Page 17 of Savage Reins
"Can't what?"
"This. You. Any of it." I gesture helplessly between us. "You're here to destroy my life."
"Maybe." His voice is rough, raw. "But right now, I'm here in this barn with you, and that's all I can think about."
The honesty in his words terrifies me. Threats I know how to handle. This, whatever this is between us, I have no defense against.
I push past him, heading for the barn door even though the storm is still raging outside. I need air, need space, need to getaway from the suffocating intensity of whatever just happened between us. Because as much as I want to twist that lust and use it, there is something inside my chest that just knotted up and I have to figure out what it is.
"Mira—"
But I'm already gone, plunging into the downpour without looking back. The cold rain hits my overheated skin with shocking intensity, soaking through my clothes in seconds. I run across the muddy yard toward the feed shed, my boots splashing through puddles, my heart hammering against my ribs.
7
RENAT
The storm tears across the pasture in sheets of gray fury, turning the dirt to mud and the air to needles of cold rain. I watch from the barn doorway as Mira races toward the feed shed, her boots sliding in the muck. The roof groans under the assault—old wood and rusted nails fighting a battle they can't win.
The sharp crack comes suddenly, wood splintering against the roar of thunder. Half the shed roof caves inward, and I'm moving before I think, boots pounding through puddles toward the wreckage.
"Mira!" I shout over the storm.
She's already there, knee-deep in debris, hauling broken beams off sacks of grain. Her father emerges from the main barn, moving slower but determinedly. Water runs down my neck as I grab the other end of a fallen rafter.
"Feed's getting soaked," Yuri calls, his voice thin against the wind. "We lose this, horses don't eat next week."
I heave the beam aside and reach for another. Mira works across from me. her movements are quick and angry. I can tell she's using the flurry of her flustered emotions to push her bodyto its limits, and it's working. Rain plasters her shirt to her skin, and she mutters under her breath—Russian curses that would make my cousins proud.
"Careful with that one," I warn as she approaches a beam still connected to the sagging roof line. "It's holding up what's left."
She doesn't listen. Instead, she scrambles up onto a pile of debris, reaching for grain sacks trapped under the twisted metal and wood. The beam she's standing on sags under her weight, and I can see the rot eating through its center.
"Mira, get down," I call, but she ignores me, stretching higher to grab another sack. The wood groans. I drop what I'm holding and move toward her. "I said get down."
"Almost got it," she grunts, fingers brushing the corner of a feed sack.
The beam shifts. Just a little, but enough to send my pulse spiking. I reach up and grab her arm, pulling hard. "Down. Now."
She pushes against my grip, gray-blue eyes flashing. "Let go of me."
"Not when you're about to break your neck."
"I know what I'm doing."
"You know how to be stubborn. That's not the same thing."
She wrenches free and climbs higher, ignoring the way the wood bends under her boots. Every muscle in my body coils tightly watching her balance on that rotted beam. I've seen men die for less—miscalculating a jump, trusting bad ground, thinking they were invincible right up until they weren't.
The grain sack comes loose, and she tosses it down to her father. Then another. She moves with the kind of reckless confidence that makes my teeth ache. I stand below her, ready to catch her when the whole thing collapses, but she keeps going, keeps pushing her luck.
"Mira."
"I heard you the first time."
Thunder cracks overhead, and the rain comes harder. My shirt clings to my skin, making me shiver with cold, but I don't move. Can't move. Not when she's up there trying to defy gravity with her own stubborn pride.
She finally climbs down when there's nothing left to save, boots hitting solid ground with a splash. Her father has moved most of the salvageable feed under the remaining section of roof, covering it with tarps. The storm still rages, but we've saved what we could.
