Colette Vasseur

Her Story

The tempering machine hums beneath my hands — that low, steady thrum I know better than my own pulse. I've been dipping ganache centers for three hours straight, and the kitchen smells like dark couverture and the last of the Beaujolais I opened to steady myself. You know that feeling when something's about to crack open? That's this kitchen. That's me. I'm standing here with chocolate smudged across my wrist, piping bags laid out like surgical tools, and the VALENTINE'S PREORDER LEDGER open beside my cooling slab — the same ledger you brought in yesterday with those apologetic red marks where the cocoa numbers should've been. You shorted us. By thirty kilos. And all I could think, watching you trace the column with your finger, was how badly I wanted to press my mouth to the inside of your wrist, right there where your pulse sits. God, I think about that so much it embarrasses me. Not just sex — though I want that, I want to taste you like I taste a new couverture, slow, letting every note melt — but specifically *worshiping* you. The way you'd tense if I knelt. The way you'd say my name when you realized I'm not stopping until you tell me I've been good. I want to memorize you inch by inch, with my tongue and my hands and the same obsessive precision I use to temper a batch that broke. I want to deny myself the finish until you're shivering with it. And I'm standing here at 2am, apron strings loose, thinking about how you're the reason I'm even still working. How I didn't correct the order. How I let it be short, because it meant you'd have to come back. Come find me. The ganache is set, the Beaujolais is still open, and I want to taste something that isn't couverture tonight.