Page 21 of A Man for the Holidays

After preparing all the ingredients, I place them into the saucepan and turn on the heat, I follow the instructions carefully, taking particular note of the section that readssimmer for thirty minutes.When all the ingredients are in the casserole dish, I place the lid over, then decide to take a quick shower while I wait for dinner to be ready. I head into the bathroom, remove my clothes, then step into the shower and turn on the water. As the water sprays against my body, I immediately have the need to touch myself as I think about Spencer, something I’ve been doing every night whenever I have a shower. I close my eyes and tilt my head backward, pressing it against the glass window and slowly start playing with my cock, or as Spencer called it, masturbating. It feels so spectacular, and I now know the reason why people immediately have the desire and need to have sex, it’s so pleasurable and fun.

I squirt some soap into my palm, then rub my hands together before wiping them all over my body and between my thighs. I let out a loud groan as I massage the sac under my cock before making my way along my thick dick, and I feel my cheeks burn up just by me thinking the word. As I continue to pleasure myself, a strange smell lingers into the bathroom. I turn off the water and step out into the steam filled bathroom where the smell is much stronger. I quickly wrap the towel around my waist and tuck the end inside, when I hear a loud beeping noise come from outside the bathroom. I open the bathroom door, to see a small fire burning in the kitchen on the stove. I race over and grab the casserole dish, but let out a loud cry of pain, as a sensation pierces through both my hands and I let go of the casserole dish, sending it flying to the floor where it shatters into pieces. Holding my hands in pain, I try and turn on the kitchen tap, but fail. The fire continues to burn, and the beeping sound gets louder and longer, as the room continues to fill with smoke.

I reach for one of the dish cloths hanging on the oven door, but a loud breaking noise frightens me and I step backward, just as I hear the front door open.

“Jesus Christ,” I hear a woman’s voice.

“Paige?”

“Quinn?”

“I’m in the kitchen.”

I see her stand on the other side of the kitchen door, then she disappears momentarily, but returns almost immediately holding something red that looks like a tube.

“Get down,” she screams, as I hear what sounds like water gushing through the kitchen. I uncover my eyes to see that the smoke is slowly starting to settle, as Paige continues to spray the room. When the red tube stops working, I watch her open the pantry door, and grab a bag from behind the door. She opens it quickly and pulls out something that looks like a duvet, and carefully places it over the stove, she then takes a step back, as the flames practically disappear. Coughing, she waits a few minutes, while waving her hands around in an attempt to clear the smoke from the room. She then moves over to the stove and slowly lifts a small part of the white material before putting it down again.

Paige opens several windows in the kitchen and living room before making her way over toward me. She kneels and places her hand on my shoulder.

“Are you all right?” she asks with another cough.

“My hands hurt,” I say.

She looks down at my hands, then gently tries to separate them, but I yelp in pain.

“It’s okay,” she says, slowly parting my hands.

I look down and notice that they’re both extremely red and tiny bubbles appear to have formed on them. “It’s a bad burn.”

I hear the front door open and close again, and the sound of Spencer’s voice as he appears in the kitchen.

“Quinn?” he kneels down beside me and asks, “what the hell happened?”

“I finished work early, so I came home because I wanted to surprise you with dinner. I got all these ingredients, followed the recipe and read all the instructions as they said in the book. I don’t know what went wrong,” I tell him.

He considers me for a few seconds, then gets to his feet and slowly paces around the kitchen. He stops by the stove, then slowly and carefully lifts the white material back slightly, and then wanders back over toward me. He kneels back down beside me and looks down at my hands, then proceeds to slowly pull them apart. I let out a soft whimper as he carefully separates my hands, holding each one in the palm of his hands.

“That’s a pretty nasty burn, Quinn, what were you doing?”

“I started making dinner, then the instructions said to simmer for thirty minutes, so I covered the casserole dish with the lid, then went into the shower. When I came out, I found the kitchen on fire.”

“You left the stove on while you were in the shower?”

“Yes. I was only gone thirty minutes. The instructions—”

“Quinn, that was so stupid and foolish. You could have burnt the entire place down. Fuck, what were you thinking?”

His tone is angry and forceful, and certainly not what I’m used to hearing from him.

“I was scared. I didn’t know what to do, when I saw the fire, I just reached for the casserole dish with my hands and I felt a sharp pain sear right through them, I dropped the dish on the ground, and it shattered into pieces. I was trying to stop the fire when Paige came home.”

He looks at Paige who’s still kneeling beside me, then he shifts his attention back to me and says, “That was a stupid, stupid thing to do. Jesus Quinn, you need to be more careful, you’re so… so… hopeless. I’m going to call the insurance company and have this mess sorted out.”

He gets to his feet and walks out of the room, leaving me alone with Paige. She slowly helps me to my feet and tells me to keep my arms out in front of me. Maneuvering me out of the kitchen, I hear Spencer talking on his phone as we cross the foyer into the bathroom. Paige closes the door behind us then tells me to sit on the edge of the toilet seat and stretch out my hands. She opens the small cabinet above the vanity unit and pulls out a bandage, and a small bottle. She then gets to her knees and kneels in front of me.

“This is going to sting a little. Tell me if it hurts, okay?”

I nod.

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