Queen of Love

PART 3

QUEEN OF LIFE

Chapter 26

Noamountofdecompressing from her most intense scene yet was enough for Genevieve, who had survived the trip home, as well as a long bath with her girlfriend and a massage on the bed that ended with them making out again. This time, no camera. Now, Genevieve sat alone in her bedroom, putting on her nightgown and brushing her hair one-hundred times.

Aya was in the living room. Genevieve had asked for a few minutes alone. She needed to get back in touch with the woman she presented to the public – not the one who rolled around naked in her club, getting editorialized like a Playboy bunny.

It wasn’t what I had in mind at all. She framed her hair around her face as she stared at her reflection in the vanity. Except I can’t stop thinking about it.

Aya was dynamite. Her creativity? Explosive. Genevieve was still replaying every touch, command, and orgasm that had hit her like a pleasure truck in that cramped room. The handcuffs had been used to keep her from resisting Aya’s phone camera. The smacks on her ass and the backs of her thighs had made her yelp for a home video.

Everything had been new and exciting – and had offered a grand portrait of Aya’s true potential as a Domme.

Where do I go with this, though? Genevieve had trained Dommes before, including ones she’d fallen in love with, but most of them followed a particular pattern of seduction. They got into the domination, the spanking, the restraints, and the dirty talk… while it was true they all put their own spins on sex, Genevieve usually knew what to expect. It had been comforting, in a way. Especially as a woman who had gone from being the Mistress to the sub over the past few years.

Maybe I’m the one stuck in a rut…

She put down her brush and tested the smoothness of her hair with her fingers. Once she was satisfied, she stepped into her living room, where she found Aya digging through the vinyl collection kept here in a Taipei penthouse.

“Anything you like?” Genevieve asked the woman wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts.

Aya straightened up, a record sleeve in her hand. “Quite the collection you have here.” A picture of Namie Amuro, one of the biggest Japanese pop artists of all time, hovered before Genevieve’s face. “There’s a story here. Because I’ve never seen this vinyl before.”

“Are you a big fan or collector?” Genevieve sat on the back of her couch. Although she had taken care when curating her vinyl collection, she never actually thought about it. She merely picked up records that either struck her nostalgia or she knew were valuable. Some were more valuable than others, depending on the edition. The one in Aya’s hands could go either way. “Do you really think it’s strange I listened to a lot of Japanese music as a kid? I’ve got quite a few Mandarin vinyls in there, too.”

“So I saw. Some of them are older than me.”

Genevieve took the Namie Amuro record out of Aya’s hands. I remember the day I bought this. She had stumbled across it at one of Taipei’s many resell shops. It had been buried beneath a stack of other Taiwan-press J-pop albums, some of them common, and others, like this one, a specimen Genevieve had never seen before. Nobody believes me when I say “Break the Rules“ is her best album. This record of the single “No More Tears“ had taken Genevieve back to her high school days, when she used to ditch her friends and lock herself up in her room to listen to CDs through her headphones. Even back then, an album that covered Namie’s public divorce and reclamation of her career via a new genre had swept young Genevieve away on a wind of daydreams. So romantic…

“Are you going through all of them?” she asked her girlfriend.

Aya turned around, another Japanese pop album in her hands. Hikaru Utada. Always a classic. “Where did you get this? It’s like you reached back into my college days and ripped my favorite album out of my brain.” She looked down at the cover once again. “Natsukashii.”

“It is nostalgic, isn’t it? That’s always been my favorite album of hers. I got to see her in concert, too. Budokan. I think it was…”

Aya laughed. “2004! I was there, too!”

“Really? That’s crazy! Maybe we saw each other!”

“Go figure.”

Genevieve almost dropped the vinyl in her hand. “I’ve collected these over the years. I have more back in Singapore, in my entertainment room. Do you remember? The one with the decent sound system, because that’s not the stereo in my room.”

“I remember a home movie theater…”

“Yes, well, I keep my vinyls in the room behind it. It shares the same sound system as the movie theater.”

“Of course it does.”

“Most of these, though, were bought right here in Taipei. Including these.” Genevieve closed one door in her cabinet and opened another, where the older (and more modern reissues) resided. “I love female artists if you can’t tell. I’ve got most of Akina Nakamori’s albums and singles between here and Singapore. I’ve been collecting some of the city pop reissues of older artists, too. Do you know Mariya Takeuchi? She’s so big again. I had to get a copy of ‘Variety’ when it came out here.”

“I knew J-pop used to be big here back in the day, but I’ve never thought about buying records here. In Japan, most of that has moved online.”

“Here, too, but you still find these cozy shops run by uncles and aunties who really don’t know what they have. They buy out abandoned storage units and set up their junk shops. Some of them are still selling what they sold for back in the day! I should take you to the junk shops sometimes. I love them more here than in Singapore.”

Aya pulled out a Seiko Matsuda album. It must have surprised her to see those scraggly teeth and that perm, because she laughed. “Oh, my God. It’s like my mom’s collection if she had one. Not enough Momoe Yamaguchi, though.”