Chapter 5
The kitchen is a sweltering pit by midmorning, despite the windows flung wide and the back door propped open with a fifty-kilo sack of sugar. The breeze carries the scent of horses and early summer, but in here it’s pure chaos.
I’ve been at it for hours.
My apron stained, sleeves rolled past the elbow, batter halfway up one arm, my left hand sticky with something I no longer remember the origin of.
The marble counter is unusable—covered in bowls, trays, knives, cream, piping bags, raspberry seeds, caramel shards, and a vaguely obscene pile of fresh eggs.
Some cracked. Some not. My hair has fallen from its knot again and I don’t have time to fix it.
I’m trying to perfect a crème patissière that tastes the way skin feels—warm, salty-sweet, and obscene. A filling that mimics the texture of sweat-slick skin, the consistency of a wet dream you can barely remember—like lust itself, I announced to the empty air a moment ago.
Somewhere behind me, Hessou turns a page.
He’s sitting on a high-backed wooden chair imported from his estate, a piece that has no business being in a kitchen, angled perfectly by the window.
Barefoot, in a silk robe patterned with indigo cranes, he looks utterly out of place in this village—like a figment conjured by someone too poetic for their own good.
But there he is, legs crossed, reading Rimbaud in a liquid voice while I mutter about the temperature of my sugar.
“—J’ai tendu des cordes de clocher à clocher; des guirlandes de fenêtre à fenêtre; des cha?nes d’or d’étoile à étoile, et je danse—”
“Don’t recite Rimbaud in that voice while I’m watching this caramel,” I snap, glaring at the pot of molten amber threatening to seize and then at him. “I’ll burn this whole place down with us inside.”
He hums. Smiles without looking up.
“I like when you threaten arson.”
I glare at him, turning off the stove before the caramel can scorch. And that’s when a sudden clang makes me jolt, nearly sending the pot flying from my grip.
Jean’s somewhere in the cellar—I can hear a curse in that low, polite voice of his.
The lead water pipe that runs from the cellar up to the kitchen sink burst last night near the junction.
The whole corner of the room smells of damp stone and wet metal.
I told him to leave it, that we’d just use buckets for a while, but Jean insisted.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be quick,” he said, blushing.
It’s been three hours.
Hessou closes the book with one hand and stretches his legs out like a cat. I glance at him. He’s watching me now.
“I’m going mad,” I say, throwing a handful of flour into the air for no reason at all.
“I noticed.”
“I can’t think! I have too many ideas. Too many ingredients. But the flour is wrong, the butter is too soft, the milk is from yesterday—yesterday, Hessou, it’s practically curdled—”
He raises an eyebrow. “It smells fine.”
“That’s not the point! The ratio is off, the humidity is obscene, and—” I whirl back to the counter, flicking a spoonful of ganache into my mouth mid-rant, “—Jean hasn’t come for the second time yet and I’m running low of cum!”
He laughs.
“I’m serious!”
“You always are.”
I slap my hands against the counter and let out a groan. Then a sigh. Then a moan, letting my head fall between my arms.
“…We should take Jean to Lyon.”
I blink at him from where I’ve collapsed, half-sprawled over my pastry mess.
“To Lyon?”
“Yes. To start.”
I frown. “To start?”
He stands, brushing a nonexistent speck of dust from the sleeve of his robe, and begins to pace. Not for movement’s sake, I know that for sure, but as if he’s physically unveiling a new world in the space between us.
“We begin here,” he says, circling around the kitchen. “Somewhere familiar. Close. Not too overwhelming. Just enough lace and silverware and impossibly tiny portions to make him feel the taste of a different life.”
I tilt my head, a slow smile forming despite myself.
“…You want to take our farm boy to a Michelin-starred room?”
“I want to give him silk against his skin and foie gras between his teeth,” he says, his eyes gleaming. “I want to watch him forget he was ever afraid of the world.”
“He blushed when we told him to use our first names. You think he’ll survive a ma?tre d’ calling him monsieur?”
Hessou smiles. “Oh! That’s the very best part.”
“And then?” I ask, no longer pretending my heart isn’t hammering against my ribs.
“Then Lyon becomes too small.” He crosses behind me, brushing his fingertips along the curve of my lower back as he passes.
“We board a train. South, at first. Let him see the azure of the Mediterranean from a villa in Nice. I want to know how his scent reacts to the sea. I want to expose him to the sun and let everyone see he’s made of it.
Salt on his mouth, gold on his skin, the entire ocean watching him discover pleasure in being seen.
Then we lose a week and a modest fortune in the casino at Monte Carlo, just to scandalize him a little. ”
I chuckle and he smiles widely, robe flying when he turns around.
“Then we go north. I want to see you on your knees for him in a chateau built for kings. I want to watch you drink him down while the portraits of dead men look on in envy.”
He closes the distance between us in a single stride, his hands cupping my face. His thumb brushes my lower lip.
“Then Paris. We’ll take him to Théatre de l’Opéra—let him hear a tenor’s voice so powerful it cracks the ceiling of his little provincial heart.
Let him walk the Rue Saint-Honoré in boots that cost more than his father’s land.
Let him drink champagne before noon and see what he does to waiters when he says merci and blushes. ”
He kisses me, hard and quick.
“We could fuck him in the Basilique du Sacré-C?ur,” he murmurs against my lips, “until he’s trembling, praying for salvation and sin in the same breath. Let God himself watch us corrupt a saint in the place that hates us the most. I’ll bottle that blasphemy and wear it every day.”
I bite my lip, the image so vivid I can almost taste it.
“He’s going to combust.”
“Beautifully. And he’ll rise from the ashes, brighter.” Hessou says, releasing me to spin around the kitchen again. “We’ll take him to Vienna in the spring. Munich for beer. Maybe even London—”
“Ugh.”
He laughs. “Yes, yes. I know your feelings on London, mon c?ur, but there’s so much to see there.”
“Jean will hate the British gloom.”
He raises his hands in a theatrical surrender. “A mere suggestion.”
He comes closer again, his expression softening. He reaches out, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth where I’m smeared with something sweet.
“But then maybe somewhere warmer. America, maybe. Somewhere with sun.”
“Brazil?”
“Eventually.”
“The United States?”
He shrugs. “I’ve been. They have… violent opinions on men who look like me, and you would declare war on their bread. But it would be an adventure. We could make a mess.”
I can imagine it—the three of us, sinning our way through. Jean, confused by the menus. Me, scandalized by it. Hessou pretending to flirt with the American women purely to watch their husbands squirm.
And then I glance toward the cellar door, where the sound of metal clanking has finally gone quiet.
The pipe, it seems, has finally surrendered.
“Jean,” I call, “did you conquer the beast?”
He appears in the doorway, flushed and a little damp.
There’s a smear of something dark on his collarbone, his curls plastered to his forehead, and a wrench sticking out of his pocket.
His shirt is clinging to the solid planes of his chest and shoulders, and his pants are worn in all the best places. He blinks at me, then at Hessou.
“I… think it’s fixed?”
“You think so?” Hessou echoes, drifting closer like a curious cat.
Jean shrugs, wiping his palms on the damp thighs of his pants. “No water burst for the last ten minutes, so…”
His voice falters as Hessou stops before him, reaching out to lightly brush a spot of dirt from his shoulder. He always does this—circles Jean like he’s testing the air around him.
“You smell like labor,” Hessou says. “It’s rare in my circles.”
Jean’s eyes widen. He lifts his arm, and leans in to sniff under it. “Is that bad…?”
Hessou grins. “It’s perfect.”
A deep flush spreads across Jean’s cheeks and throat. He’s adorable.
I watch them interact. This has become a morning ritual of sorts: Jean shows up sweaty and a little nervous after his morning deliveries, Hessou teases him, I flirt while baking something inappropriate, and someone ends up half-naked by the end of the hour. It’s comforting and domestic.
Jean tilts his head and scratches his neck, where the collar of his shirt is damp and sticking.
“Sorry I took so long. The pipe was deeper than I thought and one of the seals was… uh… broken. I had to—”
“You don’t have to explain. You look beautiful.”
He blinks. “I—”
“You do,” I repeat, stepping into his space. “Like Michelangelo took a break from David to sculpt a farm boy with delicious thighs.”
Jean covers his face with a groan.
“He’s been like this all morning,” Hessou tells him.
“Unhinged,” I admit.
“Obsessive.”
“Flour in places flour should never be.”
Jean smiles behind his hand. Then lowers it, and I see that smile for real—crooked, a little shy, but full of warmth.
He’s used to us. Still blushes, still stammers sometimes, but there’s no fear or awkwardness anymore when we touch him, no flinching when we flirt.
Just the slow-burning affection growing louder with each week.
“I haven’t eaten,” he says suddenly. “Been working since dawn.”
“Oh no,” I breathe, stepping in front of him and pressing one flour-dusted hand to his broad chest. “Our boy’s starving.”
Hessou leans over my shoulder. “We’ll remedy that immediately.”
“Feed you until you moan.”
Jean’s entire face blooms a helpless crimson.
He’ll get fed, certainly. Just not the way he expects.