Page 15 of Damaged Mogul

It’s my only salvation.

There’s not much space between us in the back seat, but you’d think it was an ocean from the way I’m hugging the passenger door. It’s my weak attempt to be as far away as humanly possible from this temptress. It’s as if I fear thatphysical contact with this woman, would screw up my wires. That earlier encounter is proof I can’t be trusted around her.

Speaking has never been an issue. Until today.

I blame her.

Her striking beauty left me tongue-tied.

Like a cunning thief, I observe her with a side gaze, as she takes in LA, her nose pressed to the window. Her profile is as stunning as her face. From this angle I can’t help but be mesmerized by the flutter of her long, dark lashes.

My cock was at full mast the moment Lily walked into that bar. After a long stretch of being disinterested in sex, the fucker decides to take a particular interest in a woman that’s forbidden.

She drops her head against the headrest, her gaze still glued to the window.

I shift in my seat, adjusting my hard-on.

Great timing, buddy.

Dammit.

I need to snuff this tug of hot attraction before it gets me in trouble.

Lily Schuyler is Fisher Edgington’s daughter.

He enlisted me as a companion for an event to ward off assholes. Not to be the asshole entertaining improper thoughts about his twenty-one-year-old daughter.

Jesus Christ.

She’s only twenty-one.

By Hollywood and LA standards, eleven years difference is nothing. That should bring me solace, but it doesn’t.

Lily is a walking distraction.

Rein it in, Hollingsworth.

Lily turns her head my way. “It must be something else to have an ocean at your front door. Do you ever get tired of living in LA?”

“LA isn’t for everyone,” I say. “But I couldn’t see myself living anywhere else.”

She nods.

“Do you ever get tired of living in New York?” I throw her question back at her.

“New York is a new adventure for me.”

I flinch in surprise.

“For the past eight years, I’ve lived in Europe,” she says, “I went to boarding school in Switzerland, followed by a degree at the American University in Paris. I returned stateside not long ago. So, in essence, this is my first time living in New York.”

“You didn’t come back for holidays or to spend time with your family?”

She stares at me for a long beat.

I’m about to retract my question, when she speaks. “I lived with my mom in Alabama until she died a few months before I turned thirteen––”

“I’m sorry––”