5. Merrick
Merrick
Wilder pushed Merrick into a seated position and climbed back into his lap.
Merrick took the other man in, the tan swell of his muscles, the smear of cum across his stomach.
Wilder’s cock was half-hard and quickly flagging, but he took Merrick’s cock into him again just the same, and they were back to the beginning, that agonizingly slow pace Wilder had started them off with.
Merrick wanted to crawl out of his skin, but he also loved it.
He fisted the sheets and let his head hit the wall, trying to breathe through the urge to rut and come.
They went on like that for what felt like a week but might have only been hours. Merrick was hazy and boneless, his body consumed by his own pleasure. He couldn’t even feel the usual ache in his jaw from the gag and he’d been on the brink of orgasm for what seemed like forever.
“You’ve done so well,” Wilder murmured, guiding Merrick’s hand down to Wilder’s now fully soft cock. “I couldn’t come again if my life depended on it. You fucked it all right out me, didn’t you?”
Merrick wrapped his fingers around Wilder’s cock and held it in his hand. He nodded, falling forward and pressing his forehead against Wilder’s.
Merrick was so tired, so spent.
So grateful.
“You should come now.” Wilder said it gently, like it was a suggestion and not an order, but Merrick’s body missed the difference.
As soon as the words were out of Wilder’s mouth, Merrick’s muscles went taut and he shot a violent stream of cum out of his dick. He sank his teeth into the gag, gritting his way through the sharp agony of his drawn-out pleasure, blinking hard at the fuzzy darkness around the corners of his vision.
“Good boy,” Wilder whispered, reaching behind Merrick’s head and undoing the gag.
It took work to get the ball out of his mouth, but it was quickly discarded and then Wilder’s fingers were the ones massaging Merrick’s jaw instead of his own.
He was still balls deep, Wilder still in his lap, but Wilder took them both down onto the bed.
He stroked his fingers across Merrick’s cheek and slowly eased Merrick’s finally sated dick out of his body.
Merrick couldn’t keep his eyes open, didn’t want to either.
He couldn’t even form words when Wilder stripped the condom off him, pulled the sheets and comforter up to their waists. The room was dark and it was quiet, their toes touched, and Merrick quickly fell asleep.
He woke up hours later, and he only knew that to be true because it was Wilder’s alarm that roused him from sleep.
The two of them were still face to face on the bed, but when Merrick opened his eyes, Wilder’s were already wide and alert.
In the light of day, Merrick found himself embarrassed about what they’d done the night before.
He sat up quickly, sheets pooling around his lap.
His first instinct was to hop out of bed and get dressed, but his clothes were not in the bedroom.
They were, unfortunately, in the living room because that was where he’d gotten naked upon arrival before letting Wilder walk him through the house by his dick.
“None of that,” Wilder said softly, rolling over and reaching for his phone. He turned off the alarm and stretched, then climbed out of bed himself, completely naked. “We are both adults. There’s nothing embarrassing about what we did.”
Merrick opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself because there was nothing to say.
He was more embarrassed about passing out like a corpse than the sex, though there was certainly something a little careless about what they’d done.
He hadn’t even told anyone where he was going before he’d come over to Wilder’s in the first place.
“I need to hop in the shower. Do you want to shower before you go?”
Merrick shook his head, but managed to follow it up with a scratchy, “No.”
“Would you…” Wilder bit his bottom lip and went quiet.
“Would I?”
“Nothing.”
“Please don’t do that,” Merrick begged, Wilder’s avoidance only adding to the tinge of embarrassment he couldn’t quite shake.
Wilder studied him for a moment, curious and dark eyes dragging over every exposed inch of Merrick’s skin.
“Would you make us some coffee?” Wilder finally asked. “It’s all in the kitchen, and I imagine it’s pretty self-explanatory.”
“I can do that.”
Wilder watched him a moment longer, then nodded and disappeared into the hallway.
Merrick had to get up anyway because of the clothing predicament, but he waited until he heard the shower turn on before he dared.
He dressed quickly, hunched over the back of Wilder’s couch before padding barefoot into the kitchen to assess the coffee situation.
Wilder’s house was smaller than Merrick had thought—very LA—and the coffee was as straightforward as Merrick had ever seen.
No fancy single-cup brewing for Wilder. He had a traditional coffeepot with a glass jar beside it, filled with coffee grounds.
Merrick brewed half a pot, resting his ass against the counter and scrolling through his phone while Wilder showered.
The water turned off and the bathroom door opened.
Merrick glanced up, but another door closed and he imagined Wilder had gone to get dressed.
Merrick shoved his phone into his pocket and turned, opening the cabinet over the coffeepot and finding two shelves overflowing with coffee mugs and coffee tumblers.
He didn’t know when Wilder had to leave, if he wanted his coffee for home or to go, and he stood there staring at all the options, paralyzed.
The air in the room shifted when Wilder walked in. The sharp clack of dress shoes against tile hit Merrick’s ears and he fought a shiver.
“I didn’t know which mug you’d want,” Merrick said without turning around. He still didn’t move, but Wilder’s arrival had at least broken him out of his haze.
“Depends on the mug you want.”
He still couldn’t look. “When do you have to leave?”
“I have fifteen minutes.”
Merrick pulled two porcelain mugs out and set them on the counter.
He filled them both with coffee, movements stuttering when Wilder closed the space between them.
He stopped short of touching Merrick, but Merrick could smell the soap on him, the cologne.
Wilder smelled like amber and…he wasn’t sure.
He tried to catch the scent, sniffing the air but losing it all to the rich smell of the coffee that was certainly artisan.
Nothing like what Merrick had at home or what Riggs had at the shop.
“Santal 33,” Wilder answered before he could ask.
“Of course.”
“I take my coffee black, by the way.”
That snapped him out of it, and Merrick side-stepped out of the way, pushing one of the mugs into Wilder’s waiting hand.
“Do you want to talk about last night?” Wilder asked.
“What about it?”
Wilder eyed him warily over the rim of the mug. “I get the impression there’s lots you want to say so I’m not sure why you’re not saying it.”
“I’ve been told I talk a lot,” Merrick admitted.
“And I’ve been told I listen well.”
That was enough to stop Merrick in his tracks, because not once in his entire life had anyone met his incessant conversation with anything more than mere tolerance, and that was a best-case scenario. The most common reactions were annoyance, and sometimes disinterest and complete dismissal.
“That’s…something,” Merrick muttered. “But I’m not sure what to say.”
“You have the floor and the words escape you?” Wilder chuckled. “You don’t strike me as the type to have performance anxiety.”
Merrick’s cheeks burned, and the floodgates opened.
“I don’t have performance anxiety. I just talk a lot.
I’ve always talked a lot, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with talking a lot, but everyone else seems to think there’s plenty wrong with it.
My brother especially hates how much I talk, but he talks just as much, you know?
But that’s probably because he had to keep up if he wanted to get a word in, and it’s just, like, there’s always stuff in my brain.
The only time it gets quiet is when I’m painting or fucking.
” Merrick snapped his mouth closed, sucking in a breath that hollowed his cheeks.
Wilder watched him, head cocked to the side and one brow slightly arched. “I have questions,” he said.
“Okay.”
“What do you paint?”
That wasn’t what Merrick had expected. He released the hold he had on his own mouth and took a drink of coffee. It was delicious, probably expensive.
“All kinds of things. Right now, I’m working on a sunset, but I just finished a pretty decent-sized dragon, and before that I was working on some new techniques for shading flower petals.”
Wilder nodded. “Acrylic?”
“Watercolor,” he said. “Mostly.”
“Is that your job?”
“Not directly. I’m a tattooer.” Merrick stretched out one of his arms. “I didn’t do these, but I mean like…”
“So you paint for work?”
“And fun. I’ve painted since I was a kid. Art has always come really easy to me.”
“Okay.” Wilder nodded. “What kind of stuff do you talk about? When you do all this talking, that is.”
“Everything.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh. “My brother says I talk about anything, basically just whatever is in my head.”
“Why do you think you have the urge to say everything that pops into your brain?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
Wilder took a drink of his coffee and without thinking too hard about how or why, Merrick did the same.
“So?” Wilder prompted.
Merrick talked a lot because it was the only way his parents would pay any attention to him.
They hadn’t been absent parents, but they hadn’t been involved either.
It was sometimes like he and his brother had been accidents or afterthoughts, or otherwise inconsequential to their parents’ lives.
The chatter had forced their hand, their action. Being good at art hadn’t hurt either.
“So I don’t get overlooked,” he said out loud for what might have been the first time ever.
Wilder took a step closer, reached around him and set the mug down.
They were close, as close as they’d been the night before when Merrick had finally reached orgasm, their breath mixed and their bodies pressed together.
He exhaled at the memory, shifting his gaze to the floor.
Wilder’s finger tapped the underside of Merrick’s chin and Merrick had no choice but to look up.
“Who could overlook you?”
He huffed a laugh. “I guess we’ll never know now.”
Wilder smiled at that, a small and unexpected thing that had Merrick’s heart doing a little backflip in the center of his chest.
“I certainly think it’s been fifteen minutes,” Merrick murmured.
“I had twenty,” Wilder admitted. “Can I kiss you?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Am I going to see you again?” he asked.
Wilder dragged his thumb across the front of Merrick’s chin. “That’s up to you.”
“What do you want, though?”
“I think I want you,” Wilder said softly.
Heat burst to life, burning through every joint, every limb, every inch of skin. Merrick fought himself under control, not entirely sure why Wilder’s simple interest and approval hit him so hard.
“Then yes,” he answered.
They’d fucked twice but hadn’t kissed, Merrick thought, as Wilder leaned in and turned his face to the side.
Wilder had a good hold on him, his hand sliding along the curve of Merrick’s neck to keep him in place as their lips slowly and finally connected.
The kiss was beyond chaste, a delicate press with no tongue and no heat.
There was something so breathtakingly simple and necessary about it that Merrick’s knees went weak.
He moaned, fisted Wilder’s tie in his hand, and Wilder’s tongue slicked across his lower lip before pushing past his teeth and into his mouth.
Wilder wrapped his arms around Merrick and stopped him from sinking down onto his knees, kissing Merrick and pushing him against the edge of the counter to get a better angle.
The kiss deepened, and Wilder reached down between them, taking Merrick’s already hard again cock into his hand.
“Are you going to be okay with this when I go or will you need to go fuck to get it out of your system?” Wilder asked.
The question caught Merrick off-guard. Wilder had just said he wanted him, but in the next breath asked if Merrick was going to go out and fuck somebody else.
They hadn’t talked about being exclusive.
They hadn’t talked about being anything, but it was such a fresh approach that Merrick wasn’t sure what to do about it.
“I…I’ll probably go home and jerk off in the shower and then go to work.”
“Do you have time to paint before work?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Why don’t you do that instead?” Wilder proposed.
Merrick swallowed hard, their mouths still close and his throbbing dick still cradled in Wilder’s huge hand.
“I could do that.”
“Okay.” Wilder squeezed. “And you’ll be okay with that?”
“I think…very okay.” His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “Do you really want me?”
Wilder chuckled, his eyes crinkling around the edges like he found the question amusing. “Very much. But…”
There was always a but.
“I’d like to have a conversation with you before we take things further than we already have. I…”
“You’re a Dom,” Merrick supplied, grimacing when the word left his mouth. He had no idea if that was what Wilder had been planning to say. For all Merrick knew, he could have been about to say he had to work late or take a trip out of town or something.
“I am,” Wilder said. “And before we do this again, I want you to understand what that means…for me and for…you, for whoever I’m with.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” Wilder smoothed his hand over Merrick’s cock and pressed another kiss against the corner of Merrick’s mouth. “Go home and paint, shower. Would you come back later tonight for dinner?”
Oh, God, this was really happening.
“Yeah,” Merrick agreed. “I’ll come back.”