Thawing the Ice

Thawing the Ice

by Shyla Colt

Untamed Series

Thawing the Ice

© 2014 Shyla Colt

Cover by Dreams 2 Media

Disclaimer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the author.
The story and its characters and
entities are fictional. Any likeness to actual persons, either living or dead,
is strictly coincidental.

Dedications

For you dear readers, who travel with me on journeys like this
one into the frozen terrain of Alaska. Without you I’d be nothing. :* And
always, thank you to the man upstairs for everything.

Chapter One

Leighton Pulver paced the length of
the small cabin, furious over her current situation.
I should have gotten a
handle on this when it first started
. Her bare feet coasted over the carpet
as she wore a path from the door to the living room and back.
Why did I let
it get this far? So stupid
. She’d out of her way to take the high road, and
now the bitterness and backup from biting her tongue and feigning detachment.
The ignored emotions rushed up, choking her. Her hands shook. Heat spread
across her face as she worried the beige carpet. This life had twisted the
optimistic girl she’d once been and had opened her eyes to the horrors,
hypocrisy, and deceit people doled out at an alarming rate.
I guess I found
my breaking point
. Fear clung to her brain like cotton candy.

What will they say when I spill
my guts? When they see the weak woman beneath my tough girl front?
Her soft
underbelly wasn’t pretty, and they had enough on their plates running the
Lodge. Her stomach rolled and knotted like pretzels waiting to be baked. She
didn’t do sharing. People had a way of breaking your heart, and using your
weaknesses against you. But this had already waited too long. She nibbled the
bottom of her lip, fingering the threadbare material of the gray shirt she’d
borrowed from Ryan to do the laundry.

A key turned in the lock, and she
paused in the middle of the living room. Ryan and Casey walked inside. For a
moment, her vision swam. She curled her feet into the carpet beneath her to
ground herself.

“Lei.” Ryan’s gruff voice made her
jump.

“What’s going on? Something
happen?” Casey shut the door behind him, and they tensed, launching into
protective mode. Anderson, Alaska was a wild, rugged area. It wasn’t unusual
for animals to wander the property, and after the way her Dad died, extra
caution became the norm. Rabid bears were a one in a million chance. She
slammed the lid shut on the horrific memories and focused on the boys.

She took a deep breath and forced
the words repeating in her mind out. “I can’t do this anymore.” Tears hovered
in the corner of her eyes, and she struggled to keep them back.
I refuse to
be remembered as a crybaby.
Her chest ached, and pain crept into her
temples, a dull pulsing she knew would quickly escalate to a paralyzing throb
if she didn’t end this soon.

“You can’t do what?” Ryan shook his
head. His brow creased with confusion.

“Exactly.” She snorted.

“We’re not following you,” Casey
said slowly. His dark brown hair swung side to side, and she drank in his
beauty. He had large, soulful brown eyes set in a masculine face. A broad
forehead, strong jaw, and dimpled cheeks rounded out the total package that
kept the females in the town swooning. The sparse city boasted two hundred and
fifty people on a good day, so pickings were slim. Everyone knew the Boyer
boys, whose father ran the only Lodging Hotel in town. Since their fathers had
been best friends, Leighton grew up beside them, fishing, hunting, and not
realizing how attractive they were until much later in life. She gulped.

“Does it matter?” Leighton’s voice
cracked.

“You come at me talking crazy,
yeah, it kind of does.” Ryan stalked forward, and she stepped back, avoiding
him. Too close and he muddled her thoughts like a lead wall dampening airwaves.
His deep-seated, brownish-green eyes and high cheekbones led down to a full
pair of deep pink lips she wanted to nibble. Her pulse ramped up.

“Are you running from me?” Ryan’s
hazel-colored eyes widened. A frown curved his tempting lips down, and the
sharp angles of his face softened with concern. Since the mauling, she’d had
panic attacks. Periods of time where rationalization left the building and
fight or flight set in.

“We’re all running from something.”
The bitchy tone made her wince.
This isn’t how I wanted this to go
.
”Shit. I am mangling this.” She hung her head.

“Just…breathe. It’s clear this
has been bothering you forever, but we’re clueless.” Casey’s soothing baritone
brought her outside her head. The man had a knack for saying the right thing to
smooth over choppy waters. A skill she was convinced he’d been gifted with to
offset his brother’s brusqueness.

“I had this all worked out in my
head, and now, it’s too much.” Leighton shook her head, begging them to
understand with her eyes.
Please don’t make me spell this out.
Embarrassment and shame, mixed with a bit of self-loathing, proved to be a pill
too bitter for her to swallow.
I just had to flummox this all up by falling
for them.

“I know it’s been hard since you
lost your dad—” Ryan said.

“Don’t!” She held out her hand. “I
can’t have that conversation tonight.” Her stomach rolled, protesting the
topic. The sight of her father’s body shredded and left like garbage before the
bear came at her would haunt her for the rest of her life. The nightmares
stopped a few months ago with the time, grieving, and a healthy dose of
counseling. She had no desire to make them resurface.

“It’s been six months. When are we
going to?” Ryan tilted his head, refusing to back down. Bullheaded and bossy,
he boiled her blood in more ways than one.

“Not now.” She ground her teeth.
Images of scarlet puddles and internal organs strewn across the grass flashed
in her head. She’d been lucky to make it out alive. Without Ryan and Casey, she
never would have.
Thank God they made a habit of stopping by the house to
check on us.
Her father, Carl, had been a surrogate father figure to the
boys, and with old age setting in, they often swung by. She’d grown up in this
rural area, had been around wild animals her whole life, often hunting them.
Yet, this bear had been from hell itself. Beastly, it came in at about
eight-hundred-and-fifty pounds and stood at six foot. She’d battled the thing
tooth and nail to survive long enough for help to rush to the rescue when the
bear made a mockery of the security door on the back porch and finagled its way
inside. Pulvers did what they had to.

“Isn’t that what this is about?”
Ryan scowled. Frustration tinged his voice.

“No. It’s about me fucking up and
trying to rectify the situation.” Leighton wrapped her arms around her waist.
The thought of leaving the sanctity of their home made her sad.
Has to be
done. Man up, Pulver. You screw this up and you’ll have no one left.

“Leighton, you can tell us
anything, you know that. We’ve known you since you were born,” Casey said.
Always
the voice of reason.

She rolled her eyes. “You love
bringing that up, don’t you?” Right now, the last thing she wanted to remember
was how they viewed her as a little sister.

“Since when is having history a bad
thing?” Ryan’s jaw flexed.

“Since the only thing I can think
about is fucking the two of you.” She covered her mouth, shaking her head
vigorously. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Casey gasped, and Ryan’s jaw
dropped. The words spilled out like air from a balloon with a hole. “The
one-night-stand, wing woman of the year shit is killing me a little more every
day. I know we could never do casual. Ryan doesn’t do anything else except
that, and Casey’s still recovering from my dad’s death same as I am.” She
paused. “This is my stop. I’m a big girl, and I know when to get off the ride
before It becomes too much.”

Ryan turned to Casey. A silent
conversation took place between them.
I hate it when they do that.
They
stepped forward, and she glanced at the ground, not ready to see the
disappointment and pity. Shame sent heat into her cheeks. The poor, pudgy,
black girl had developed a crush on the hottest commodity in the tiny
community.

“Look at me,” Ryan said.

“No.” Mortified, she closed her
eyes tight and balled her fists.

“Come on, Leighton.” Casey’s timbre
was laced with comfort. For once, she wanted no part of it. Growing up with
people trapped you in a time capsule.

Ryan stepped into her space,
blocking her between the expanse of the arms he placed on either side of her
head. “I’m not going to move until you do,” he said.

“Such a fucking bully,” she said
under her breath.

Casey snorted.

“Shut up, Casey,” Ryan said.

Her lips twitched. She loved their
brotherly banter.

“Finally a smile,” Ryan said. She
could hear the smile in his voice. Thoughts of his brilliant beam made her
knees weaken. Tired of being a coward, she looked up and fell headlong into an
intense set of brownish-green jewels gifted to him as eyes.

“All this time we’ve been calling
ourselves bastards for wanting to get into your pants.” Ryan smirked.

“What?” His words rolled around in
her brain, but she refused to follow the logic. Surely he didn’t mean what she
thought he did.

“We’re painfully aware that you
aren’t a little girl anymore.” Ryan moved even closer. Their bodies brushed.

“Is this some sort of joke?” Her
voice cracked.

Ryan grabbed her hand and placed it
on the bulge in his jeans. The air fled from her lungs, and her mouth formed on
O. “No joke, sweetheart. Why do you think I’ve been playing wheel of fortune
every bar we enter?”

“B-because you’re Ryan Boyer.” She
huffed. His reputation preceded him.

“Now you’re just trying to flatter
me.” Ryan smirked and rubbed against her hand. The bulge grew. Her nipples
peaked. Tongue-tied, she shook her head. Casey framed her face in his massive
hands as he leaned in, stopping her denial. ”We see you. We want you, and
nothing about the demands we’ll place will be casual.”

“C-Case…”

“Do you want it too, Leighton? Are
you willing to give us a try? You know us better than most. We’re possessive,
greedy, and gruff. But I promise you, you’d never want for a damn thing.”
Casey’s mouth hovered millimeters from her lips.

“We want you here, Lei. We like the
dynamics too damn much.” Ryan nipped her neck. Casey connected their lips, and
she closed her eyes, lost in the incredible sensation they created together.

“So beautiful.” The sincerity in
Ryan’s voice blew her mind. Never the one with a soft touch, Ryan always
treated her like one of the guys. He licked her pulse point, and she moaned
into Casey’s mouth. Her world tilted on its axis. Fantasies became
possibilities.

“If we do this, you’re ours,
Pulver,” Ryan said.

Casey pulled away. She sucked air
into her lungs. “Y-Yours?”

“That’s right, Leighton, property
of the Boyers.” Casey skimmed his fingers over her thigh bared by his t-shirt.

“I’m not something to own.” She
struggled to focus while her body caught fire.

“No, but this isn’t a one off, or
some experiment. We want more,” Casey said.

“All…” Ryan stepped closer, filling
her vision and her mind with his larger than life personality. ”We won’t stop
until we put our mark on everything you are.”

Her chest heaved, and her breath
came in small puffs.

“You’ve always held a special spot
in our hearts. Over the years, the sister vibe changed. Neither of us could
decide who had the right to pursue you, so we sat on our feelings. Then the
attack happened, and you moved in. We saw you day in and day out.” Ryan stroked
her collarbone with the tip of his index finger. His rough skin calloused by
chopping wood and handling weapons made her body tingle. “If we do this, we do
it right.”

“How do we do that?” She moistened
her dry lips with her tongue. Casey moaned.

“A relationship between all of us,
equal time, equal treatment.” Ryan’s voice dropped an octave and her breasts
swelled. Ryan circled her pulse point with the pad of his thumb, exploring the
area exposed by the large shirt. “Are you in?”

“B-but what will people say?” The
thought of bringing shame to her father’s memory so soon after his passing
placed a gnawing pit in the bottom of her stomach.

“Nothing…” Casey’s eyes hardened,
and Ryan growled.

“They’ll see we’re two of the
luckiest sons of bitches around here,” Ryan said.

Leighton couldn’t help but smile. Anderson had a severely imbalanced ratio of women to men.

“Hell, maybe we’ll start a trend.” Ryan
winked. “If you’re not ready to scream it from the rooftops right away, we
won’t be upset. It took us a long time to come to terms with it, too.”

“Wait, you talked about this?”
Any
minute now I’m going to wake up disgruntled and sexually frustrated.

“All the time,” Casey said. “We
wanted to give you time to heal and adjust,” he said, answering her question
before it could be asked.

“What do you think, Lei? Are you up
for the adventure?” The challenge in Ryan’s eyes made her bristle. He always
knew how to press her buttons.

“Are you?” She tilted her head, and
Ryan grinned.

“Let’s show you how ready we are,”
Ryan said.

The words made her nervous. When
one grew up in a town as small as hers, sex took on a whole different meaning.
Most men were too old, stuck in the friend zone, or sleeping around. She’d
never been one for sloppy seconds or giving away something precious for no
reason.