Shamefully Broken: A Dark Romance Page 5

  “Good girl,” he said, rewarding her with a slow rub that soothed much of the worst of the sting instantly, leaving her with the warmth sinking through her bottom. “It won’t be like it was last time. I stopped too soon that night. I won’t make that mistake again, I promise you that.”

  She craned her head around and tried to glare at him, without much success. “You didn’t stop too soon! You started too soon! You just grabbed me and started hitting me, what did you expect me to do?”

  “That’s true,” he admitted. “I didn’t prepare you for what was to come, and you didn’t give me the chance to make it better afterward.”

  “I guess we both made mistakes,” she smirked down at the carpet. Her sense of smugness was very short lived as he swatted her rear with a sharp little tap that got her attention, even if it didn’t outright hurt.

  “Don’t start getting an attitude with me,” he said sternly. “You’re not out of the woods yet, Ellie. Not by a long way. We started something all those years ago, and I intend to finish it.”

  “We did? What did we start?”

  It was very difficult to have a conversation while trapped over a man’s lap, but Mason seemed intent on keeping her there, addressing her pantied bottom and the back of her head.

  “Do you know why I spanked you that night?”

  “Because I was going to get drunk, and because I was rude to you, I guess.”

  “Those would have been good reasons, but they weren’t the main reason.”

  “What was the main reason?”

  “You need this,” he said, caressing her rear slowly. “You need someone to take care of you, to give you some kind of guidance. You need someone to correct you when you’re wrong, and provide consequences for you. You’ve lived a life without them, and that’s not healthy.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve had a wonderful life. I’ve never wanted for anything.”

  “Mhm. Ellie, I watched you grow up and I saw how unhappy you were…”

  “I was just a snotty teenager, like every other teenager is,” she interrupted.

  “No, you weren’t. You were neglected.”

  She snorted. “Mason, I had six ponies and a Ferrari by the time I was sixteen. I wasn’t neglected.”

  “I’m not talking financially. I’m talking emotionally. I don’t think I saw you ever talk to anyone other than Aiden. And I know Aiden barely had anything to do with your parents either. They were never around and when they were, they were dressing the two of you up like dolls and playing happy families for the benefit of their friends. I’m not surprised Aiden has a drug habit. I am surprised you don’t.”

  She bit her lower lip, thinking back to the conversation with her mother that very morning. Mason wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t want him thinking he was right either. “It wasn’t that bad. They were just busy people. They had careers, Mav.”

  “I know that’s what they told you over and over again. But careers aren’t a reason to take separate holidays from your own children, or have them taken care of by staff that change every few months. Aiden didn’t even know your mother was his mother until he was about five.”

  She was silent for a while. Mason knew far more than she’d given him credit for. She supposed she’d been stupid to not realize how much he’d known. She figured he’d focused mostly on Aiden, and Aiden never complained to her about anything, but that was because he was a good brother. He used to be, anyway, before all this.

  “He talked to you about a lot of this stuff, didn’t he.”

  “When he got high,” Mason said. “He didn’t say much most of the time, but I was around your family, or lack thereof, for a long time, Ellie. I saw how things worked, or didn’t work. I saw what you two got away with.”

  “We did get away with a lot,” she grinned, then gasped as he laid another swat on her ass.

  “You did,” he agreed. “But not anymore. That’s over. You’re in my care now.”

  His care. She liked the sound of that, even if she didn’t look forward to being punished. The last hours and days had been terribly frightening, and it was a relief to know that she wasn’t alone in it anymore. Mason had the power, the contacts, and the money to keep her safe.

  “At a price,” she said, squirming. It would have been much easier to have this conversation sitting up, face to face, but Mason wasn’t about making things easier. Never had been. He was making every single part of this as difficult as possible, and she could only imagine what he had in store for her.

  “Everything comes at a price,” he said, rubbing her bottom gently. She held her breath as she felt his fingers splay over her cheeks and then curl in the back of the waistband of her panties. They took hold there and then he began to ever so slowly peel them down over her cheeks. She felt the fabric leaving her skin slowly, rendering her bare and vulnerable as little by little the twin rises of her cheeks were stripped of the last vestige of propriety.

  She was his. He had barely touched her yet, but she was beginning to know it in the very core of her. Only someone who owned her could do this, put her over his knee and take her panties down. Her hips began to sway back and forth, her breath catching in her throat as her panties began to travel down between her thighs. She was more exposed now, her sex bare to him. Could he see how she looked there?

  “You wax.”

  He could.

  She put both her hands over her face in a totally futile gesture, covering entirely the wrong part of her anatomy. She felt him parting her legs, and she knew he was looking. More than that, he was inspecting what he now owned. His fingers stroked her inner thigh lightly, moving toward the apex, but staying clear of her sex. He wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction, not yet. He wanted to draw the whole embarrassing thing out, of course. He was enjoying this all far too much. She could only imagine how long he’d wanted to have power over her like this.

  He swatted her lightly, once, twice, three times and then his fingers slid back between her thighs and found her clit, circling around it slowly. She sighed softly and stretched out on the couch. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. It had been too long since she’d been with a man, and Mav was very, very attractive. He also knew how to touch a woman, judging by the way his fingers were grazing over her pussy, teasing her into a state of aroused relaxation.

  “You’re about to discover that the world is very different than you think it is,” he rumbled as he caressed her gently, taking his time. She had half expected him to ravage her, but he was clearly in no hurry to seal her undoing. She laid there, taking his touch, drawing his scent into her lungs and feeling herself start to slowly melt in mind and body.

  She felt his fingers between her thighs, spreading her legs even more. She cursed his long thighs as he spread her wide in a way that could only be described as lewd. His hand came down against her raised cheeks, reminding her of his ability to punish her as he saw fit. The pain bloomed again, but this time it was not so intense, nor was it entirely pain. It had become something else, something new. It made her feel warm in the very core of her belly.

  He spanked her again, the slap sharper this time, more intense. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve it, but soon his palm fell again, and again, until her bottom started to tingle and sting and her hips could no longer stay still across his thighs, but instead danced, her bottom gyrating beneath his green gaze as she rutted against him, her clit finding his thigh over and over in short little motions that made her shamefully aroused.

  Soft little moans escaped her lips as his hand branded her bottom harder and harder, bringing her to a peak of intensity that probably would have hurt if not for her bare pussy rubbing his thigh. She couldn’t really feel pain anymore. All she could feel was sensation, untethered from normal understanding. The arousal and the heat and the intensity combined to make her hips move of their own accord, moving with a primal rutting motion that left no room for dignity. She was fucking herself like a horny little bitch in heat, humping his leg with animal
desperation.

  He encouraged her with a steady stream of slaps that fell faster, but not harder. He seemed to have found precisely the right level to keep her on the verge of orgasm, her hands gripping at his leg as she gasped and moaned, his name panted on her lips over and over as she started to get dizzy with her need. The orgasm was building, focused on her clit, but drawing power from every part of her body. Tingles were starting in her fingers and toes, zipping toward the center of her. She didn’t feel like a person anymore. She didn’t feel like anything besides a series of impulses desperate for one thing: release.

  And then he did it. The thing that put her over the edge. She heard a soft sound, like a finger between masculine lips, and then she felt him touch her in one place she’d never allowed any man to touch her ever. The pad of his thick middle finger found the bud of her anus and pressed there, circling without urgency as she ground her greedy pussy against his thigh.

  It was as if he’d found the button that activated the most intense orgasm of her life. Elliot let out a scream of climax as every single muscle in her body became tight, her breath stopping for a second as her voice hit a pitch beyond hearing. She found a peak she had not ascended before, a pure pleasure in which she floated, utterly free and totally satisfied.

  Mason spanked her through her orgasm, his palm raining lighter slaps over her heated cheeks as she squirmed over his lap.

  Only when her hips stilled and her moans turned to whimpers did he stop and rub her bottom. “Better?”

  “Much better,” she sighed. “So much better.”

  The stress of the last few weeks was suddenly gone. She hadn’t realized how much it had been weighing on her. Aiden’s antics and hospitalization, subsequent discharge to rehab had been like a series of stones piled ever higher on her until she could barely breathe.

  By baring her bottom and spanking her soundly, Mason had given her an escape from that concern. She could finally set the responsibility that was all too much for her aside and simply be herself.

  She let out a little sniffle as tears she hadn’t realized were gathering in her eyes hit some critical mass. Before she knew it, she was crying. She didn’t understand it; they weren’t tears of sorrow, or rage, or even pain.

  Mason seemed just as confused as he helped her up still naked from the waist down as he settled her on his lap in such a way her stinging bottom was somewhat supported, though she couldn’t be spared all of the discomfort as she sat there, trying to hide her face in his neck.

  He didn’t let her. He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gazed into her teary eyes with an expression of such deep concern and care it made her cry all the more.

  “Did it hurt too much?”

  “No,” she sniffed. “I mean, maybe, but I’m not crying because it hurt. I’m crying because I feel good.”

  She was certain he wouldn’t know what she was talking about, but a second later he drew her into his arms, wrapped her tightly in a snug embrace, and rubbed her bottom better.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured against her ear. “You can let it out, Ellie. I’m here.”

  She buried her face in his neck and cried. She cried for herself, for Aiden, for everything that had happened and would happen. She cried because her bottom was sore, because she had been spanked, because she’d been so lost for so long and suddenly she was found and she absolutely did not know what to do with that.

  Mason was the last person in the world she’d expected to take care of her, and here he was, taking time from his business, from his other social obligations, from his own leisure time to simply cuddle her as she cried.

  “Why,” she sniffled against his neck. “Why are you helping me, Mav?”

  “I’ve told you already, and I’ll tell you again, but I don’t think you’ll understand. Not yet. It’s too soon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ellie, I can tell you I care about you a hundred times, but until you feel it, you won’t know why I’m helping you. Maybe you’ll never know. It depends whether you come to feel as I do.”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Mav.”

  “You mean to say, you’re talking in riddles, sir,” he corrected gently.

  “Sir,” she mumbled, burying her face in his shoulder again. The tears soon began to settle, and the afterglow of the orgasm became the dominant feeling in her body. She felt as though she had been cleansed by the tears and what remained was just… good. It had been so long since she felt good that at first it was sort of unsettling, but as he held her, she began to simply enjoy being comforted. It had been so long since she was hugged. She couldn’t even remember the last time she felt safe in a man’s arms.

  “I forgot what this feels like,” she murmured.

  “What being spanked feels like?”

  “No, what cuddling after coming feels like,” she said with a little snort. “Most people don’t go around spanking me, Mav.”

  “That’s a real pity. You’d probably be a lot happier if they did.”

  She shook her head with a little giggle. The deep words came rumbling through his chest, going straight to her heart. Now that the anesthetic of orgasm was staring to fade, she could feel the effects of the spanking a little more. It didn’t hurt, he hadn’t been that rough with her, but she could feel the warmth and tightness of her skin tingling against his thighs as she shifted on his lap.

  “I do have a question for you,” he said. “I know it’s probably a sensitive subject, but I need to know.”

  She risked a little glance at him under her lashes. “What do you want to know?”

  “What happened to your engagement?”

  Her stomach plunged and twisted, as her cheeks colored with embarrassment of a very different kind. “You know already,” she said. “Everyone knows everything. Eric practically broadcasted our dirty laundry across every billboard in Times Square. Why are you making me tell you?”

  “I know the rumors. I want to hear it from you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, turning her gaze away from him. Eric had managed to humiliate her more thoroughly than Mason. Mason was treating her like a spoiled brat, but Eric had treated her like a disposable vagina.

  At first glance, Eric was going to be the perfect match. His family was as rich as hers. They made their money in Silicon Valley, but they spent it on the East coast. Eric was slick and handsome and smart and everyone loved him. He was the blue-eyed, blond-haired boy who made panties drop whenever he walked into a room. And that was the problem. Most of the time, the panties weren’t hers.

  “He was fucking every other girl in range,” she said bitterly. “And before we got married, it turned out that his family had lost most of their funds. Easy come, easy go. He was going to marry me for the money and go on sleeping with other women.”

  “So you left him?”

  “No,” she said, gritting her teeth as she confessed to the worst decision of her life. “I loved him. I was stupid. I thought that maybe, even though he’d been sleeping with other people, he still loved me too. But when he realized that the family money is in trusts to stop people like him getting access to it, when my father told him he’d never see a cent he didn’t bring into the marriage himself, he left me. Three days before our wedding.”

  “I’m sorry, Ellie.”

  “Don’t be,” she shrugged. “I could have been married to him my whole life and not known what he really was. I guess you never really know who anyone is. I thought I knew who Aiden was… and look what he’s turned out to be.”

  Mason gave her a look that might have been sympathy, or pity. Either way, she didn’t like it very much. There had been far too many of those looks coming her way in recent months. She’d gone from being one of the most popular faces on the social scene to being something of a pariah. People stopped talking when she walked into a room, and when they did talk to her they told her how sorry they were with sorrow that didn’t reach their eyes. Her betrayal had been public e
ntertainment, one of the biggest scandals of the year. Upon hearing the news, her parents had immediately taken a cruise to Panama. That was their way of dealing with difficult times. No news was so bad it couldn’t be drowned out by miles of ocean between them and it.

  “That man was a fool,” Mason said softly, taking her hand and her attention in one smooth motion. “He didn’t know what he had.”

  “What did he have? Just a spoiled rich girl, right?”

  “You’re much more than your money,” he purred. “You don’t even know what you are, that’s the real pity. All that wealth and no idea what you’re worth.”

  It was a cute play on words, but it was the look in his eye which made her wonder. What exactly was he seeing in her? She knew she was attractive, but so were a lot of other women. There was no reason for him to be this interested in her. Their connection must still mean something to him—though she could hardly imagine she had ever been anything other than a total irritation to him.

  “Why are you even doing this, Mav? Did I just annoy you into wanting me?”

  He laughed. “Maybe that’s part of it,” he said. “You were always a handful, Elliot. But I knew I could handle you—if I was allowed to.”

  She bit her lower lip, looking at him with curiosity. “How long have you liked me, Mav? You know we used to think you and Aiden were… you know.”

  “You’re supposed to call me sir,” he reminded her. “And yes, I’m aware of the content of the rumors. They were not entirely accurate. Half true, really. His half. Not mine.”

  Throughout high school, Aiden and Mason had hardly dated, for very different reasons. Aiden had been deeply conflicted and repressed, whereas Mason had simply not had the time. Every minute he wasn’t at school, he was working. He’d worked harder as a teenager than most grown men worked—and it had paid off. The rumors had not been so kind though. Practically every time the student body saw Mason and Aiden, they were together, and coupled with their common refusal to date, talk started that did not stop until they went away to college and things started to change.