by Thianna D
His Damsel in Distress
Corbin’s Bend: Season Three
By
Thianna D.
Copyright 2015 Blushing Books and Thianna D.
Published by Blushing Books at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Published by Blushing Books®,
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D., Thianna
His Damsel in Distress
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62750-8179
Cover Design by Anthony Walsh
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.
Table of Contents:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
Blushing Books
Chapter One
“I’m sorry, Mr. Nelson.” For all he truly listened, the tone sounded empty, as did the words – platitudes they had learned to say at times like these, but Corbin Nelson nodded anyway. It felt like another person, another time, another life as the nurse handed him the clipboard and he signed next to the X. How his hand stayed steady enough to sign his signature, he couldn’t tell, but finally he handed the paperwork back.
The constant beep, beep, beep of the machinery was the only thing that kept him standing straight. It meant Lena was alive, even if it was only her body. Her mind and spirit were gone; everyone said so. Even he had to admit after four weeks of constantly being at her bedside, that the person he had lived with for seventeen years was gone. When the beeps stopped, he jolted, his eyes flashing to the monitor that had shown her heartbeat. It was blank. The strange whooshing sound from the ventilator stopped and as his eyes slid down to her, as he saw her chest no longer rising and falling through the forced air, her body no longer alive, he collapsed.
Strong arms grasped him from behind, holding him as he wept uncontrollably. Hands held him up and he felt more than saw the scenery change as whoever was holding him, walked him out of the room and down the hall. The antiseptic scent of the hospital slowly disappeared and when his rump touched hard wood, Corbin took a gulping breath and stopped breathing for a moment, trying to calm himself down. Opening his eyes, he found himself on a bench in a small courtyard in the middle of the hospital. Fake grass surrounded him and he let out a long shuddery breath before his eyes fastened on a pair of dark loafers to his right. They might be new, but he knew to whom those shoes would belong.
“How did you know?” he asked without looking up.
“Shawn called me.” Brent’s voice was quiet, kind, just like it always was unless he felt you needed a wake-up call. “He said you were ready to make the decision and that he’d said his goodbyes last night. I flew out on the red eye.”
Nodding while still looking at the fake grass under his feet, Corbin had a hard time thinking. “I couldn’t have him here. He needed to remember her alive. Seeing her body not moving…” He shuddered imagining the pain in the man’s face. “Shouldn’t you be home with your girls?”
“Nice try. Char will be fine. Plus,” he added, amusement creeping into his tone, “she thinks I’ve left her to her own devices. I fully expect to hear her scream when she finds out Benjamin’s going to be looking in on her twice a day.”
Corbin wanted to laugh, to tease, but right now he couldn’t. “She’s dead,” he said in a calm voice. Being calm was the only thing that was barely holding back hysteria he could feel in the back of his head.
“I know. I’m sorry you had to make that decision, Corbin.” Brent squatted down and put his hand on Corbin’s knee. “Everything’s being taken care of. Let’s get you home.”
Home was a four-story row house, one he and Lena had purchased for their second anniversary. It had felt like home for only a couple years. For the last decade it had been nothing but a shell, no matter how much they had tried to revive their relationship. And that, of everything he had to worry about, was the thing he felt the worst about. That when all was said and done, their relationship had been a sham. Nobody, not even his best friends Brent and Calbert, knew just how much of a mockery it had been.
The problem, he thought as he walked in without really seeing anything, was that he kept thinking something would fix everything. But he guessed you couldn’t fix something that should have never been. He was a strong man; she was a strong woman. Unfortunately, he also believed in being head of his own house. She did not.
“Sit down and I’ll make us some coffee.” Brent pressed him into a chair and Corbin stared blankly at the brick walls around him. A couple minutes later when a hot mug pressed into his hands, he stared at it, confused. “Drink,” Brent ordered making Corbin smile.
“I’m not Char,” he said dryly, taking a sip of the deeply flavored drink. Groaning at how good it tasted, he drank half the mug in one shot. Lena had hated the pungency of true coffee and could only handle it if it she couldn’t taste it. Corbin had forgotten how good a real cup of coffee could taste when not drenched in milk or sugar.
“No, but you’re too raw to think. Drink that and then we’ll talk.”
Grimacing, Corbin nodded as he took another drink. Of course Brent would expect him to talk. That he didn’t want to would mean nothing, nothing at all. Corbin’s best friend had a stubborn streak, one that Corbin applauded when used against anyone else, hated when it was directed toward him. Even if he usually admitted it was a good thing afterward. As the last of the hot liquid poured down his throat, Corbin blinked, feeling, which he did not necessarily want to do right now.
Seated across from him in one of Lena’s velvet chairs with a grimace on his face, Brent looked out of place. Wearing a blue checked button-down shirt and black jeans, he stood out in amongst Lena’s high-class furnishings. Unable to stop himself, Corbin cracked a smile. “You look good in velvet.”
Rolling his eyes, Brent tossed one of the many pillows that decorated the room at him. “How long?”
The question came fast and made Corbin wince. It was one of many questions his friend would ask that he did not want to answer. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does and you know it. How long?” Brent leaned forward, fixing him with a stare that would make lesser men hit the floor and cower but that he recognized as intensity. They were as close as brothers and Brent knew how to get through to him.
The look and the meaning behind it made Corbin more relaxed. Even as an alpha male, there were some times where it was apparent that another alpha had the higher ground. And that, in its way, was comforting. Still holding out, he nodded. “All right. Here’s the skinny. She’s been going downhill for two years. Three months ago, she had a checkup and she was fine. Four weeks ago she collapsed and they found a huge tumor in her brain. She never regained consciousness.”
<
br /> “You know that’s not what I’m asking.” This time the tone was more subtle as Brent’s gray eyes stared into Corbin’s bright baby blues.
“Shawn told you.” It wasn’t a question. There was no other way his friend could have known.
“Fuck, Corbin. I knew when you refused to move to Colorado. What I want to know is how long you’ve been trying to live this life?” The pain in his friend’s voice was real. Brent hated to see anyone suffer and knowing Corbin had been in pain for a very long time probably cut him to his core.
That Brent saw through him so easily was both a comfort and an annoyance. “It doesn’t matter,” he snapped, standing up and going into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee. As he poured the deep black liquid into the mug, his hands shook but only slightly.
“The fuck it doesn’t.” Brent’s calm voice right behind him startled Corbin, though it probably shouldn’t. They met the first day he moved to New York and had quickly become best friends. That relationship had deepened to where Brent was more like his brother than his friend. They knew each other well enough, he should have known he wouldn’t be able to hide his situation. Still, it was irritating that he couldn’t.
“You need to stop being so damned quiet,” Corbin said, looking at the wall behind the coffee maker. If he turned and looked at his friend, he might break. He had held himself up for so long, ignoring his own needs and just trying to keep the status quo. If he admitted just how long it had been, he didn’t know if he could handle it. Besides, the guilt clawing at his gut trying to get out was almost too much to ignore. How could he explain that there was a sense of euphoria in her death? That he was finally free of a woman who had tried to control him for seventeen years and when he didn’t let her, became a shrew. The guilt was like a noose wrapped around his throat, getting tighter and tighter with each moment that passed. No matter how bad their relationship was, feeling relief about her death felt dreadfully wrong.
Brent didn’t respond and as the quiet infiltrated his mind, it warred with the information his brain contained. “Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Lena never submitted to me. Never. She hated spanking and everything to do with it. The only outlet I ever had was with you guys and after you left, I’ve had nothing. Is that what you wanted to hear?” The shame to such an admittance filled him and he fought back the bile in his throat.
A long sigh was his response. “No, my friend, it’s not. Nobody should have to live like that. You’re too good of a man at times, Corbin.” Brent’s strong hand landed on his shoulder carrying with it an immense amount of calm. Elizabeth, Brent’s deceased fiancée, had said sometimes she thought the man’s hands were magic. At times like this, Corbin had to agree with her.
“I’m an idiot.”
“Come on. Shawn’s taking care of funeral arrangements. You’ll have to make the rest of the decisions. I’m just here to goad you into them.”
Snorting a laugh, Corbin turned and looked over his shoulder. “It’s a good thing I like you.”
Brent flashed him a smile. “True. I remember what a mean right hook you’ve got.”
* * * * *
As exhausted as he was, making a decision about the house was easy. “I don’t want it,” he admitted to Brent and his lawyer, Dennis McLeary, two days later. “The place is a blasted shell filled with nothing but trinkets. There isn’t a part of me in there. I want to get rid of it and find an apartment.”
Dennis nodded. “The area is selling well. You should be able to get a mill to a million and a half out of it easily. Especially if you sell it furnished.”
“That works. All of my things are in storage, anyway.” Over the years, Lena had made sure anything that he liked was taken down and stowed away. Worried she would sell everything, he had rented a storage space the first time they had discussed divorce. Every year since, that discussion had turned nastier until the last one when he actually intended to leave no matter what. Her collapsing a few seconds later and going into a coma had just made him feel like the lowest creature on the planet. Doctors might say it was the tumor that killed her. Corbin felt part of it was his own fault. He hadn’t hated Lena, in fact he had loved part of her – the part that he remembered from their first two years of marriage. It was the shrew she became that he disliked.
But he never would have wished her dead. And yet she was.
“Her will was simple,” Dennis explained. “But only because of the law insisting that she get your signature to put anyone else as beneficiary. You get everything except for a small stipend that goes to Shawn on a monthly basis.”
“How much did she give him?” Corbin asked, wondering just how much money Lena had set aside for her sibling. Probably not enough. The woman had always been embarrassed by her mentally disabled elder brother. Corbin couldn’t understand it. Shawn was the sweetest person. At the age of fifty-two, he had the mental acuity of an eight year old combined with the wisdom of a man who had lived five decades. He would have done anything for Lena and she did everything she could not to have anything to do with him.
“Five hundred a month.”
“Fuck. Triple it. No. Just how much are we talking here?”
“When all’s said and done? Between her investments and her life insurance, you’re set to inherit well into the eight figures.”
Corbin blinked at him. “What?” Lena had cried poor so many times, even after she bought some expensive piece of art for their house, she would cry about not being able to live the life she wanted and how if he worked harder, they would be fine. He worked almost eighty hours a week through most of their marriage and over the last few years had made well over a million a year. Now he knew where it all went.
“We don’t have the exact figure, but it will be somewhere between twelve and fifteen million.”
“Shit,” Brent murmured and Corbin looked out of the side of his eyes at his friend’s aghast expression which quickly flashed to anger. Brent looked over at him. “How many vacations did you not go on? How many opportunities did you—?” Brent stopped himself and shook his head as if to stop the thoughts in his head. “She fleeced you, my friend, and had tons of money sitting for the taking.”
Grimacing because it was true, Corbin turned back to Dennis. “I want several million put into a trust. Somewhere that a decent interest rate can give Shawn a few thousand a month. He’s a good man. Her brother deserves better than a measly five hundred a month.” Fury built in his chest. He knew Lena held a lot back from him, but hearing how much she had planned to keep back from her brother pissed him off. “I’ll want to reinvest the rest and—”
“Come to Colorado.”
The statement, while expected at some point, was still startling and Corbin jerked with the force of it. “Not now. I can’t think properly.”
Brent snorted. “You’ll never be able to think properly in New York. Come to Colorado.”
“To a town you named after me.” That was a joke that would live forever.
A flash of white lit up the wood-lined room as his friend grinned. “I told you if you didn’t move with us that I’d pay you back.”
Turning back to Dennis as this conversation could go back and forth forever, Corbin raised an eyebrow. “Anything else I should know about?”
“One more thing.” There was slight hesitation in his movements as Dennis reached into one of the drawers in his desk and removed an envelope. “She wrote this five years ago and asked that I give it to you if she died before you did.”
As they walked from the lawyer’s office, both Brent and Corbin were quiet. Even in the cab ride all the way back to his house, they said nothing except to give the cabbie the address. As Brent went to make them some fresh coffee, Corbin sat down in the least despicable piece of furniture in the living room – a leather wingback chair – and opened up the envelope. While there was no love left between him and the woman he had lived with for seventeen years, he never expected the vitriol that poured off the page. Phrases jumped out at him, typ
ed in bold.
… always your fault … blame Brent and Calbert … I tried, but could never mold you into the man I wanted … but the worst was at the very end, just above her signature. I never loved you, Corbin. I married you because I knew you could make a comfortable life for me, which is what I wanted and needed. If I’d known you were a freak, I would have married someone else.
For weeks, he had felt guilt over her coma and especially over the fact that he had to sign the piece of paper that would pull the plug. True, he had done it from a sense that he should rather than that he wanted to. For years he had tried to bring back the love he felt for her so many times. And here she was telling him she had never loved him. Never. Not that she fell out of love, but that she never, not once, not even when she threw herself at him, loved him. Even if it were that she stopped loving him when he developed a taste for spanking, he could understand. But these were the words of a cold-hearted woman who had only been after him for money.
Two emotions came upon him so fast, they were hard to differentiate. Anger exploded within him, but what was shocking was the way the guilt noose constricted. Bile rose in his throat and Corbin leapt out of the chair, rushing past Brent in his haste to get to the bathroom. While the physical manifestation of his guilt poured into the toilet, it dissipated within him until nothing but bitterness came up. Coughing, he sat down by the commode and stared at the ugly purple fixtures Lena had insisted on. With the guilt gone, the only thing left was anger. What he had put up with to keep the status quo. To do what he believed a man should do: uphold his marriage vows and do what he could to keep the marriage going. Hell, he had even believed that if a marriage collapsed, it was his fault. Each time he had got up the nerve to take that weight and divorce her anyway, she had begged, pleaded with him to give their marriage another shot.
