Beg (4 page)

***

Jonathan Drazen stood in the lobby, talking to Sam, laughing like
an old buddy. I wasn’t going to approach him with my boss right there. Sam
seemed like a fine guy for the fifteen minutes we’d talked. With his white hair
and slim build, he looked like a newscaster and had an all-business attitude. I
just pushed through the revolving doors, figuring fate had lent a hand in
deciding whether or not I’d see Drazen outside a rooftop bar.

I was three steps into the hot night when I heard him call my
name.

“You stalking me?” I asked, slowing my steps to the parking lot.

“Just wanted company to walk to my car.”

We strolled down Flower Street, the long way to the underground
parking lot. Any normal person would have gone through the hotel.

“How do you know Sam?” I asked.

“He introduced me to my ex-wife, which I’m trying to not hold
against him.”

“You’re a good sport,” I said. “Have you always been blue?”

He tilted his head a few degrees.

“Dodger fan,” I said. “I would’ve taken you for more of an Angels
guy.”

“Ah. Because I have money?”

“Kind of.”

“I like a little grit,” he said, that smile lighting up the
night.

“Is that why you met me after work?” I asked, turning toward the
parking lot entrance.

“Kind of.”

He let me go first into the underground passage, and I felt his
eyes on me as I walked. It was not an uncomfortable feeling. When we got to the
bottom of the ramp, we stopped. I parked in the employee level and his car was
in the valet section. I held up my hand to wave good-bye.

“It was nice to talk to you,” I said.

“You too.”

We faced each other, walking backward in opposite directions.

“See you around,” I said.

“Okay.” He waved, tall and beautiful in the flat light and grey
parking lot.
 

“Take care.”

“What do I have to say?”

“You have to say please,” I said.

“Please.”

“Where do you think you’re taking me?”

“Come on. Text a friend and tell them who you’re with in case I’m
a psycho killer.”

***

The early hour guaranteed a traffic-free trip to the west side.
I’d gotten into his Mercedes convertible thinking most killers don’t drive with
the top down where everyone could see, so I just let the wind whip my hair into
a bird’s nest. Jonathan drove with one hand, and as I watched his fingers move
and slide on the bottom of the wheel, the hair on the back of it, the strong
wrist, I imagined it on me. I grabbed the leather seat, trying to keep my mind
on something, anything else, but the leather itself seemed to rub the backs of
my thighs the wrong way. “So, you pick up waitresses a lot?”

He smirked and glanced over to me. The wind was doing crazy shit
to his hair as well, but it made him look sexy, and I was sure I looked like
Medusa. “Only the very attractive ones.”

“I guess I should take that as a compliment.”

“You definitely should.”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

“You mentioned that.”

So maybe the rumors were true, and he was a total womanizer.
Well, I’d already told him sex was off the table, so he could womanize all he
wanted. Didn’t matter to me at all. I was driven by curiosity. Who was this
guy? What was it like to be him? Not that it mattered, I told myself, because
again, I had no time for a heartbreak.

“What’s your instrument, Monica? You said you were a musician.”

“My voice, mostly,” I said. “But I play everything. I play piano,
guitar, violin. I learned to play the Theremin last year.”

“What is that?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful. You actually don’t touch it to play it.
There’s an electrical signal between two antennae, and you move your hands
between them to create a sound. It’s just the most haunting thing you ever
heard.”

“You play it without touching it?”

“Yeah, you just move your hands inside it. Like a dance.”

“This, I have to see.”

When he tipped his head toward me, I thought, oh no. He wants to
play it for him. Never gonna happen. For some reason, the idea of this guy
seeing me sing or play made me feel vulnerable, and I wasn’t in for that at
all. “You can watch people play it on YouTube.”

“True. But I want to watch
you
do it.”

I didn’t know where we were going, so I didn’t know how much of a
drive we were in for. I wanted to get off the subject of me before I told him
something that gave him a hold over me. I had to remember he was my new boss’s
friend, and I really liked working at the Stock.

“What do you do besides own hotels and pick up very attractive
waitresses?”

“I own lots of things, and they all need attention.”

He pulled the car to the side of the road. We were on the
twistiest
part of Mulholland, the part that looked like a desolate
park instead of the most expensive real estate in Los Angeles County. A short
guardrail stood between the car and a nearly sheer drop down to the valley and
its twinkling Saturday night lights.

“Let’s go take a look,” he said, pulling the emergency brake.

I got out, thankful for the opportunity to uncross my legs, and
slammed the door behind me. I walked toward the edge overlooking the city. My
heels kept hitting little rocky ditches, but I played it off. They were
comfortable, but they weren’t hiking boots.
 
I stood close to the guardrail, leaning
against it with my knees. I felt him behind me, closing his door and jingling
his keys. I’d been to places like that before. There were thousands of them all
over the city, which was surrounded by hills and mountains. Way back when,
before I’d sworn off men as a distraction, I’d been up to a similar place to
squirm around the back of Peter Dunbar’s Nissan. And after the prom, I’d come
up to drink too much and make love to Darren behind a tree.

“Do you live up here?” I asked.

“I live in Griffith Park.” He stepped behind me. “Those bright
lights are Universal City. To the right, that black part is the Hollywood
reservoir.” I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. “Toluca Lake is to
the left.” He put his hands on my neck, where every nerve ending in my body was
now located, following his touch as he stroked me, like the little magnet
shavings under plastic I’d played with as a kid. When the pen moved, the
shavings moved, and I arched my neck to feel more of him. “The rest,” he said,
“is hell on Earth. Not recommended.”

He kissed me at the base of my neck. His lips were full and soft.
His tongue traced a line across my shoulder. I gasped. I had not a single word
to say, even when I felt his erection against my back and his hands moved
across my stomach, feeling me through my clothes. God, I hadn’t been touched
like that in so long. When did I decide men were too much trouble? A year and a
half since I shed Kevin like a too-warm coat? I couldn’t even say.
Drazen’s
lips were more than lips; they were the physical
memory of myself before I shut out sex to pursue music.

I twisted, my lips searching for his, my mouth open for him as
his was for me. We met there, tongues twisting together, his chest to my back,
his hands moving up my shirt, teasing my nipples.

I moaned and turned to face him. He pushed me against the car.
The hardness between his legs felt enormous on my thigh. He moved his hand down
and pushed my legs open, gripping tight enough to press my jeans against my
skin. He looked down at me, and the intensity of the lust in his eyes was
nearly intimidating, but I was way past sense. Miles. The thought of saying,
“No, stop, I need sleep so I’m fresh for rehearsals tomorrow,” didn’t even
occur to me. He pushed his hips between my legs and kissed me again. I was
hungry for him. A white hot ball of heat grew beneath my hips. We kept kissing
and grinding, hands everywhere. I pinched his nipple through his shirt and he
gasped, biting my neck. I hated my clothes. I hated every layer of fabric
between myself and his cock. I wanted to feel skin sweating above mine, his
dick rigid and hot, his hands at my breasts. I wanted those hard, dry thrusts
to be real, slick, sliding inside me.

The siren blast split my ears. I almost choked on my own spit.
Jonathan looked over at the police car and the tension in his neck was the last
thing I saw before the light got too bright to see anything. I lowered my legs,
and when he got off me, he held his hand out to help me off the hood.

“Good morning,” came a male voice from behind the driver’s side
light. The passenger door opened, and a female cop got out.

“Good morning,” Jonathan and I answered like two kids greeting
their third grade teacher. He wove his fingers in mine. The female cop shone
her flashlight in my face. I flinched.

“You okay, miss?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you step away from the gentleman, please? Come toward me.”

I did, hands out so she knew I wasn’t reaching for anything. The
cop pulled me out of earshot.

“Do you know this guy?” she asked, shining a little light into my
pupils to see if I was on anything stronger than pheromones.

“Yes.”

“Are you here of your own free will?”

“Yes.”

“That was pretty hot.” She snapped her little light down. “Next
time, get a room, okay?”

CHAPTER 5

Things cooled on the way home. I kept my legs crossed and his
hand stayed on the gear shifter. When I told Jonathan the lady cop said we
should get a room, he laughed.

“If only she knew who she was talking about,” he said. After a
few seconds, he stopped at a light and turned to me. “So, what’s up with you
saying you’re not sleeping with me, then pushing up against my dick on the hood
of my car?”

I was a little annoyed with the question, because he brought me
there and he started kissing my neck, but I also couldn’t pretend I wasn’t just
as responsible for the raw heat of the scene.

“I just…” I had to pause and think. The light changed, and when
he turned his head back to the road, I felt like I could talk. “I have things
I’m doing. I can’t be up all night fucking because my voice gets messed up. I
can’t think about a man, any man, nothing personal, when I should be writing
songs. Carving out enough nights for song writing, between gigs and working, is
hard enough without making time for a boyfriend. So, I mean, I had to give up
something in life, and it’s men.”

He nodded and thought about it. He rubbed his chin, which had a
little bit of stubble. My neck remembered it very fondly. “I get it.”

“So, I’m sorry I led you on. That was careless.”

His laugh was loud and inappropriate, considering what I’d just
said, but he didn’t seem embarrassed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You’re taking all my best lines.”

“Didn’t mean to steal your thunder.”

“No problem. I enjoyed hearing it.”

I leaned back and watched the scenery change from the twisted
forestation of Mulholland to the expanse of the 101. How did I end up in this
car, at four in the morning, with a known womanizer? Yes, he was gorgeous and
warm and knew all the right places and ways to touch me, but really? How stupid
would I be? How many women had fallen for this crap, and I was going to be
another one in line?

The wind made it hard to talk until he pulled off downtown.
“What’s with you and sleeping around?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“All the women. You have a reputation.”

“Do I?” He smirked, not looking at me as he drove. “And that
didn’t chase you away?”

“I trust myself. I trust my instincts and my resolve. You just
make me curious is all.”

He shrugged. “What do you think your reputation is?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Of course you do. Everyone does. When people talk about Monica,
what do they say, besides that she’s beautiful?”

I let the compliment slide. Coming from someone who had almost
made his way into my pants, it didn’t mean much. “I guess they say I’m
ambitious. I hope they say I’m talented. My friend Darren would say I’m cold.”

“Did he try to get you into bed, too?”

“Shut up.” He glanced at me and we smiled at each other. “I was
with him for six and a half years, so it’s not like he had to try for a long
time.”

“Was it a hard breakup?” He stopped at a light and turned his
gaze to me, ready to offer me sympathy or words of wisdom.

“No. It was the easiest thing we ever did.” I couldn’t discern
what he was thinking from the way he looked at me, but he got serious, draining
his tone of all flirtation.

“Easy for
you
?”

“Both. It was dying for a long time.”

He looked out his window, rubbing his lips with two fingertips.

“You want to say something you’re not saying,” I said. “I don’t
want to be your girlfriend, so being honest isn’t going to come back and bite
you on the ass.”

the Stock, and my car, were a block away. He pulled up to the
curb. He put the Mercedes in park but didn’t turn the key.

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because you make me curious.”

He smirked. “My wife and I were married that long. It’s wasn’t
easy.” He rubbed the steering wheel, and I realized he regretted answering even
the first part of the question. It was too late for me to give up on him now,
so I waited until he said, “She left and took everything with her.”

“I don’t understand. Are you broke?”

He put the car into drive and turned to me. “She didn’t take a
dime. She took everything that
mattered
.”

I felt sorry and then I felt stupid for feeling any kind of sympathy.
I wanted to hold his hand and tell him he’d get over it someday, but nothing
could have been less appropriate.

“I’m
kinda
hungry,” I said. “There’s
this food truck thing on First and Olive. In a parking lot? You can come if you
want.”