Dirt Driven (Racing on the Edge Book 11)

me to do whatever he wanted. “I just put Hudson down for a nap on our bed.”
His arms tightened around me and he backed me up against the fence on the front stretch. The metal squeaked in protest when his body pressed into mine. “We don’t need a bed,” he grunted, his breath tickling my cheek, assaulting me with open-mouth kisses up the side of my neck. When he got to my jaw, he held my face is his hands, those beautiful blue eyes on mine. Flush against each other, I had forgotten what this was like. To be drunk on the scent of him and held still by the force of him.
He shut me up by slamming his lips on mine. Warm, salty, just right, as always. I couldn’t accurately describe what it was like to be kissed by this man, but that kiss, it was everything he had become to me. Adrenaline. Addiction. Aggression. It was all there drawing out my deepest desires, desperate for more, and the weight of him pinning me to the fence.
I jerked my head to the side when something wet hit the side of my face and it wasn’t from Rager. I looked up to the sky thinking it was starting to rain, but cloudless turquoise shined down on us. “What was that?”
Rager turned his head, and then scowled immediately. “What the fuck, Tommy?”
“Thought you two should calm down.” Perched on a four-wheeler with Hudson on his lap, Tommy grinned and held up a squirt gun in his hand. “Or you could get lit. Whatever you prefer.”
Tommy Davis was my dad’s longtime best friend, and my older brother, Axel’s, crew chief. He’d lived his life around the Outlaw schedule for the past thirty years, and sometimes I think he drank racing fuel and it went to his brain. Wavy orange hair, brown eyes full of trouble, his blood was mostly vodka and he was up to no good most of the time. Never trust him.
Rager backed up, creating a foot of space between the two of us. He wiped his hand down his cheek and then smelled it. “Is that vodka in your squirt gun?”
At the same time my son Hudson took it from him and squirted his mouth. Tommy’s wide eyes met Rager’s. “Will you kill me if it is?”
Rager stepped toward them, his black T-shirt stretching perfectly around his biceps. “If my son is drinking vodka, yes.”
Tommy grinned. “Then it’s water.”
Rage took another step. “Bullshit.”
Straightening out my tank top, I kicked dirt from my white shoes I knew I shouldn’t be wearing at a dirt track. After collecting my phone, I wiped the vodka from my cheek and moved toward Rager.
Hudson looked at me, Rager, and then smiled at Tommy and tried to pry the squirt gun from his hands. Our almost two-year-old son, Hudson, was the definition of a bad kid. I said that with all the love a mother has for her children. I loved my baby boy, but he was an asshole. Plain and simple. We couldn’t even find a regular babysitter for him; he’s that bad. And he only liked my dad. Everyone else he scowled at.
To prove my point, just wait. When Tommy didn’t give Hudson the squirt gun, he threw his head back in a tantrum and nailed Tommy right in the chin.
Rager shook his head when Tommy caved and handed him the squirt gun. “Here, ya little brat.”
“Don’t give him that.” I gasped, rushing toward them to pry the squirt gun out of Hudson’s hand. Naturally, he cried and I plucked him off the four-wheeler.
“What is he even doing up? I put him down for a nap. Rosa said she was watching the kids for us.”
Tommy started the four-wheeler, revving it once. “I saw Rosa at the concession stands. She didn’t have any kids with her. I picked this little guy up on the way to check track conditions. He was wandering around under the pit bleachers.”
Goddamn you, Rosa was my first thought. Followed quickly by, It’s a good thing my dad didn’t see him under there.
Hudson took my phone from my hand and threw it on the ground. No reason at all. Just decided I didn’t need it.
Two-year-olds are dicks.
I peered down at him. “Why’d you do that?”
He looked at the phone, then me, batting his lashes. “Sawry, Mama.”
That meant sorry. And then I couldn’t be mad at my baby any longer.
Beside me, Rager rolled his eyes, walking toward the pits, leaving me on the front stretch. “You’re such a pushover.”
I was. There was no denying it. Tommy took off the other direction, spraying a wave of dirt at Rager in the process.
Carrying Hudson on my hip, I wiped the vodka from his face. He licked his hand. “Yum.”
“Don’t get addicted yet,” I told him. “You gotta get off the tit first.”
I was still breastfeeding Hudson, at nearly two. Believe me, I tried to get him to stop, but he wouldn’t.
Back in the pits, everything was beginning to burst to life as the final night in Vegas was getting underway. I stood at the entrance to the pits, the long row of haulers and sprint cars my view. I… loved this life. Everything about it. From the smells, dirt, sun, burnt rubber, brake cleaner, methanol… all the way to the concessions stands serving the stale beer and overly greasy hamburgers.
Growing up, my life was spent at NASCAR tracks. Motor coaches that were nicer than most people’s homes and the extravagant suites high above the super speedways. And it was best not to get me started on the wives. Though my dad was one of those super stars of NASCAR, my mom was nothing like the WAGS of those drivers. She grew up at the dirt tracks and stayed a dirt wife.
Me? I went down that road and thankfully, here I was, back at my roots and living my life out of a forty-foot motor home with four kids. And I wouldn’t change it