Beg (Songs of Submission #1)(9)

“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 ni**les.

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 br**sts. 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.”