I am not a bratty sub, and he is not a chocolatier. I am bored and anxious, cooped up in those empty days between Christmas and New Year, and he is on a mission to learn something new. He is always on a mission to learn something new.

My anxiety looks like anger. It often does. I have not yet learnt to differentiate one from the other. Nor can I say why I am anxious. It could be the prospect of returning to work, to a job I am tired of; it could be that there has been too much socialising lately; it could be the prospect of New Year. I thought when I met him that my dislike of New Year might ease, that I might cease to fear the future. Now I understand that love cannot solve these problems, it can only distract from them.

He is good at distraction.

There is something about the chocolate that irritates me, though. It’s the contrast, I think, between the rich, glossy hedonism of it, thick and liquid, and the slow precision with which he has to work it – heat it to 46ºC, pour it on to the cool granite work top, spread it thin. Take its temperature again, in several places, make sure it’s at 27ºC all over. When it is, scrape it up, put it back in the bowl. Melt it again. Bring it up to 31ºC, keep it there. Use it as you wish.

I wouldn’t have the patience.

He needs 450g of chopped chocolate. I am eating it as fast as he can chop it. I am trying to rile him. I am turned on by the swift movements of the knife, by the sound of steel on granite.

The first temperature, he gets bang on, but when he pours the molten liquid and moves to spread it, I am fascinated by how fast the consistency of it changes, and I push at the edge of it with my fingernail, watching it flake away from the granite at my touch.

He grabs my wrist. ‘Stop it,’ he says. ‘Keep your fingers off, dirty bitch.’

‘No,’ I say, and push harder at the wrinkling chocolate. I am ruining his handiwork.

The knife he is using to scrape it up with clatters against the worktop as he drops it. He points at the opposite counter. ‘Take your clothes off.’

‘You’re not done.’

‘No, but you are. Done with pushing your fucking luck.’

We’ve been here before.

He will slide his fingers inside me and warm me until I’m halfway to boiling. He  will make me lie star-shaped on the cold stone floor and take my temperature, with his cock, in several places – my mouth, my cunt, my arse. And when all the heat has been drained out of me, he will warm me again until I am calm and, well, just that – warm. In every sense of the word.

At the end of the evening, there will be no perfectly dipped truffles, no glossy caramels. There will just be me, heated, cooled, and heated again – a sub with just the right amount of snap – ready to be used as he wishes.