Page 21 of At Her Service (Club Velvet #2)

CHAPTER 21

A bby was barely aware of Valerie untying her. She was barely aware of Valerie taking her home, and laying her down in the bed in the main bedroom. Her mind was a haze of sensation and bliss.

And need . A deep, unquenchable need.

Valerie slipped into the bed beside her, drawing her hand through Abby’s hair. “How are you feeling?”

Abby’s lip quivered. She could barely think, let alone speak. It was like everything she’d ever felt for Valerie—all the desire, all the doubt—was swelling up inside her at once. And the maelstrom of emotions was threatening to overwhelm her.

Valerie drew her in close. “I’m here. Whatever you need from me, I’m here.”

Abby rested her head against Valerie’s chest and closed her eyes, the gentle thump of the other woman’s heartbeat reverberating through her body like it was her own. This was what she needed. This closeness, this vulnerability, not from Madame V, but from Valerie.

Abby opened her eyes and gazed into Valerie’s. She cupped Valerie’s face in her hand.

And she kissed her.

Valerie wrapped her arms around her, her lips dancing against hers. A sigh rumbled inside Abby’s chest. She deepened the kiss, pressing her body against Valerie’s, caressing bare skin and delicate lace. But she wanted so much more.

She drew her hands up the front of Valerie’s chest, her fingers searching out the clasps that kept the corset dress in place. Valerie’s breath hitched. She drew back, her hands falling to Abby’s to pull them away.

Abby’s heart sank. Had she crossed an unspoken line?

But as she opened her mouth to speak, Valerie pressed a finger to her lips. Then, she reached up and unhooked the clasps of her dress one by one, pulling it over her head and laying it carefully at the end of the bed. Her panties followed, leaving her in nothing but her garter belt and lace-topped thigh-high stockings.

She stretched out beside Abby again. Abby’s breath caught in her chest. She hadn’t seen Valerie naked before. Her bronze breasts framed perfect brown nipples, her luscious hips giving way to full thighs and long legs. And between those thighs was a patch of neatly trimmed hair that hid the treasures Abby first tasted on her knees that day inside the forbidden room behind the bookcase.

Abby longed to taste her again. She longed to feel Valerie’s body against hers, flesh against flesh, skin against her skin. And as Valerie stripped off Abby’s dress and drew her panties down her legs, the gentle pulsing between her thighs turned to throbbing.

Valerie lowered her gently back down to the bed. Abby’s heart raced. There was something in Valerie’s eyes that ran deeper than lust. It was a profound yearning that mirrored the need Abby felt deep in her soul.

Valerie’s lips met hers again, her hands roaming Abby’s body. Abby explored her body in return, tracing her fingertips over each curve, each dip, each swell. She painted her lips across every inch of Valerie’s skin. She took her nipples in her mouth, relishing the way they tightened at her touch and sent tremors through her body. She slipped her hand between Valerie’s thighs, stroking slick folds, grazing her swollen clit.

And as Abby slid a finger down to Valerie’s entrance and slipped it inside, the sigh of pleasure that heaved through Valerie’s body was enough to make her ache. She savored every murmur and moan, every shiver and shudder, as she brought Valerie’s pleasure to a crescendo.

And when she finally cried out in climax, no sound had ever been sweeter. It was that sound, that sight, that echoed in Abby’s mind, even as Valerie pushed her back down to the bed and straddled her body, bringing Abby to release, again and again, until finally, they fell into that sweet oblivion together, unable to tell where one began and the other ended.

* * *

The door to the bedroom opened and shut, Valerie’s footsteps growing louder. Abby kept her eyes closed, nestling deeper into the nest of cushions and pillows on the bed. She wasn’t ready to come back to reality yet.

“Here.” Valerie set something down on the nightstand. “Something for you to eat and drink.”

Abby opened her eyes reluctantly. On the nightstand was a tray holding a jug of water and some glasses, along with juice, a selection of fruit, chocolate, nuts, and other snacks.

“I can get you something warm to drink,” Valerie said. “Or anything else you’d like. Just let me know, and I’ll make it happen.”

“I’m okay,” Abby said. “I don’t need anything.”

“Yes, you do. We put your body through the wringer tonight. You’re going to crash hard if you don’t replenish it.”

Abby murmured wordlessly. Her mind was still foggy with endorphins.

Valerie sat down at the edge of the bed. “How about this? You drink a glass of water and eat something. And I’ll give you the most exquisite massage you’ve ever experienced.”

Abby chewed her lip. “That does sound pretty good. Okay.”

She sat up, clutching the silk sheet to her chest. She was still naked, and there was a slight chill in the room. Valerie was naked too, but the cold didn’t seem to bother her at all.

She poured a glass of water and handed it to Abby. Abby gulped it down, then plucked some grapes from the platter of fruit and popped them into her mouth. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t noticed how hungry she was.

“Mmph.” She grabbed another handful of grapes and swallowed them down, followed by a chocolate-covered strawberry. “You’re right. I did need this.”

“Of course I’m right. Your Mistress knows best.” Valerie took a grape from the tray and slipped it into her mouth. “So, was being up on stage tonight everything you imagined it would be?”

Abby shook her head. “It was even better.”

She grabbed a chocolate truffle from the tray, her fingers fumbling with the foil wrapper. Valerie took it from her and unwrapped it carefully before slipping it into Abby’s mouth. Abby let out a sound between a giggle and a moan. She’d never tasted anything more delicious.

She fell back onto the pillow with a sigh. “This feels like the most heavenly dream. I don’t want it to end.”

“It isn’t over yet. I promised you a massage, after all.” Valerie drew the backs of her fingers along the curve of Abby’s chin. “But I’m tempted to make you wait so I can enjoy this beautiful view.”

Abby’s cheeks grew warm. She’d dropped the sheet she’d been covering herself with while she was eating, and she was flushed and sticky with sweat. Her hair? It had to be a mess by now.

Did Valerie really find her beautiful this way?

“But a promise is a promise,” Valerie said. “Lie down on your stomach.”

Abby lay down and folded her arms under the pillow beneath her head. Valerie reached over to the tray on the nightstand and took a small bottle from it. She opened the lid, a sharp, sweet scent filling the air.

“Coconut oil. It has so many uses. And it’s perfect for massages.” Valerie climbed onto the bed next to her. “Close your eyes. Try to relax.”

Abby shut her eyes. The bed swayed as Valerie straddled her body, her knees on either side of Abby’s hips. A moment later, she felt the trickle of oil on her back, followed by Valerie’s hands kneading the oil into her muscles, gently at first, then harder, then harder still, working her way up Abby’s back.

A moan slid from her lips. “This feels incredible.” Valerie was finding muscles Abby didn’t even know she had. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“I had a professional teach me. A massage is an excellent form of aftercare, so I made sure to learn how to do it properly. Any submissive of mine deserves the best.”

She reached Abby’s shoulders and began kneading even more firmly, loosening every knot. Abby sank deeper into the bed, soft purrs rising from her.

“Besides, it’s not every day that I find someone special enough to call my own,” Valerie said. “So when I do, I like to be able to spoil her.”

“I definitely feel spoiled right now,” Abby murmured. “Thank you, Madame V.”

“You’re welcome, my pet.”

She glided her hands down Abby’s back again until she reached her ass. It was still sore, and from what she’d glimpsed of it, bright red. But Valerie’s hands were gentle there, and on the backs of her thighs, her touch soothing Abby’s aching skin.

Valerie moved down her calves and feet, working her muscles loose. Once she was done, she ordered Abby to turn over. As Abby rolled onto her back and stretched out her body, a question grew in her mind.

“I was wondering,” she said. “How did you become Madame V in the first place?”

“I didn’t become her. I’ve always been her.” Valerie picked up the bottle of massage oil and squeezed it down the front of Abby’s legs, spreading it over her shins and thighs. “But the name is something I adopted about ten years ago. It was around the time LA Legal was picked up. I’d worked as a screenwriter before, but LA Legal was the first show I created myself. I was young, so the studio was taking a big chance with me. But I knew I had something special, and they saw that too. Sure enough, the show became an international sensation. I went from being an unknown writer to a household name overnight.”

She slid her hands up past Abby’s knees, kneading her way up her thighs with firm thumbs. “I was thrust into the spotlight. And all of a sudden, every part of my life was under intense scrutiny, far more than my peers. I was an outsider to Hollywood in more ways than one—gay, Black, a woman, and I didn’t come from the elite. I’d clawed my way up from a working-class background with zero connections. So I didn’t have the luxury of mistakes, of scandals, of failure. I constantly needed to think about my image, about who and what I represented.”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” Abby said. “I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”

“It wasn’t easy. I started to feel like I needed a part of my life, a part of myself , that wasn’t under constant scrutiny. Something that didn’t belong to the public, that was mine and mine alone. I needed a way to simply be , without the weight of the responsibilities that came with the name Valerie Kane.”

She moved on to Abby’s other leg, working her thumbs deep into her muscles. “Finding that part of my life happened naturally. Kink was already a part of me, so I sought refuge in it, immersed myself in it, not as Valerie Kane, but as Madame V. It wasn’t as if the moniker obscured my identity. And the BDSM community values privacy for obvious reasons, so there would be no harm in using my real name. But it wasn’t about anonymity, or pretending to be someone else. Madame V isn’t an alter ego or a false persona. She’s a truer expression of myself than the person I am day to day.”

Hadn’t Abby thought just that on stage earlier that night? It was as if, for the very first time, she was seeing Valerie as she truly was, unburdened, uninhibited, free.

“Having that outlet to express myself became more important as time went on,” Valerie said. “As I started my own production company, became a wife, then a single mother. The responsibilities piled on. The need to maintain a certain image grew, and it keeps growing every day. But as Madame V, none of that matters.”

“I think I get it. Well, I’ll never get what it’s like to be you. To have all that pressure, to have to fight harder for acceptance than everyone else around you. But I understand the need for an escape. And I understand wanting the freedom to just be yourself.”

She closed her eyes. Valerie was still massaging her legs, lulling her back into a trance with her soothing touch.

“Sometimes, I want the same thing,” Abby said. “Sometimes, I just want to let go of it all and be who I truly am. But that’s easier said than done. Because what’s holding me back isn’t other people’s expectations, or my responsibilities, or anything else. It’s just me . It’s that voice inside my head telling me I don’t deserve it. Telling me no one wants me and no one ever will. Telling me I’m useless, a burden, a nuisance, just like everyone always said I was.”

“Abby…” Valerie’s hands stilled. “Whoever told you that?”

Abby shrugged. “No one worth my time. I know that now that I’m older. And even though I’ve left all that behind, left them behind, it doesn’t stop me feeling the way I do sometimes.”

She didn’t talk about her parents much. She’d moved on, built a life for herself without them. But their words still haunted her like specters from the past.

“My mom was a teen mom,” she said. “Had me at sixteen because her family wouldn’t let her get rid of me, but then they turned around and kicked her out for getting pregnant. My dad skipped town when he found out, so she was stuck raising me all by herself. She tried her best, but even as a little kid, I could tell she resented me for ruining her life. Then my stepdad came along when I was six years old. He’d made a little money selling a startup to some big company, and he wanted a hot young wife as a trophy. To him, I was just an inconvenience that came with her. My mom didn’t care that he felt that way. All she cared about was that she had someone to provide for her and didn’t have to struggle alone anymore.”

Valerie stretched out beside her, her hand falling to Abby’s arm. “I’m sorry. No child deserves that.”

“It’s hard to blame her. No teenager wants to be saddled with a baby. Because of my stepdad, she got to have a semblance of the life she would’ve had if she hadn’t gotten pregnant at sixteen. And when my mom and stepdad had my brothers a few years later, she finally got a chance to start over with the perfect nuclear family. One I didn’t fit into. It was like I became invisible to them overnight.”

Abby stared up at the ceiling, just like she used to back then, when she’d lain awake in bed at night, wondering what she’d done to make her parents shun her.

“I was just a kid,” she said. “I didn’t understand why they treated me the way they did. I thought it was my fault. I thought that if I tried hard enough, was perfect and well-behaved enough, I could win their affection. But nothing I did worked. And when I got older, I stopped trying and rebelled instead. It was just typical teenage stuff, but it made my mom and stepdad furious. They worried about what people would think of them, having a troublemaker like me as a daughter. But at least I had their attention. That was all I wanted. For them to see me. Because my stupid teenage subconscious thought that maybe if they saw me, they’d love me.”

Her voice faltered. Valerie slipped her hand over Abby’s, twining their fingers together.

“I guess one day, I went too far,” Abby said. “It was my sixteenth birthday. We went out to dinner to celebrate, but in reality, it was just an excuse for my stepdad to go to this fancy restaurant he wanted to try. I wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere I liked, or at least invite some of my friends, but I didn’t get a say. So I wasn’t exactly enjoying myself, and I was acting like it too.

“I don’t remember what I said or did that set my stepdad off. But I remember the moment he finally snapped and said out loud what I’d always known in my heart was true, but had wished wasn’t. He said…” Abby swallowed. “He said that I wasn’t his kid. That he didn’t want me and never had, and neither did my mom. That they wished I’d never been born.” Her voice quavered. “But the worst part is, my mom? She didn’t defend me. She didn’t say that it wasn’t true. She didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, Abby.” Valerie squeezed her hand, holding it tight. “I can’t imagine how that must have felt.”

“I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget how much it hurt . After that, I checked out of the family entirely. I stopped trying to get my parents’ attention. I stopped expecting anything from them. I started taking babysitting jobs and stashed away all the money I could. And the day I turned eighteen, I moved out.

“It wasn’t easy. I had to abandon my brothers. My mom and stepdad weren’t exactly parents of the year. They cared more about keeping up appearances than actually parenting. More often than not, it was on me to look after my brothers. They relied on me, and they were too young to understand why I was leaving. I’m sure they’re okay, but I haven’t seen them since, or anyone else in my family. My mom calls me now and then, says something about wanting to catch up, but she never follows through with it. She only called me once this year, on what she thought was my birthday, but she was a week late.” Abby shook her head. “It doesn’t bother me, not anymore. I moved on from them a long time ago. But sometimes, they get in my head and make me question myself.”

Valerie reached out and stroked Abby’s cheek. “I understand. It’s hard to shake off the stories we’re told when we’re young, especially when they’re about ourselves. And I’m sorry you went through all that. The way your parents treated you was cruel. You deserved better.”

Abby glanced away. “Like I said, I’m over it. But I guess a part of me worries that if I get too close to someone, let my guard down, show them the real me? They’ll reject me. But with you…” She met Valerie’s eyes again. Her pulse quickened. “With you, tonight? You made me feel like I didn’t have to worry about any of that. Like I could just be . I’m glad I trusted you tonight. And I’m glad you pushed me.”

Valerie gave her a gentle smile, drawing her in close. “I’m glad you feel that way. Know this, Abby. I see you. The real you. And I’m not going to reject you for it. It’s what drew me to you in the first place.”

Valerie kissed her softly on the lips, sending warmth surging through her. She wrapped her arms around Valerie’s neck, returning the kiss with greedy lips.

Valerie saw her. She understood her. She wouldn’t reject her.

So why did a part of her still doubt those words?