Burn For You (Boys of the South) by Marquita Valentine Page A

know why Beau Montgomery is printed there?” The best way to distract most people is by talking to them, and I’m hoping Landry is no different.
    “Besides being a NASCAR regulation?”
    “Oh baby, tell me more.”
    She giggles. “Because you have brothers that race, too, so they need to know which one of you is behind the wheel.”
    “Smart girls are so damn hot,” I tease, easing onto the track and applying a little pressure to the gas pedal. It takes less than two seconds to hit sixty.
    “Oh God,” she croaks. Immediately, I slow down a bit. “My dad was right.”
    “About what?
    “Zero to sixty in one point eight seconds.”
    Though it’s killing me not to open her up, I slow down even more, until it feels like we’re crawling on the track. “This better?”
    “No.”
    Disappointed, I start to ask if she wants to go back, but she cuts me off with three words.
    “Go faster, Beau.”
    “How fast, baby doll?”
    “Before I answer that, can I hold on to you?”
    “You can hold on to anything you want except my hands and arms. I need those to drive.”
    She grabs my leg and squeezes. Heat from her touch scalds me though my jeans.  “Fire this thing up.”
    Grinning like the cocky son of a bitch I am, I don’t wait to be told twice.
    ––––––––
    L andry
    I have never felt anything so exhilarating in my life.
    Wind whips inside the car, making my clothes billow in and out. We’re practically flying around the track, the wall and stadium seats one big blur. In the middle of the speedway is a huge campground-type of area where hardcore fans tailgate for days leading up to the races.
    “My family and I camped out in the middle once.”
    “Yeah. What did you think?” he asks.
    “It was fun to run around and meet other kids but we ended up leaving early, because some guys started showing a porno on the side of a camper.”
    “Classy,” he says, and I wonder if he really means it. Viewing porn is to guys like shoe shopping is to women. 
    “It was disgusting . We were sitting outside, cooking hotdogs over the campfire with another family, and then all of a sudden, there it was—a giant penis and vagina going at it. We couldn’t look away. I think I saw all the way to the woman’s brain.”
    He chokes back a laugh, and I grin at the visual he must now have. “How old were you?”
    “Fourteen. Thank God, Jamie was only five. He doesn’t remember it. Wish I could say the same. Totally scarred me for life.” I shudder.
    “You’ve never watched one again?”
    “God, no.” I wince. “I sound like such a prude, like some uptight, goody-two shoes who clutches her pearls a lot. I mean, I do have a pearl necklace that belonged to my mamaw, but I’ve never clutched it. Once, when Jamie was ten, I made him eat a bug for snooping around in my room. ” And that sounds so much better. I want to crawl out the window and let him run over me with the car a couple hundred times.
    Beau laughs. “Did it keep him from snooping in your room again?”
    “Yeah,” I laugh. “But don’t worry. I won’t do that to Mia. That kind of torture is reserved for siblings.”
    “Must be nice.”
    “You’re not close to your brothers?”
    “Not really. I didn’t move in with them until I was seventeen, and I moved out of Remington’s house as soon as I won my first race.”
    “How old were you?”
    “Almost nineteen.”
    “I don’t remember my parents talking about that.”
    “It wasn’t on the national circuit, and my house was a condo, not the monstrosity I live in now.”
    A sharp turn makes me clutch my harness strap with my free hand. “If it’s such a monstrosity, then why did you buy it?” As soon as the question is out of my mouth, I wish I never asked it.
    “Paisley and Mia live four houses down. I wanted a home with a yard in a neighborhood that was safe. When it was just my mom and me, we lived in some pretty shitty places. It’s not something I wish on anyone, including the