The Devil's Sperm Is Cold by Marco Vassi Page A

embarrassment. He had called her thinking she would be the timid overweight girl he had loved but could not take seriously as a mate, and that she would be overjoyed to see him. Instead he found a sharp beautiful woman who treated him with a certain warmth, but definitely with deference. He felt clumsy and oafish in front of this woman of the world.
    He didn’t realize he had fallen so silent and was staring moodily into the flames until she rubbed the back of his neck with her hand.
    “Hey,” she said, “where you off to in your head?”
    He could find no words. Depressed by what had happened with Joan, he was almost paralyzed at finding Alma as far, if not farther, beyond his grasp than the sexy editor at the office. But almost without his being aware at first of what was happening. Alma slipped her hand inside his shirt and was slowly and gently rubbing the firm pectoral muscles, tickling his hair, and grazing his nipples. He got aroused before he was conscious of his growing erection. He turned to look at her.
    “What are you doing?” he asked tenderly.
    “Remembering how good you feel,” she told him. “Remembering what a strong, handsome, fierce lover you are.”
    “Don’t pity me, Alma,” he said.
    She pinched his skin hard enough to make him wince and grab her wrist. “The only pity here is coming from you, and it’s all for yourself. What’s the matter with you? You have a little run-in with a chick where you work and it destroys you? In the old days you used to eat women like that for breakfast. When you were with me you used to go downtown and pluck them off the streets and fuck them in the back seats of their cars, those little white girls with their itchy asses.”
    “I know,” he agreed. “I guess I’m just getting old enough to feel lonely, that’s all.”
    “That’s why you came to see me, isn’t it?” she asked with a quaver in her voice.
    “Sure,” he said. “And I’m really glad to see you doing so well.”
    She shook him roughly. “Why are you talking to me like I was a stranger?”
    “Well,” he told her, “you’re in a different world now. You got money, you got new ways, you got fancy lovers.” He looked at her sadly. “It’s nice of you to take me in off the street for a night, but there is nothing for me here.”
    She pulled away from him, lay back on the rug, and looked up at him through half-closed eyes. “I loved you so much,” she began, “that when you went away I just wanted to die for a long time. But I lived, and I changed. And I’ve been making my way. And now you’re back, and you’re pissed off because I’m not the way I was when you left. And you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Well, I’ll tell you something. All this while I’ve been going through changes, I’ve been thinking, ‘If Manuel comes back, I’ll be a real woman for him, a beautiful woman who can stand on her own two feet.’ But I didn’t think you would come back. I just kept loving you anyway, way in the back of my heart, thinking I would never see you again. And now you are here. And if you want me again, you can have me. I’m not going to play games with you about that. I still want you. And I have money, yes, and I have new ways, yes, and they are all yours if you want them. And I have lovers, yes, because I am a woman and not a child. And if you come back into my life, I’ll make every other man I know disappear, like that!” She snapped her fingers. “But you got to show me something. You got to show me that you want me. You got to win me. You got to fuck me so I forget every other cock that’s been inside me. And if you want to do that, here I am, baby. And if you don’t, you can go out the same door you came in.”
    Manuel rocked back and forth as she delivered her speech, words that jumped like sparks from her mouth. At the same time that they intimidated him, they turned him on, making him at once afraid and desirous of the strange and familiar woman who was