2. Hot Piece of Ass

two

Hot Piece of Ass

Zelda

" Y eehaw!"

Okay. So I'm a lame-o who cheers herself on. Who even cares?

In my lovely apartment filled with my many stuffed animals and pretend pets—aka the plants I give all my love and attention to—I'm the only one available to do any cheering.

Plus, I really do deserve a good cheer. After my midnight run for pizza the other night, I realised I needed to be better about looking after myself. As much as I'd like a sugar daddy or a Daddy full stop, I don't have one, and I won't get one staying inside all day.

So, I started my new mission.

Looking after Zelda 101.

Step one: Buy groceries. After various debates with the peanut gallery of stuffed bears on my bed, I finally ordered those in. Why force myself to people any more than I need to?

Step two: Set up a meal plan. It doesn't have to be healthy, but I must at least get two solid meals daily. This one was a little harder to do, but I finally figured it out with some help from a friend online.

Step three: Take at least one walk every second day. I don't have to force myself to socialise with anyone other than Edie, but I need fresh air and at least minimal exercise. And so far, for the last five days, I've managed to tick off everything on my list. I even set reminders on my phone to get my ass up and make some food.

Hence my 'Yeehaw'.

In the middle of a strict deadline to get a website up for a client, I stopped to pop some stuff in the oven for dinner. Something I usually would have worked straight through.

So, I can focus back on my tasks with my buns in the oven—delicious, buttery, garlic buns—and my coffee mug filled to the brim.

I've bashed my head against my desk on more than one occasion during this project. The client is particularly difficult, and they've shot down almost all of my suggestions, so the fact that for once they're happy with all I've done is a huge ego boost, one that came at the exact right time.

I fiddle on Illustrator for a while, messing around with the new logo options before shooting the changes to the client bitch from hell. With the ick out of the way, I can dive into the background and test the changes I'd implemented the night before.

Before long, I lose track of time, and I'm pretty much fucking elbow-deep in HTML coding when I smell it.

Smoke.

And not just a whiff of it, either.

And where there's smoke? In my life, that most definitely means there's fire.

Well fuck.

I didn't set a timer for the oven, did I?

Saying a little prayer to the kitchen gods or whoever else might listen, I rush to my very cute open-plan kitchen. But I don't make it that far... Why? Well, that would probably be because my kitchen is on fire.

No, not my oven, not even the extractor fan over the stove. Uh-uh. I'm not that lucky.

My entire kitchen is on fire.

How the hell I didn't smell anything before now, I don't know. And why my smoke detector didn't go off is an even bigger question. Regardless, I can't do jack about that now because my kitchen is on fire!

My mind races with what needs to happen next, and while my logical brain knows I need to call emergency services, all I can think about are my babies, the plants, and the stuffies that are littered all over the place.

There's pounding on my front door before I can make a choice or another move. It's a really hard, scary-movie-type pounding. It completely freezes me in my tracks.

"Zelda! Open the fucking door!"

Oh, holy shit. No. That can't be Brennan? He already thinks I'm an idiot who can't care for myself.

"Zelda! Babygirl, you gotta open this door, or I'll break it!"

I'm already facing a boatload of trouble with the kitchen fire, and I'm not super keen to find out what will happen if the building supervisor finds out that I have to add a broken front door to the damage.

And... as my luck would have it, I open the door right as Brennan decides to shoulder his way in.

How do I know this?

He falls into the apartment.

"Oh shucks! Sorry, are you okay?" I cry out in alarm.

Lucky for him—seriously, some people have all the darn luck—he's rather sure-footed, and he doesn't fall on his face, instead catching himself two steps in.

"Zelda, Babygirl, are you okay?" Brennan asks, concern etched on his face as he takes in the scene before him.

I stand there, dumbfounded, staring at him for a moment before reality crashes back in. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," I mumble, trying to shake off the shock of the fire and Brennan's sudden appearance.

"Mind telling me why you're still in here when your kitchen is a raging inferno?"

I have no control over what falls out of my mouth next. Seriously. Let's blame smoke inhalation if you think that will work.

"I was waiting to see if I could turn myself into a hot piece of ass."

His face. Oh goodness, his face.

The range of emotions that run across his features is so varied and wide that I'm impressed until it settles on outright outrage.

"For heaven's sake. Zelda. Get the fuck out. Do you have a fire extinguisher?"

I don't. But at this stage, I'm too scared to tell him I don't because he's already so mad at me. I also want to go back in and grab my babies, but something tells me he won't be too happy with me if I make the suggestion.

More colourful words leave his lips, his very sexy lips. I have no control over the blush that rises up my face and end up looking at my feet like there isn't a kitchen fire going bananas in my apartment right then.

"Just wait outside," he orders. "Kaz phoned the fire department. I'll grab the extinguisher from our place." He looks at me, exasperated and worried, shaking his head before continuing. "Just, please, Zelda, wait outside."

He nudges me out with him and gives me a stern look before rushing through their front door. Before I can even contemplate going back inside to grab my babies, or at the very least my laptop, Kaz comes out holding his phone to his ear. His gaze zeroes in on me immediately, and I'm rooted to the spot.

Mouthing the word 'stay' to me, he murmurs into the phone too softly for me to make out what he's saying. Within seconds, Brennan is back in the hall, holding a bright red extinguisher.

"Need a hand, bun-bun?" Kaz calls.

He only receives a negative shake in response.

"Brennan is inside with a handheld, but there's a lot of smoke," he says into the phone again, standing right in front of me so I can hear what he's saying. "Okay, we're waiting outside, and if he gives us the nudge, we'll pull the building's alarm. But I think he's got it under control."

That's when we hear the sirens, and everything that happened catches up with me.

My legs collapse, but before I can hit the floor, two strong arms wrap around me, circling me with a calming embrace.

"You're okay, sweetums. I have you."