but no matter how she moved she exposed another area of succulent flesh to their view.” Joan sighed. “That’s two ‘succulent fleshes’ in the same paragraph,” she said to herself. “Rick is getting sloppy.” Rick Fantusi was one of Centaur’s regular contributors, and he could always be counted on to turn in minimally acceptable works. Usually his novels were, if not literary exercises, at least well-crafted. But he had been turning them out at the rate of one a month for the past six months and he was getting slop-happy.

  “Well, fuck it,” Joan thought. “Who’s going to notice the excess of ‘succulent flesh’ usage besides me?” She continued to read. “Tears sprang to Laura’s eyes,” the story continued. “She could hide nothing. Her sweet lush breasts, her round belly, the delicate thighs, all these were now being brutally ravished by the hot eyes of the heavy grizzled men who were beginning to take their clothes off, peeling off the grease-stained shirts and leather chaps, revealing huge muscular arms and immense hairy thighs…and cocks that hung huge and menacing even in their relaxed state. Laura let out a sob at the thought that their rough hands and sinister mouths would soon be probing and sucking at her soft white skin. She pressed her legs together in an insane attempt at modesty, but the men only laughed.

  “‘Roll her over,’ said one. ‘I want to see her ass.’”

  “She was seized and turned onto her belly, her legs were pulled apart, and she cringed in shame as she realized that they were peering at the center of her intimacy…”

  Joan jumped up and slammed the manuscript down. “Center of her intimacy!” she yelled. “By God, that’s going too far.” She enjoyed, when she was alone, mimicking the stories she read and acting them out. She was able to understand a bit of the excitement in pornography that gets lost from too much sophistication and exposure. She was able to rediscover the humor in sex, the fact that it is possible to be aroused and laugh at the same time.

  Joan sat down again and read on. “Anonymous hands pulled her ass cheeks apart, other hands lifted her hips, still more hands ran up and down the lips of her cunt. Hands went to her breasts, hands stroked the backs of her legs. Despite her resistance to anything but terror, she felt herself melt, as she had only been able to do with Ron, the man she had been saving herself for. A finger slid into her cunt and stopped at the still intact maidenhead.

  “‘Hey,’ a voice said, ‘she’s still a virgin.
’

  “Laura began to cry, and as her mouth fell open, she felt her lips being nudged, and she opened her eyes to see a large, thick, unwashed cock burying itself in her face. She tried to protest, but the immense engine only forced itself farther back in her throat. She thrashed about, attempting to escape, but each movement only brought another part of her to exposure. She was turned over on her back again, her legs pressed to her chest, leaving her cunt gaping. She wanted terribly to cover herself, but there was nothing she could do, except to gasp as the first cock she had ever known in her life fucked her mouth, and the second began to press against the never-before-penetrated pussy lips.

  “To her undying amazement, Laura began to enjoy herself.”

  “Well, far out,” Joan said out loud. She leaned back in her chair and lit another cigarette. “It’s amazing the fantasies people have,” she thought. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the scene she had just been reading about, only instead of Laura tied to the cot, she placed herself. All at once, the ambience changed. Far from being an absurd exercise in sexual hyperbole, the thing became feasible and desirable. Joan let out a mouthful of smoke and let herself sink into the scene. To be tied, to be overwhelmed with brute male energy, to know the smell of it, the power of it, the deep penetrating sensations. Yes, she could understand the logic of that kind of rape. To be nothing but a hole, a hot wet pussy, a lapping mouth, a twitching ass. She had known what that was like being with just one man, and not being bound by ropes. To make the leap to a gang-bang concept was just to project the reality a bit further.

  She let her free hand fall to her thighs, and smiling to herself, she let her fingers walk to her crotch. Then, as though her hand were a man jumping off a cliff, she leaped from her leg to her cunt, landing with a long slow glide. The pressure felt good through the cloth of her dress, and she lazily nibbed herself, up and down. Little jolts of electricity shot from her clitoris deeper into her vagina, and she pressed her thighs together with pleasure. She could smell the first secretions, and she tightened her ass to heighten the sensations. She put her cigarette out and with her other hand she began to play with her breasts, reaching down the top of her dress and slipping under her brassiere, to caress the thick flesh and tweak the taut nipples. Joan’s eyes closed and her mouth fell open. She began to work in earnest, going from a light masturbation to a steady effort to bring herself off. All the while she stroked and pinched her tits and dug her fingers into the soft heat of her cunt, she maintained the fantasy of the chapter she had just been reading. Her pussy was mushy under the fabric, and she was hungry for it to be bare and spread, open to the eyes of the men surrounding her.

  “She lay on the dirty cot and the men began to climb over her. Her tight asshole was nudged by a thick cock, and she groaned out loud as she pictured her buttocks spreading, and the tiny hole grasping the giant engine as it slid haltingly into her. Another man straddled her shoulders and masturbated over her. She opened her mouth wide, yearning upward, waiting for the thick creamy sperm to come splashing down on her tongue and into her throat.” Joan’s toes curled as the Hell’s Angels of her dreamworld fucked her again and again, making her cunt sloppy and sore, and she rotated her fingers faster and faster, pumping toward climax.

  “Oh fuck me,” she cried out, “you big thick cock, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”

  The sentences spilled out from her as she clenched her ass, bunched one breast in her hand, and humped the air. She rolled from side to side in an anguish of expectation. And in her mind she thought, “’an anguish of expectation,’ that’s not a bad phrase.” And she laughed as she came, the deep sound breaking from her chest, and the juices seeping from her pulsating pussy into her panties, through her dress, making her fingers damp and fragrant.

  “Oh, yes,” she moaned as her climax sang through her. She arched her back one last time and fell quiet into the deep chair, breathing heavily. She lay there for several minutes, letting herself return to normal, and very slowly opened her eyes. And when she found herself looking up into the serious gaze of Manuel, her heart almost stopped with fright.

  He worked in the mail room, and because of his low-status position, and because he was Puerto Rican, Joan had rarely even thought of him as a person. But he was over six feet tall, and wore his two-hundred pounds with the muscular ease of an athlete. He was thirty years old, and lived in a totally self-involved world, saying little, thinking much. He was keenly aware of the caste system that operated through and around him, but his goals were in a different realm. His only ambition was to save enough money to buy land in Puerto Rico, and work it as a farmer. Although his formal education was slight, he had a deep understanding of the nature of social reality through having seen it from the vantage point of always having been low man on the totem pole. As far as he was concerned, a simple life of growing one’s own food in a land that was warm and clean, next to clear beaches, was all that one could aspire to in life, and surpassed the artificial pleasures of the tycoon and politician and urban hustler of any level.

  Joan tried to sit up, to pull herself back into the accustomed role she assumed with Manuel, to assert her white skin and college education and importance as editor. But one glance at him showed how utterly senseless all that was now. There was no way to know how long he had been watching her, listening to her. A blush crept up her throat and into her face. He had seen her completely exposed, her face in its orgasmic contortions, her body thrashing wildly about. He had seen her masturbating and was now gloating over her. “It’s like Lou says,” she thought to herself, “life imitates art. Only instead of a roomful of motorcycle freaks, I have one horny mail boy.” The last word stuck in her mind. “But he’s not a boy,” she said to herself, “he’s a man.”

  Without a word, Manuel reached down and grabbed her arms. Effortlessly he lifted her from the chair, turned her around, and bent her over the desk. She flushed even more deeply at being put in this frank posture. He pulled her skirt up and tossed it over her back, covering her head. She was in semi-darkness now, her legs bare, her ass jutting up under the thin fabric of her red panties. Her knees trembled as she waited for him to pull her panties down. She considered screaming, but there was no point in making a mess.

  “He’s caught me fair and square,” she reasoned, “and it’s foolish to be a bad sport. What on earth is he waiting for?”

  Manuel did nothing but look at her, letting the beauty of the moment sink in. He had been consumed with desire for Joan from the very first day she walked into the office. With his looks, and his strength, and his inner resolve concerning what he wanted to do with his life, there were thousands of women he could have had, of any race or nationality. Sex was easy for him, as was winning women’s hearts. But when Joan came into his life, he was like a man possessed by a demon spirit. He knew at once that he had to have her, and not just to fuck her, but to own her, to make her his cunt.

  Of course, he had very old-fashioned ideas about women. When a woman gave herself to a man, she became his. And if he loved her, he treated her with concern, and care, and tenderness; and when she needed it, he beat her. But through everything, she belonged to him, and found her deepest identity in knowing that. Given all this, he was tormented by Joan. He could see that she didn’t even see him clearly enough to despise him. To her, he was a cipher, a nothing; fucking her was going to be next to impossible; possessing her was beyond his hopes.

  So, he tried hating her, comparing her to other women, seeing that this one had a nicer ass, that one had bigger breasts, the other one was prettier, and yet another one exuded a hotter sexuality. But he was branded in his soul, and no matter how much he fucked other women, he knew no real satisfaction. Because it was Joan he wanted, and he could not get her out of his skin.

  And now, here she was, bent over the desk before his eyes, her legs shaking, her cunt sopping wet from having just fingered herself into orgasm, and she was waiting, waiting with bated breath for him to fuck her. It was so sudden, so overwhelmi
ng, that he was practically paralyzed with wonder. He had come back to the office to pick up a book he had forgotten, and when he passed her room he glanced in and almost fainted at what he saw. She was stretched out across the chair, her legs wide, one hand rubbing her breasts, the other digging at her cunt, her mouth stretched wide, her tongue curling in the air, and a stream of pornographic prose coming from her lips. He entered quietly and stood there until she came, his cock growing rock-hard in his pants, hurting with desire to break loose from the cloth and sink into her hot box.

  Joan straightened her knees, lifting her ass higher into the air. She slid her feet apart, allowing her thighs to open. The situation was extraordinarily erotic, with the combination of having read the book, and having made herself come, and now pitched face-forward over her desk while the taciturn dark Manuel ravished her legs and ass with his hot eyes.

  “What is he waiting for?” she thought to herself again.

  Manuel stepped forward. He was weak with desire. He wanted to do everything at once. To fall to his knees and worship her cunt with his tongue. To spin her around and cover her mouth with his. To feel her firm soft breasts in his hands. To force his way between her cheeks and up her puckered asshole. To have her suck his cock. To hold her, to stroke her, to slap her. To merge with her completely.

  “My God,” he said to himself, “it’s more than a man should be asked to bear. How much beauty can a person stand?”

  He was now standing less than an inch from her body. His hands went forward tentatively and his knuckles grazed the insides of her thighs, gently, going from the backs of her knees to the fold of her buttocks. He stroked her a number of times, deliberately, fleetingly. She felt it like butterflies fluttering up and down her legs. She pushed her ass back an inch, wanting him to do more, to go deeper. But as she approached, he retreated. It would do little good to take her. He knew that instinctively, in a way he could never have articulated. He would not be satisfied until she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. And he had waited almost a year to come to this point, so he could wait longer until it was just right.