Shamefully Broken: A Dark Romance Read online

  “You’re going to need a lot of training,” he rumbled. “But this is your first position, Ellie. This is where you’re going to find yourself a great deal of the time as you start to learn what it means to be mine.”

  “Mason…” she whined his name, and he shook his head firmly.

  “Sir,” he said. “You’ll call me sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Mason is what you call me when you’re being a haughty brat, and Mav is what you call me when you’re being flippant. You will call me sir.”

  She made a grumbling sound that was cut off abruptly when he gave her hair a little tug.

  Thoroughly embarrassed and utterly uncomfortable being so humbled, she couldn’t help but squirm and complain. “Let me up, Mav.”

  “No,” he said firmly, keeping her in place easily. He had her head and with it, control of her entire body. He wasn’t exerting practically anything in the way of force, but she was utterly stuck, there in front of him, her skirt riding up. It hadn’t been designed for crawling around on the floor. As far as she was concerned, she hadn’t been designed for it either. The longer he kept her in the position, the more she whimpered and squirmed to no effect whatsoever.

  “Mason, come on, this is silly, let me up…”

  He didn’t dignify her rule-breaking words with a reply. He quirked one thick brow at her and tightened his fingers just a little, so she felt his strength and her own weakness even more keenly.

  The battle of wills went on for quite some time. He was waiting for something. She didn’t know what exactly, but she ran through everything she could think of to say, she tried every way to escape she could imagine, wriggling this way and that, pulling back, trying to squirm forward. It did nothing. He just held her until she gave a deep sigh and sat still, looking at him with an okay, what now, look?

  “Good girl,” he said, his lips breaking into a smile that made him an entirely new kind of handsome. God, she just about died when he smiled. It did things to her. It made her heart flutter, and sent a ripple of excitement over her skin and through the very core of her. It made the muscles of her inner thighs tighten. It made her feel as though she’d been immersed in sparkling water all over. If he ever knew the power of that smile…

  “This is just the beginning,” he said. “There’s a lot for you to learn. You’re going to learn how to serve me.”

  “Serve you?”

  “I know,” he said with a low chuckle. “You’ve never served anyone else in your life. It’s been a series of people catering to your tastes, desires, and whims for as long as you can remember. That’s not your world anymore.”

  Instantly nervous, she wasn’t sure she was even capable of doing what he asked. The notion of being some kind of servant was almost worse than just being kept as a sex toy. Decades of being led to believe she was above the serving classes had made her certain she’d never need to do such a thing.

  “I know,” he said, seeing the expression on her face. “It’s not your forte. It’s something you’ll have to learn, something you’re not going to be good at right away. Don’t worry. I’ll teach you. You might even discover there are some rewards in it.”

  Thus far there were not many rewards, aside from that brief moment of being bathed in his approval, but it didn’t really matter. She didn’t have anyone besides him. All her friends, acquaintances, they would never have helped her with a criminal problem. It would become the subject of malevolent gossip and not much else.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, even after all these years, she’d known that he was someone she could turn to. The moment she got into real trouble, she’d gone running to him. And he’d taken her in. She couldn’t be surprised that he had terms and conditions. Everyone did.

  “Why so sad?”

  She shook her head and lowered her eyes. “I’m not sad,” she lied.

  Now that the initial shock of being held up and then rescued was wearing off, she was sad. Sad that it had come to this, for her and for Aiden. Sad that even though hundreds of people clamored to go to their parties and take pictures with them, there was nobody to truly help them when it mattered. Except Mason—the one man she’d treated like dirt all her life.

  “I could always tell when you were lying to me,” he said, tugging her head back a little so she had to look at him. “Talk to me.”

  “Look at where I am,” she said. “Look at what you’re making me do. I’m Elliot Taylor-Chapman, for god’s sake.”

  His smile had a hint of sympathy in it. “It must be quite a shock to meet the real world suddenly at the age of twenty-five, to realize that you’re vulnerable, and that bad things can happen through no fault of your own.”

  “This isn’t the real world,” she said. “This is your world. You’ve got me, Mav, and you know it.”

  His eyes gleamed with possession. “I do,” he said. “I’ve wanted you for a long time, Ellie. I’m not going to lie. Having you here, on your knees, where you need to be makes me happy. In time, I think it will make you happy too. See, Ellie, you don’t know what you need. You don’t know much.”

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, a tender gesture that made her tummy flutter. “I think you’re a girl who grew up in a bubble. A lot of it was nice, but more of it was fake. It’s real out here. Things can hurt, but they can also feel good in a way I don’t think you’ve ever felt good.”

  She looked at him dubiously and he let out a husky chuckle that made tremors of anticipation and excitement run through her captured body.

  He released his grip on her hair and moved up to sit on the couch above her, leaving her kneeling on the floor as he extended his legs around her, keeping her corralled in the space between. He looked down at her from what felt like a great height as a chasm opened up between them. He was in control now. He had all the power, and she did not know what to do with herself.

  “You know what you need?”

  “What?”

  “A spanking.”

  Spanking. The word alone sent a rush of embarrassment through her body.

  “No, Mav, no, I really don’t.”

  “But you do, or you’d have called me sir. I told you the rules, didn’t I?”

  She found herself squirming. “But it’s so hard to get used to, it’s impossible.”

  “It’s not impossible to call me sir,” he chided, reaching down to take her by the hand. “Come here. It’s time we did this again.”

  Again…

  He was making reference to the most embarrassing memory in her life, the one she’d run from for years. She found herself going somewhat limp as he guided her up and over his lap. He didn’t ask, and he didn’t cajole. He simply took her by the hand and applied enough pressure to draw her over his thighs. She could have resisted him, but she didn’t. She allowed the room to spin, and for her view to become the side of the couch, and the expensive blue Persian rug adjacent to his well-heeled feet.

  He adjusted her a little so she was supported by the couch, lying over his lap with her legs on one side, her upper body on the other, her cheek pressed against cool leather. The feeling of his hard legs beneath her hips stimulated a reaction she hadn’t anticipated and that only served to make her all the more confused. She shouldn’t be enjoying this. She should be fighting it, rejecting it, demanding that he did as she said. Instead she laid there as he smoothed her skirt up over her bottom and settled it in the middle of her back.

  “This is crazy,” she mumbled under her breath.

  “It’s not crazy at all. You’ve always needed a firm hand, Ellie,” he said, his big palm rubbing over her bottom. “But Daddy’s little princess never got touched, did she. You got away with absolutely everything.”

  “Until my eighteenth birthday,” she sniffed.

  “Uh huh. Until then. And you didn’t take kindly to that, did you?”

  Being in this position was already triggering something like a flashback. It
wasn’t difficult to remember that night all those years ago as vividly as if it was happening all over again. At the time, it had been one of the most shocking things that had ever happened to her.

  It had happened at the Mirabello Resort, which her family owned. A hundred acres of rolling upstate country upon which a sprawling resort and ranch was placed. She usually liked being there, but not on that particular evening. It was her birthday, but that was largely incidental to the proceedings. She’d been greeted with great ceremony and then ignored by the bulk of the guests who were there to socialize with one another and suck up to her parents. Eventually, she’d snuck away from one boring conversation after another and curled up in the corner of the cloakroom with a bottle of vodka she’d stolen from behind one of the bars.

  It wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t particularly fun, but it was a chance to slip her shoes off and escape some of the scrutiny that came with being the only daughter of Nigel and Sophie Taylor-Chapman. Before she could get too deep into the bottle, before she could really get properly started, the door had squeaked open and she’d held her breath while stifling a little giggle of pure rebellion. There wasn’t really any reason for anyone to come into the cloakroom, it was a warm evening and most of the guests would remain for many hours to come, but apparently someone either wanted a coat or was tired of theirs.

  She’d seen his shoes first, well-polished but still worn. Worker’s shoes. Because he was a worker. He was below her and she would never let him forget it, not for a single second. She didn’t recognize them at first, but as they walked between the rows of coats, she curled up tighter, stifling her laughter with her hand over her mouth. She kept waiting for the shoes to stop, but they came toward her inexorably, back and forth, up and down the rows until they rounded the corner and she looked up to see…

  *

  Seven years earlier…

  “Ellie? What are you doing?”

  Mason was twenty-three years old and already devastatingly handsome. His face was narrower than it would later be, his body not quite as broad, but he had the bearing and the elegance of a well-bred man despite being from a poor family. His skin was tanned from his other job and that green gaze locked on her beneath thick dark brows with an authority he really shouldn’t have had any claim to. He wasn’t at the party as a guest, he had been employed as a waiter. He was in post-grad something or other and he needed the money. Her parents had been kind enough to give him a job. She wondered how he could take the shame of serving a lot of the people he’d been through school with, but she supposed he was used to it.

  What she absolutely was not used to was being questioned by an employee. She gave a shrug and took a sip of the vodka, stifling the cough that followed as the liquid burned her throat raw. The bottle was largely concealed beneath one of the furry coats, so he couldn’t really see what she was doing, but he got the idea fairly quickly.

  “What is that?”

  “Nothing,” she lied. “Get out of here, Mason. Go back and finish serving everybody their soup.”

  He put his hands on his hips and looked down at her from his rugged height. She didn’t appreciate his attitude. Being a pretty, rich girl meant that she was used to attention from boys, and even some men. They complimented her and told her what she wanted to hear. Mason had never done that. Mason treated her like his best friend’s snotty kid sister, and she hated it.

  “Why are you back here, Ellie? Waiting for someone?”

  His interrogation grated on her very last nerve.

  “No, I’m not waiting for someone,” she snapped. “There’s nobody here under fifty now except you. I’m just entertaining myself.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” she giggled. “But I’m working on it.”

  “Give me the alcohol.” He snapped his fingers at her impatiently.

  “You can’t tell me what to do, Mav. You’re a servant. Go away and leave me alone.”

  “To what? Give yourself alcohol poisoning? I don’t think so,” he insisted, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Even as she stared daggers at him, she had to admit that he looked cute in the server’s uniform. The baize green jacket could have made him look like a walking poker table, but it didn’t, and his long legs made the dark pants look good too. He was even managing to pull off the goofy bow tie they all had to wear.

  “You’re not the boss of me, Mav,” she semi-slurred. “I’m your boss, and I’m telling you to fuck off.”

  The look he gave her made her feel suddenly sober. It was a hard look, the look of a man who is not at all amused. She’d seen that look on her father’s face before, usually aimed at Aiden. She’d never felt the full force of such a stare before, and it utterly paralyzed her.

  “Give me the bottle. Now.”

  It was an order she knew she would regret not following, but she had to defy him. She tucked the bottle further back behind her, the open top spilling vodka over the fine furs of the ladies who were enjoying an evening’s entertainment on her account, and shook her head at Mason.

  “I’m not giving you anything,” she said. “And if you try to take it from me, I’ll scream.”

  “Oh, you’re going to scream alright, little girl,” he growled down at her. Two swift steps took him to her. He reached down, clasped her by the arm, and pulled her up to her feet in a swift motion. She let out a shriek of outrage as he turned around and pulled her out of the cloakroom. She didn’t realize at first where he was taking her. She thought maybe they were going to see her father or mother, which would have been funny as they wouldn’t have done anything anyway. But it quickly became apparent that he was not taking her toward the party, but away from it.

  He headed across to a small gazebo where a lot of the pre-event staging had been done. It was still packed with boxes and crates, and he put his leg up on one of them before swinging her over it in one smooth motion. She let out another cry as her dress went flying up over her back, revealing her thong-clad rear.

  “You’re too young to be drinking,” he lectured her as she tried in vain to escape his grasp. She tried to push her skirt down, but he grabbed her hand and pinned her wrist to her lower back, leaving her totally exposed and utterly helpless. “And you’re too good to be talking that way.”

  “I’m not too good to tell you to fuck off, Mason,” she hissed. “My father… oww!”

  He cut her off with a hard slap to her bottom. It came like a bolt from the heavens, so utterly unexpected that she did not know what to do. She had never been punished in her life. The concept of physical discipline had not established itself in her brain, so at first she didn’t even know what was happening. She knew her bottom hurt, that the sting from the slap remained long after the slap itself was over. She knew he was holding her down and swatting her, that there was nothing she could do to stop him.

  “Mason!”

  He kept spanking her. He didn’t stop when she screamed, or when she swore, or when she promised him money, or when she told him she’d have him kicked out of college, or when she said she’d tell her father. Nothing stopped him from lighting her rear up with merciless slaps that made her bottom burn like all hell.

  “Mason! Please! Stop!”

  She hadn’t actually drunk as much alcohol as she’d pretended to. Straight vodka wasn’t exactly palatable, but sitting in the cloakroom with the bottle had felt subversive and rebellious. She wasn’t feeling either of those things now. She was feeling very sore, and very sorry for herself.

  When he was finally done, and her butt felt as though it had been stung by a thousand bees, he tipped her onto her feet, her hair falling into her tearstained face, sticking to her cheeks. Her hands went back to her bottom immediately.

  “I didn’t like doing that, Ellie, but…”

  “Liar!” She yelled the word at him, suddenly furious. Her butt hurt, but the embarrassment was worse. She’d never been so humiliated in all her life. “Liar! I hate you, Mason! I fucking hate you! Don’t ever talk to me ever again!�
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  *

  The memory made her flush with fresh heat.

  That was the last time they’d talked before this very day. She’d stormed off across the grounds, found one of her father’s subordinates, and demanded they take her home. From that point forth, she’d made a distinct effort not to be in the same room as Mason Malone again. Her ego couldn’t handle it, and after a while avoidance got a whole lot easier anyway. Aiden and Mason went their own way after college and he stopped coming around.

  Now his hand was smoothing over her rear, rubbing over the panties that protected her from his gaze. She was wearing much fuller briefs now, always had since that day he’d spanked her and she’d discovered a reason why having her rear be effectively bare could be a problem. Unfortunately, the thin silk didn’t really do anything to make her feel less vulnerable. She could feel the heat from his hand through the material, rubbing slowly over her cheeks. How had she ended up back here? She’d sworn she’d never let this happen to her again.

  “I couldn’t believe how long you sulked about that, Ellie,” he said, his voice a deep rumble. “I don’t think you’ve ever forgiven me.”

  “No,” she admitted. “I haven’t. And I won’t forgive you if you do that again.”

  “I’m going to do it again, and you’ll do more than forgive. You’ll thank me for it.”

  “Mason, you must have lost your mind… ow!” she protested as his hand clapped against her butt, catching both her cheeks in a solid swat. “Mav, that hurts!”

  “It’s going to hurt a lot more if you don’t remember to call me sir,” he growled, repeating the treatment again.

  “Okay! Sorry!”

  “Sorry, what?”

  A third slap landed hard on her bottom, sending the sting to another level. She did not like being spanked, not one bit. The pain was so foreign to her, and being held over his lap and punished was still as much a blow to her ego as it was to her bottom—but she knew she had to start playing his game, or it was going to hurt a lot more.

  “Sorry… sir.” Her voice was gritty and small, but loud enough for him to hear.