Beg Read Online Free PDF

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