Awakening Veronica Read Online Free PDF Page A

his closest friend and wanting to influence him to stay in Divine. “You remember a conversation we had years ago, before you transferred to Wyoming?”
    Travis took another sip from his beer and his eyes took on a faraway look. “Sharing a woman? You’re appointed to your current position by the voters. Do you still think about it?”
    Hank put down the beer glass and pointed at his temple, where more and more silver was crowding out his formerly jet-black hair. “I turned forty-four this year. There will come a point where I’ll be too old to compete with the younger guys coming up in the sheriff’s department. I don’t begrudge them their chance to make a difference in this community. I just don’t want to arrive at the end of my tenure as sheriff and realize that my years of service have cost me more than just a few silver hairs. Walking into a dark, quiet house at the end of shift has been getting to me. I wondered if you still felt the same way we did back then.”
    The other dream—one he’d all but given up on—also because of his elected position, hovered in the back of his mind but didn’t fully surface. He didn’t know if Travis still enjoyed the same Dominant tendencies he did, but he’d content himself with having one dream come true. Hoping for both felt greedy.
    What if we found our one and she was receptive to being dominated?
    “If you’re asking after all this time, that must mean the thought of sharing a woman, loving the same woman, has been on your mind.”
    “Frequently, yeah. Some things have changed since the last time you visited. Remember Jack Warner, Ethan Grant, and Adam Davis?”
    A deep chuckle rumbled from Travis’s chest and he sat back in his seat. “They’re kind of where this dream started. How are they?”
    A disquieting knot of emotion churned in Hank’s gut as he recalled the first time Jack, Ethan, and Adam had shared their secret dream of sharing a woman—not just for sexual pleasure but for a lifetime. He knew the emotion stirring in him wasn’t jealousy, but it still burned. Want. He wanted what they had with Grace. He longed for the peace he saw in Jack’s eyes when the subject of Grace came up.
    “They found her.”
    “They did?” Travis’s tone made it clear he was shocked. Hank thumbed through the pictures on his personal cell phone until he found the right one. He turned the phone so Travis could see it. “This was taken on Fourth of July. That’s Grace.”
    Travis took the phone from Hank, looked more closely, and his eyebrows did a brief, appreciative jump. “She’s beautiful. Looks familiar, too.” A grin spread across his face, and he glanced at Hank and said, “She have a sister? I’ve got a thing for curvy women.”
    “Me, too, man. Yeah, she has one already-married sister. Charity.”
    Travis paused and looked closer. “Stuart?”
    Hank nodded. “Used to be.”
    “She was a shy little thing and Charity was a pistol, as I recall.”
    Hank nodded and then chuckled. “Speaking of pistols, they also have a daughter. Little Rose Marie. She’s three. A lot has changed since you last visited Divine. Among our generation, Grace is the center of the first ménage I know of in this area. There are others from our parents’ generation, but they’re all still very much in the closet.”
    “You said the first ménage. There are others?”
    Hank licked the beer foam from his upper lip and nodded. “Several. Including people you know.”
    “I’d like to hear more about that, maybe get caught up with some of them.”
    Hank hoped that meant Travis still thought about their discussion years before. One night, when they’d gotten rip-roaring drunk, long before Hank ever conceived the idea of running for sheriff and before Travis had moved on to his first posting away from Divine as a game warden in Wyoming, they’d talked about sharing a woman.
    Both of them were so territorial back then, and they’d agreed that the only way either of them