Excerpt: Driven Together by Neil S. Plakcy
- Archaeolibrarian
- 9 hours ago
- 4 min read
Book Details:
Book Title: Driven Together
Author and Cover Artist: Neil S. Plakcy
Publisher: Samwise Books
Release Date: February 23, 2026
Tense/POV: First person/past tense
Genres: Contemporary MM Sports Romance
Tropes: Slow burn
Themes: Second chance at love, coming out
Heat Rating: 3 out of 5 flames
Length: 81 000 words/301 pages
It is a standalone book and does not end on a cliffhanger.
@neilplakcy @gaybookpromotions
@neilplakcy @gaybookpromotions
He’s covering Formula 1’s hottest rising star.
He never expected it to be the man who broke his heart.
Journalist Wally Pulaski is sent to cover Formula 1’s most exciting rising star—Jonathan Hirsch.
The same Jonathan Hirsch he loved and lost in college—and never got over.”
Now Jonathan is on the verge of a championship, with the world watching his every move. Wally’s job is to report the truth. No bias. No exceptions.
No matter how much it hurts.
But as the season intensifies, so does everything they left unfinished. Old feelings resurface. Lines blur. And every stolen moment threatens to become tomorrow’s headline.
Because in Formula 1, nothing stays private for long.
And this time, they have more to lose than just each other.
A second-chance MM romance set in the high-pressure world of Formula 1, perfect for readers who love emotional tension, high stakes, and hard-won happily-ever-afters.
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I looked at him, really looked. Jonathan Hirsch, Monaco Grand Prix finalist, sitting in a dive bar in Monte Carlo at midnight, asking me to take a chance on something that might be wonderful or might be a complete disaster.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“Okay, let’s see where this goes. Barcelona to Spa, five races to figure out if we’re brave enough to make this work.”
Jonathan’s smile was radiant. “That’s all I’m asking for.”
He kissed me across the small table, soft and sweet and tasting like beer and possibility. Around us, the bar continued its late-night rhythm, oblivious to the fact that a Formula 1 driver and a motorsports journalist had just decided to rewrite their carefully planned lives.
When we broke apart, Jonathan was grinning.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “Once, we were too practical to try long distance. Now we’re going to try dating while you cover my races. We’ve either gotten much braver or much stupider.”
“Probably both,” I admitted. “But you know what? I’m okay with that.”
We finished our beers and walked back toward the harbor, where the parties still buzzed. Jonathan tugged me toward the paddock. Behind the glitter, the Monaco Grand Prix was already vanishing, piece by piece. Crews swarmed over the cars with military precision, wiping them down, draining fluids, and sliding them into padded crates as if they were Fabergé eggs instead of machines built for speed.
The air still vibrated with leftover adrenaline. The sharp tang of fuel, the sweet stink of rubber ground into the asphalt, the faint bite of hot brakes cooling in the night mixed with the briny breeze from the harbor, a perfume of glamour and grit all at once. Everywhere I turned, there was motion and sound: the staccato crack of impact wrenches, the slap of gloves on metal, the hollow thud of crates sealing shut. Cables coiled like sleeping snakes at the workers’ feet as garage walls folded into flat panels and tool chests slammed closed, the paddock dissolving from carnival into pure efficiency.
I couldn’t look away. One moment it had been champagne and music and color; now it was stripped to bare bones. Somehow that made it even more impressive. The glamour was temporary, but the precision and the discipline was permanent.
I breathed it in, dizzy with the noise and smells and sheer scale of it all. My first Grand Prix was ending, but even in its aftermath I felt the pulse of something bigger than myself, alive and relentless.
“By morning, you won’t even know we were here,” Jonathan said beside me in his Meridian jacket. “Barcelona’s only a few hundred miles. The trucks will drive overnight, and the setup crew will already be waiting.”
I nodded, picturing cars cocooned in trailers, engineers and mechanics scattering onto buses and budget flights while Jonathan and his teammates slipped onto a private jet with their race engineers.
The Monaco Grand Prix was over, but the season stretched ahead. Twenty-two more races, five more chances to figure out if second chances were worth the risk.
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Neil S. Plakcy is an award-winning author of sexy, fast-paced MM romances, including The Big Race, about which Joyfully Jay wrote, “A truly enjoyable read.” He also writes the Ormond Yard series of Victorian MM romances, and the Love on series of sun-kissed South Beach romps.
His website is www.mahubooks.com.
Author Links
Tour hosted by: Gay Book Promotions
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