Queen of Love

“These days I hear you’re the one getting spanked.”

“Uh-huh, and what do you mean by don’t fuck it up, huh? You saying I can’t keep a girlfriend?”

“Pfft. I know you. You fall in love quickly. You wine and dine your new love. You make her fit your absolute ideal, and maybe they can handle it, maybe they can’t. Doesn’t matter. Because you’re in love now, and when – I mean if – they break up with you, it’s the end of your world. It’s a pattern with you. There’s a reason some guests here say Paradise is run by the Queen of Love.”

“People say that?” Genevieve squeaked.

“I’m not gonna say it’s Wendy Ahn who started it, but yes, I’ve heard it a few times over the past few months. Ah, but don’t take it so seriously. You know how people are. They talk shit about others so they can feel better about themselves.”

“If you have some hot gossip about Wendy, I would like to hear it. I think you owe it to me by now.”

Nyla turned her back on Genevieve, grabbing a clipboard from the back bar and taking inventory of the top-shelf liquors and wines. “My lips are sealed. You’ll have to come back with a bribe if you want to hear what I know about Wendy Ahn and her troubles with her popstar girlfriend.”

“You can’t leave me hanging like this! What troubles? Tell me everything.”

Nyla glanced over her shoulder as if Genevieve were a rowdy guest instead of one of the owners of the club. “I’ll text you the details after my shift tonight. Don’t worry. I know you need some ammunition for the next time you see your fellow Singaporean princess.”

Genevieve knew when she had been dismissed. I may be the boss, but Nyla knows how to put me in my place. She would have been an amazing dominant if it weren’t for her insistence on being a switch in the bedroom. Something she apparently gets with her current girlfriend. A girlfriend she was never supposed to be with if the rules of the club were to be honored. The way she tells it, she and Terry Tsao got drunk in here one night, then woke up married the next day. The marriage wasn’t legal due to Terry being a Mainlander, but Genevieve still liked to tease them both about being married. The more she called Terry Nyla’s “wife,” the more she felt like she was making up for their breakup.

“I know when I am not wanted.” Genevieve pretended to be offended as she slipped off her stool and slowly rounded the bar. “Except for when it’s signing your paychecks.”

“You don’t sign my paycheck. The machine does.”

“I could fire you whenever I want.”

Nyla turned her whole body toward Genevieve before she disappeared around the corner. “You could, but you won’t!”

Genevieve sighed loudly as soon as she was in the empty hallway. Except it wasn’t as empty as she anticipated. Gene had rounded the corner and was coming right at her when he saw his boss sighing like she had dealt with the most cumbersome girl in the world.

“Oh, God,” he said. “What did Nyla do this time? Should I reprimand her?”

Genevieve rolled her eyes. “Do you think that would do any good? Besides, you know how it is with her. We go back.”

“Still, someone talking to you like that, Lady Liu…”

“Some people get away with not treating me like ‘Lady Liu.’” Genevieve’s gaze lingered on Gene as she walked away. “Some people.”

That did not include him.

The curtains were drawn and the lights turned down in her bedroom as Genevieve emerged from the bath and sprawled across her bed in nothing but a silk robe that fluttered around her knees. A message had arrived from Aya, who wished her a good night from one hour ahead in time.

“I hope you have sweet dreams,” Aya wrote from over a thousand miles away. “Maybe that sweet dream will be about me.”

Genevieve flopped onto her back, her robe open and her hair covering half of her face. “That would be the sweetest dream, indeed.”

“Do you remember your Japanese lessons?”

“How could I forget? Anytime a girl orgasms during a language lesson, she’s forbidden from forgetting the details.”

“Prove it to me. Only then can I sleep and face the long work week ahead.”

“I was going to ask what you did today, but you’re so demanding, aren’t you, Ms. Aya?”

“I had dinner with my parents and withstood a whole conversation about me being single. Which means I don’t have a husband, by the way. So, tell me, what do you remember? I think I deserve proof.”

Tingles spread from Genevieve’s ears to her toes. Only curt words like those could make her feel alive anymore. Nyla knows me so well. Genevieve was falling in love. Against her best interests, she was about to give all of her heart – and a part of her soul – to a woman from another country.

“What do I get in return?”