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When Lennox and Connor race full throttle into a secret relationship, can they navigate the track, or will they crash and burn?
Lennox Bradley is Formula 1 royalty. His father was an F1 champion, and so is his brother, so expectations are high for Lennox’s debut season. But when he suffers a koala-related PR disaster at the Australian Grand Prix, he’s thrust into the media spotlight. For an introvert like Lennox, it’s a nightmare. Connor Blake doesn’t know the first thing about Formula 1, but as communications manager for Bradley Racing, it’s his job to manage the fallout for Lennox. Except Lennox isn’t anything like the arrogant, shallow guy he’s expecting, and it gets harder and harder to deny the magnetism between them. When Connor and Lennox both have to choose what it is they really want for themselves, is there any room for a future together? This M/M romance from Lisa Henry features a secret relationship, two guys who are bad at admitting their feelings, pining, and is set in the high octane world of Formula 1 featuring fast cars, driving at the limit, spectacular crashes, heated rivalries, and of course, a HEA. Each book in the Lights Out collection is a standalone story, and the books can be read in any order. |
The Lights Out Series:
- RJ Scott's Team Orders: https://rjscott.co.uk/read-teamorders
- Lisa Henry's Full Throttle: https://books2read.com/lightsfullthrottle
- Charlie Novak's Pole Position: https://readerlinks.com/l/3311434
- HL Day's Scoring Points: https://geni.us/SP-NL-other
- Emma Jaye's Black Flagged: https://readerlinks.com/l/3338886
- Beth Laycock's Rookie Mistakes: https://mybook.to/RookieMistakes
"I enjoyed everything about this read. The pace, the romance, the angst. I honestly could not put it down."
- Wicked Reads
- Wicked Reads
An excerpt from Full Throttle:
Chapter 1 - Lennox
It was supposed to be one of those stupid press things. Turn up somewhere, play nice with some sick kids, or old people, or community groups—an hour, tops—and then get the hell out of there. And for once I was looking forward to it, even though it would mean an hour of trailing around after Malcolm and either getting pushed aside during the photo op because nobody wanted me in it or getting pulled in because someone would make a joke about not leaving me out. That usually pissed me off, but this time it was at a wildlife rehabilitation center just outside Melbourne, and I wanted to see the kangaroos. It was at the top of my list of things to do in Australia.
When we piled off the bus, we were met by a girl in khaki shorts and a matching button-up shirt with the center’s logo stitched above the pocket. She was blonde and tanned, and more than a few of the guys perked right up at that. Not me, though.
“Hi,” she said, her smile faltering for a moment in the face of not just a bunch of drivers and PR people from the teams but a whole lot of broadcast press, too, who were already in the parking area when we pulled in. Then, just like a flickering light bulb, her smile lit up again. “Welcome to the Goonawarra Wildlife Sanctuary.”
The sanctuary itself was a low, rendered brick building with a tin roof. Gum trees, their leaves hanging listlessly as though they were half melted in the morning heat, offered a scant amount of shade from the blistering sun on the walk to the entrance of the building.
We stood at the wide, open doors while the girl gave us an introductory speech, and then we all headed inside to look at the animals. The walls of the reception area were painted pale blue. The floor was linoleum. Posters asking for donations decorated the place, and the girl herded us—and the twenty or so broadcast press members—to a door that led through to the rest of the sanctuary.
Our first stop was the animal hospital, which was a bunch of wire cages against one wall, a stainless steel table, and sets of outdated kitchen cabinets with masking tape labels in different handwriting: Bandages, Syringes, Surgical Sets, Disinfectant. A bunch of what I assumed were brand names I didn’t know.
The girl talked about the local vets who volunteered their time here in emergencies, then took us over to the cages to see the current patients.
I wished Renzo were here, but I snapped a bunch of pictures of a wombat and sent them to him: Found you a hot Aussie girlfriend. It was probably the middle of the night for him, but fuck it. He was a snorer, and he deserved it.
Meanwhile, Malcolm was laying on the charm in that easy way he did, all broad smiles and easy banter. He and his American teammate, Justin Harper, were hamming it up for the cameras, holding a pair of baby possums and making faces at them. One of the possums wrapped its bandaged tail around Malcolm’s wrist while the girl talked about how it’d been burned in a bushfire. I could tell Malcolm wasn’t going to leave without writing a check. Except he’d wait until the cameras were off for that, because not only was my brother an actually generous person, he also kept his donations private.
Malcolm Bradley—Formula 1 driver with Team Bradley, with a first place already behind him this season, carrying his father’s legacy on his broad, straight shoulders.
Lennox Bradley—the other one. The one who wasn’t as good. The one who, at twenty-four, still hadn’t driven in Formula 1. The one whose dad owned the team but who still couldn’t make the grade. Formula 2 didn’t have a Melbourne race, so the only reason I was even here in Australia right now was because I’d been bumped up from F2 to be the reserve driver for the F1 team. And the only reason I was here as reserve driver instead of my F2 teammate, Renzo—well, ask the fan forums about that.
Or, in case I didn’t know, Karl Neumann, the biggest asshole on the Formula 1 circuit, was always ready to tell me. He sidled up to me now, wearing a grin.
“Lennox,” he said, drawing my name out like it tasted bad. “Look at you, hanging out with the big boys.”
Karl was all perfectly styled hair and teeth that had been bleached to an almost fluorescent shade. He looked good, but only from a distance. He was too perfect. If you got too close, you were suddenly in uncanny valley territory and your Ken doll had come to life. I mostly hated him because I’d been there. Not with the bleached teeth and overgrooming but with Karl. We’d had a messy drunken hookup a while back and got nothing out of it but regret and, since we were both in the closet, a promise of mutually assured destruction if either of us opened our mouths.
“Must be easy getting picked as a reserve when Daddy owns the team.”
“Fuck off, Karl,” I muttered and forced a smile, aware that while the chances weren’t high, given the other options in the room, there might be a camera on me right now. The thought made my stomach twist—there was a whole lot more media scrutiny at this level of racing than I was used to, and it made the back of my neck itch, like I could feel the weight of a heavy stare on me.
Karl pouted at me and then laughed.
We moved on from the animal hospital to the large chicken-wire cages outside, where we saw more wombats and possums, mostly jammed into hollow logs to escape the daylight, and some scary-as-fuck snakes and lizards. The press snapped pictures of Justin holding a python with a diamond pattern of scales and the face he made when it curled its tail up around his neck. The girl laughed and hauled it off him before it could start to squeeze.
Well, that’d be one way for me to get a race, right?
Justin laughed and scrubbed his knuckles over his sandy buzz cut, and Malcolm slung an arm around his shoulders. I was too far back to hear what Malcolm said, but everyone laughed.
This was the part of the visit I’d been looking forward to. A couple more khaki-clad workers appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly animals were getting passed around like party favors. A guy handed me a big, chunky lizard, and I took it. It opened its mouth to show me its blue tongue.
“He’s pretty chill,” the guy promised me, but nothing looked chill about that mouth, or sounded chill about the hiss it gave.
“Does he bite?”
“Oh yeah,” the guy said. “But you’ll be all right. He might leave a bruise if he gets you, but it probably won’t break the skin.”
There were too many mights and probablys in that statement to make me feel great about my new friend the lizard, but it was pretty cool all the same. He was heavier than he looked, sort of stumpy and fat, with a pattern of stripes down his soft but scaly body that did a great impersonation of a snake. Despite the fact that he did me a solid by not biting me, I handed him straight back to the worker when a woman approached with a koala.
It was heavier than it looked, too, a lump of solid weight. It settled into my arms, and the woman showed me how to keep one arm under its backside, like holding a toddler. A dozy, fuzzy toddler with surprisingly intimidating claws.
“Lennox!” Malcolm called from farther along the row of wire runs. “Get over here!”
He and Justin were still mugging for the photographers, some of whom looked annoyed when they straightened up and waited for me to join them. “This guy? Who the fuck is this guy?” But maybe it was all in my head. What was the opposite of a superiority complex? Whatever it was, I’d had one for years, and my promotion to reserve driver had brought it into sharp relief.
Malcolm was holding a pillowcase. A baby kangaroo’s head was poking out of it, all velvety snout and long, dark eyelashes. “How cool is this? Oh, man, you’ve got a koala! I definitely need to hold that next.”
He and Justin grinned for the cameras and bantered back and forth off the softball questions the press threw at them. I smiled, too, though mine probably looked more like a rictus grin than anything approaching genuine. Eventually even the journalists got bored with the Malcolm and Justin sideshow and moved on to some of the other guys.
“Hey, look at its little paws,” Justin said, and Malcolm carefully bundled the kangaroo over to him. “This is nicer than the snake.”
Malcolm scritched my koala on the head. “This is great.”
And then suddenly Karl was back, smarming up beside us. Malcolm looked at me and then Karl, and a hollow pit opened up in my gut. My brother noticed stuff, and this wasn’t the first time I felt sure that he knew something had happened between me and Karl. Or maybe Karl had dropped a few hints—he was a top-tier wankstain, so it fit. He and Malcolm didn’t like each other, which was no surprise, because nobody liked Karl, but Karl seemed to take it more personally with Malcolm for some reason. Probably because Malcolm was the Bradley brother whose dick he’d reallywanted to suck.
There was my opposite-of-a-superiority-complex again, right on cue.
“Hi, Justin,” Karl said.
Justin’s smile transformed from carefree to cautious. He nodded. “Karl.”
“You drove really well in Jeddah,” Karl said. “Almost a personal best, wasn’t it?”
Justin darted a glance at Malcolm.
Malcolm was still smiling, but there was a hardness in his gaze. At Jeddah, when Karl had come second to Malcolm’s first, he’d kissed Malcolm on the cheek after the race, which the fans seemed to think was either because they were mates messing around and they’d forgotten where they were, or that Karl was a hero for giving the middle finger to the Saudi authorities and their hardline anti-gay laws—but anyone who knew Karl in person knew he was just being a dick. And I, who knew Karl way more personally than I should have, knew that he’d just done it to rile me up. To remind me, though it wasn’t like I needed it, that I was nobody’s first choice.
Karl smirked. “But I guess when those team orders are given out, that’s what you do, huh? Let your teammate take your position and settle for fourth instead, while he goes on to win.”
Justin bristled at that, and so did Malcolm, because that wasn’t what had happened in Jeddah. Malcolm had overtaken Justin fair and square, and nobody had ordered Justin to let it happen.
“That’s not—” Justin began, and Malcolm shook his head and put a hand on his arm.
“You’re still taking orders off him now.” Karl’s smile inched up another couple degrees into bald-faced insincerity. “That has to rankle just a bit, doesn’t it? I mean, you actually worked to get where you are, and you’re still playing second fiddle to a fucking pay driver.”
I burned with sudden rage.
Karl shrugged. “I guess at least Malcolm can drive.” His gaze raked over me. “All Lennox is good for is—”
I punched him.
I wasn’t planning on it, but my rage lit the very short fuse of something even hotter and uglier, and my fist was swinging and connecting with his jaw before I even knew I’d moved. The punch became a scuffle as both Justin and Malcolm intervened to pull us apart, and I stood there, glaring at Karl, who didn’t even have the fucking decency to have a hair out of place after I’d hit him.
Camera flashes dazzled us, and with a sinking feeling in my gut, I realized way too late that I’d seriously fucked up. I’d just punched Karl Neumann in the face in front of a whole bunch of journalists. This wasn’t the sort of press coverage the FIA and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation had been hoping for when they’d arranged this little outing. And my dad was going to be pretty pissed off too.
And then, when the girl in khaki came in yelling at me, her face red with outrage, I realized I’d seriously, seriously fucked up, because I wasn’t holding the koala anymore.
In my rush to punch Karl in the face, I’d dropped it.
Chapter 1 - Lennox
It was supposed to be one of those stupid press things. Turn up somewhere, play nice with some sick kids, or old people, or community groups—an hour, tops—and then get the hell out of there. And for once I was looking forward to it, even though it would mean an hour of trailing around after Malcolm and either getting pushed aside during the photo op because nobody wanted me in it or getting pulled in because someone would make a joke about not leaving me out. That usually pissed me off, but this time it was at a wildlife rehabilitation center just outside Melbourne, and I wanted to see the kangaroos. It was at the top of my list of things to do in Australia.
When we piled off the bus, we were met by a girl in khaki shorts and a matching button-up shirt with the center’s logo stitched above the pocket. She was blonde and tanned, and more than a few of the guys perked right up at that. Not me, though.
“Hi,” she said, her smile faltering for a moment in the face of not just a bunch of drivers and PR people from the teams but a whole lot of broadcast press, too, who were already in the parking area when we pulled in. Then, just like a flickering light bulb, her smile lit up again. “Welcome to the Goonawarra Wildlife Sanctuary.”
The sanctuary itself was a low, rendered brick building with a tin roof. Gum trees, their leaves hanging listlessly as though they were half melted in the morning heat, offered a scant amount of shade from the blistering sun on the walk to the entrance of the building.
We stood at the wide, open doors while the girl gave us an introductory speech, and then we all headed inside to look at the animals. The walls of the reception area were painted pale blue. The floor was linoleum. Posters asking for donations decorated the place, and the girl herded us—and the twenty or so broadcast press members—to a door that led through to the rest of the sanctuary.
Our first stop was the animal hospital, which was a bunch of wire cages against one wall, a stainless steel table, and sets of outdated kitchen cabinets with masking tape labels in different handwriting: Bandages, Syringes, Surgical Sets, Disinfectant. A bunch of what I assumed were brand names I didn’t know.
The girl talked about the local vets who volunteered their time here in emergencies, then took us over to the cages to see the current patients.
I wished Renzo were here, but I snapped a bunch of pictures of a wombat and sent them to him: Found you a hot Aussie girlfriend. It was probably the middle of the night for him, but fuck it. He was a snorer, and he deserved it.
Meanwhile, Malcolm was laying on the charm in that easy way he did, all broad smiles and easy banter. He and his American teammate, Justin Harper, were hamming it up for the cameras, holding a pair of baby possums and making faces at them. One of the possums wrapped its bandaged tail around Malcolm’s wrist while the girl talked about how it’d been burned in a bushfire. I could tell Malcolm wasn’t going to leave without writing a check. Except he’d wait until the cameras were off for that, because not only was my brother an actually generous person, he also kept his donations private.
Malcolm Bradley—Formula 1 driver with Team Bradley, with a first place already behind him this season, carrying his father’s legacy on his broad, straight shoulders.
Lennox Bradley—the other one. The one who wasn’t as good. The one who, at twenty-four, still hadn’t driven in Formula 1. The one whose dad owned the team but who still couldn’t make the grade. Formula 2 didn’t have a Melbourne race, so the only reason I was even here in Australia right now was because I’d been bumped up from F2 to be the reserve driver for the F1 team. And the only reason I was here as reserve driver instead of my F2 teammate, Renzo—well, ask the fan forums about that.
Or, in case I didn’t know, Karl Neumann, the biggest asshole on the Formula 1 circuit, was always ready to tell me. He sidled up to me now, wearing a grin.
“Lennox,” he said, drawing my name out like it tasted bad. “Look at you, hanging out with the big boys.”
Karl was all perfectly styled hair and teeth that had been bleached to an almost fluorescent shade. He looked good, but only from a distance. He was too perfect. If you got too close, you were suddenly in uncanny valley territory and your Ken doll had come to life. I mostly hated him because I’d been there. Not with the bleached teeth and overgrooming but with Karl. We’d had a messy drunken hookup a while back and got nothing out of it but regret and, since we were both in the closet, a promise of mutually assured destruction if either of us opened our mouths.
“Must be easy getting picked as a reserve when Daddy owns the team.”
“Fuck off, Karl,” I muttered and forced a smile, aware that while the chances weren’t high, given the other options in the room, there might be a camera on me right now. The thought made my stomach twist—there was a whole lot more media scrutiny at this level of racing than I was used to, and it made the back of my neck itch, like I could feel the weight of a heavy stare on me.
Karl pouted at me and then laughed.
We moved on from the animal hospital to the large chicken-wire cages outside, where we saw more wombats and possums, mostly jammed into hollow logs to escape the daylight, and some scary-as-fuck snakes and lizards. The press snapped pictures of Justin holding a python with a diamond pattern of scales and the face he made when it curled its tail up around his neck. The girl laughed and hauled it off him before it could start to squeeze.
Well, that’d be one way for me to get a race, right?
Justin laughed and scrubbed his knuckles over his sandy buzz cut, and Malcolm slung an arm around his shoulders. I was too far back to hear what Malcolm said, but everyone laughed.
This was the part of the visit I’d been looking forward to. A couple more khaki-clad workers appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly animals were getting passed around like party favors. A guy handed me a big, chunky lizard, and I took it. It opened its mouth to show me its blue tongue.
“He’s pretty chill,” the guy promised me, but nothing looked chill about that mouth, or sounded chill about the hiss it gave.
“Does he bite?”
“Oh yeah,” the guy said. “But you’ll be all right. He might leave a bruise if he gets you, but it probably won’t break the skin.”
There were too many mights and probablys in that statement to make me feel great about my new friend the lizard, but it was pretty cool all the same. He was heavier than he looked, sort of stumpy and fat, with a pattern of stripes down his soft but scaly body that did a great impersonation of a snake. Despite the fact that he did me a solid by not biting me, I handed him straight back to the worker when a woman approached with a koala.
It was heavier than it looked, too, a lump of solid weight. It settled into my arms, and the woman showed me how to keep one arm under its backside, like holding a toddler. A dozy, fuzzy toddler with surprisingly intimidating claws.
“Lennox!” Malcolm called from farther along the row of wire runs. “Get over here!”
He and Justin were still mugging for the photographers, some of whom looked annoyed when they straightened up and waited for me to join them. “This guy? Who the fuck is this guy?” But maybe it was all in my head. What was the opposite of a superiority complex? Whatever it was, I’d had one for years, and my promotion to reserve driver had brought it into sharp relief.
Malcolm was holding a pillowcase. A baby kangaroo’s head was poking out of it, all velvety snout and long, dark eyelashes. “How cool is this? Oh, man, you’ve got a koala! I definitely need to hold that next.”
He and Justin grinned for the cameras and bantered back and forth off the softball questions the press threw at them. I smiled, too, though mine probably looked more like a rictus grin than anything approaching genuine. Eventually even the journalists got bored with the Malcolm and Justin sideshow and moved on to some of the other guys.
“Hey, look at its little paws,” Justin said, and Malcolm carefully bundled the kangaroo over to him. “This is nicer than the snake.”
Malcolm scritched my koala on the head. “This is great.”
And then suddenly Karl was back, smarming up beside us. Malcolm looked at me and then Karl, and a hollow pit opened up in my gut. My brother noticed stuff, and this wasn’t the first time I felt sure that he knew something had happened between me and Karl. Or maybe Karl had dropped a few hints—he was a top-tier wankstain, so it fit. He and Malcolm didn’t like each other, which was no surprise, because nobody liked Karl, but Karl seemed to take it more personally with Malcolm for some reason. Probably because Malcolm was the Bradley brother whose dick he’d reallywanted to suck.
There was my opposite-of-a-superiority-complex again, right on cue.
“Hi, Justin,” Karl said.
Justin’s smile transformed from carefree to cautious. He nodded. “Karl.”
“You drove really well in Jeddah,” Karl said. “Almost a personal best, wasn’t it?”
Justin darted a glance at Malcolm.
Malcolm was still smiling, but there was a hardness in his gaze. At Jeddah, when Karl had come second to Malcolm’s first, he’d kissed Malcolm on the cheek after the race, which the fans seemed to think was either because they were mates messing around and they’d forgotten where they were, or that Karl was a hero for giving the middle finger to the Saudi authorities and their hardline anti-gay laws—but anyone who knew Karl in person knew he was just being a dick. And I, who knew Karl way more personally than I should have, knew that he’d just done it to rile me up. To remind me, though it wasn’t like I needed it, that I was nobody’s first choice.
Karl smirked. “But I guess when those team orders are given out, that’s what you do, huh? Let your teammate take your position and settle for fourth instead, while he goes on to win.”
Justin bristled at that, and so did Malcolm, because that wasn’t what had happened in Jeddah. Malcolm had overtaken Justin fair and square, and nobody had ordered Justin to let it happen.
“That’s not—” Justin began, and Malcolm shook his head and put a hand on his arm.
“You’re still taking orders off him now.” Karl’s smile inched up another couple degrees into bald-faced insincerity. “That has to rankle just a bit, doesn’t it? I mean, you actually worked to get where you are, and you’re still playing second fiddle to a fucking pay driver.”
I burned with sudden rage.
Karl shrugged. “I guess at least Malcolm can drive.” His gaze raked over me. “All Lennox is good for is—”
I punched him.
I wasn’t planning on it, but my rage lit the very short fuse of something even hotter and uglier, and my fist was swinging and connecting with his jaw before I even knew I’d moved. The punch became a scuffle as both Justin and Malcolm intervened to pull us apart, and I stood there, glaring at Karl, who didn’t even have the fucking decency to have a hair out of place after I’d hit him.
Camera flashes dazzled us, and with a sinking feeling in my gut, I realized way too late that I’d seriously fucked up. I’d just punched Karl Neumann in the face in front of a whole bunch of journalists. This wasn’t the sort of press coverage the FIA and the Australian Grand Prix Corporation had been hoping for when they’d arranged this little outing. And my dad was going to be pretty pissed off too.
And then, when the girl in khaki came in yelling at me, her face red with outrage, I realized I’d seriously, seriously fucked up, because I wasn’t holding the koala anymore.
In my rush to punch Karl in the face, I’d dropped it.