8. Wilder
Wilder
He’d maybe underestimated his own fascination with Merrick, but after listening to him talk about painting techniques and art for well near an hour, his interest was impossible to ignore. Merrick’s hand fit so well in his, clammy palm and all.
“You remember earlier, I said I was a Dom.” He curled his fingers around Merrick’s and turned their hands upside down before lowering them both down to the couch. He didn’t let go.
“I remember.”
“Your sign last night said no D/s. Is that because you’re against the idea?” he asked.
“I’m not against it. I just didn’t want to do all the talking that normally comes with it,” Merrick said.
“You? Not wanting to talk?”
Merrick’s expression darkened at the taunt, and Wilder brushed his thumb across the swell of Merrick’s cheekbone.
“Don’t be cross,” Wilder murmured, knowing all was well when Merrick’s lashes fluttered and he leaned into Wilder’s retreating touch.
“Sometimes the sex helps me turn off, like it quiets all the chatter in my mind.”
“You’re using sex to medicate?”
“Not that.” Merrick’s eyes went wide and he shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong. I just know most people—”
“Most people aren’t here,” Wilder interrupted. “Most people are not in this room.”
“I know that, but I can’t just pretend they don’t exist because they’re not here this very second.”
That was fair, and Wilder told him as much. Merrick was already turning out to be so much different from what Wilder had expected him to be, and he liked that. Not that Merrick would be a challenge, but he would be new. Fresh.
“Okay, hold on.” Wilder held up his hand, giving them both a pause. “I’m going about this wrong. I approached this from a place of presumption, and I need to backtrack a little.”
“You didn’t presume anything.”
He smiled sweetly at Merrick, so earnest and nervous while also being somehow completely at ease.
The duality of the man across from him was not lost on Wilder, the way the physical reactions of his body didn’t quite mesh with the words out of his mouth.
It was as if Merrick so desperately wanted to be something only half of himself could allow.
“This morning when I told you I wanted you, I meant it. I don’t do open relationships and I’m not a huge fan of casual. I appreciate commitment. I require it. I also know asking you to commit to me in any way when we don’t know a single thing about each other is probably the biggest red flag—”
Merrick cut him off. “I hear you, but it’s not. I don’t want you to think that about yourself.”
“Why isn’t it a red flag?”
“You’re thinking of me in all this too, right?” Merrick asked, running a hand over the short hairs on the top of his head. “Not just yourself?”
“Right.”
“You’re trying to create safety,” Merrick said. “I respect that.”
“How would that safety impact your kink?” he asked next, taking a deep breath and steeling himself against whatever the answer was going to be. “The free use, I mean.”
Merrick covered his face with his hands, folding his body in half and muttering a string of curses into his lap. Wilder chuckled, brushing his hand over the top of Merrick’s head until he looked up again.
“No D/s so I don’t have to have this conversation twenty times,” Merrick admitted.
“My kink isn’t being used by multiple people; it’s being used at all.
It could be just one person, and it’s not like…
it’s not like I can’t sleep if I don’t fuck four men on a Wednesday or I can’t function if I haven’t gotten off a certain number of times. ”
Wilder studied Merrick’s face while he talked, continually captivated by the man. Merrick’s mouth was like a faucet that had two settings, a drip or a firehose. He wasn’t sure what activated which version, but he hoped he’d be around enough to try and find out.
“How does it play out when you’re involved with someone seriously?”
“Never well.” Merrick snorted. “It’s novel at first, to tell someone they can use me for sex whenever they want, but everyone I’ve ever been with gets tired of it eventually.”
“Have you dated dominant men before? Women?”
The embarrassment on Merrick’s cheeks turned a deeper shade of red, and Wilder wondered if Merrick could feel the burn beneath his skin or if it was an experience meant only for Wilder to see.
“Not like you, I don’t think.”
“So you enjoy being used for sex, by one person or more than one person. Tell me more about the scenarios you like to play this out in.”
Wilder had already caught on Merrick might have a little bit of a praise kink. He hadn’t missed the way Merrick’s attention perked when Wilder called him a good boy, a good man.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Merrick said.
“Do you like to be objectified when you’re being used?” Wilder held up one finger for each scenario. “Keep your mouth shut, the only thing you’re good for is this dick. Just like that, Merrick. You’re such a good boy to share this cock with everyone.”
Merrick’s mouth fell open, the sound of his tongue sucking against the roof of his mouth audible. He held up two fingers and nodded slowly.
“Both.”
“Good to know.”
“What are your kinks?” Merrick blurted, lowering his hand to his lap. He fidgeted his fingers. “Can we talk about anything besides me for a minute?”
“Of course.” He made himself comfortable on the couch, hoping that over time Merrick would mirror it.
“I have quite a few things I like, if we’re being honest. For one, I did like using you for sex last night, and I very much enjoyed the way you rubbed your face between my legs to make me come.
There’s some objectification there, I think. Some worship, that I enjoyed.”
“I just wanted to suck you so badly.” Merrick covered his mouth with his hand, his fingers pressing into his lips.
Wilder filed that admission away for later.
“I also really like rough sex, but it’s hard to find as a bottom who is also dominant.” He smiled, and Merrick smiled back.
“Your profile on the app said domestic discipline,” Merrick said. “And corporal punishment.”
Wilder ignored the influx of pressure between his legs, the way his cock responded at the mere suggestion of it.
“I like spanking. I like bondage. I like telling you to do something and you do it, and if you don’t, you get punished,” he said.
“What kind of things?”
Merrick did a less impressive job at hiding his arousal.
He shifted his knees, bulge thickening between his legs.
Wilder stared at it, allowed himself to look in a way that Merrick couldn’t ignore.
Finally, he licked his lips and looked up.
Merrick’s pupils were dark pools and his nostrils flared with every inhale.
“Sometimes it’s easy things like making the bed or washing the dishes. Sometimes it’s telling you that you’re not allowed to jerk off for a whole week or that I want you to jerk off twice a day every day for a week. It…it depends on what we both want. What we both would need.”
“Do you do spanking as a reward too?” Merrick asked, and Wilder heard the words tremble as they were spoken.
“Yes.”
Wilder grabbed his water from the table and took a drink.
His mouth was as dry as Merrick’s seemed earlier.
He’d had conversations like this many times before, but something about this time felt different to him in a way he couldn’t articulate.
Maybe he was in over his head, or maybe he was moving too fast with someone he shouldn’t be.
Wilder didn’t know, but he also didn’t want to know.
He didn’t want to stop. He simply wanted more.
“Give me an example.”
“I wake you up at eight in the morning on a Saturday with my hand. You were hard in your sleep, and I knew you needed to come. You’re still half-asleep when I roll you onto your back and straddle you, sink down onto you.
You whimper because your cock is sore since I woke you up at midnight because I was the one who wanted to come.
You’re so overfucked, but you finish and fall back asleep.
” Wilder adjusted himself, the fantasy more real than he’d realized.
“I get up and make you coffee and I make you breakfast. I bring it to you in bed and feed it to you, then you ask if you can suck me off. I ask if you’ve earned it.
We both agree that you haven’t, but you can, so you fold yourself over the top of my lap and let me spank you.
The spanking makes you hard, so I let you suck my dick like you wanted. ”
Merrick cursed under his breath. “Now who’s the talker.”
“I’m very much a talker,” he promised. “What happens after that, Merrick?”
“I suck you until you come and then I swallow it. No, I ask if it’s okay to swallow it.
You tell me yes because I took the spanking so well.
You come in my throat, and then I take the dishes into the kitchen and wash them, put them away.
I get you more coffee and set it on the edge of the sink because you’re in the shower. I make the bed, I—”
“Sit down and paint,” he interrupted before Merrick could go any further.
“I join you in the living room with my coffee, and I watch you sit at my table and create something beautiful. You’re naked and you’re hard, and I love seeing you like that.
So obedient. And when it’s too much for me, I prep myself and bend over the couch.
I make you take a break to fuck until I get off, then I make us lunch while you finish your art. ”
Merrick’s chest heaved with every breath, his stare locked on Wilder’s with a desperate sort of intensity that made Wilder wish it was Saturday and they could fall into this fantasy routine immediately.
Unfortunately, it was a Thursday night, it was late, and he couldn’t run this whole thing through before bed.
“And after lunch?” Merrick prompted. His entire body swayed forward, and Wilder wanted to kiss him. He closed some of the space and took Merrick’s cheek into his hand. He brought their faces close, their breath mixing.
“I might put leather cuffs around your wrists and ankles, and I might bind you to my bed, strap a vibrator onto you so you’re hard whenever I need you to be, and I can come into the bedroom and fuck you whenever I want.
I might put on a movie and pull you onto the couch, put your head into my lap and my cock into your mouth.
” Wilder was so hard it hurt. “I’d do whatever I wanted, wouldn’t I?
Because it would be up to me to decide…”
He trailed off, Merrick nodding a quiet agreement with every word that came out of his mouth.
Wilder gave in to his own urges and pressed their mouths together.
The kiss was different from the one in the morning.
There was just as much want in it, but this one came with more knowing.
It was a different kind of understanding than what they’d had before.
“It’s not just sex,” he murmured. “It’s everything.”
“I know,” Merrick whispered against his lower lip.
“It will hurt sometimes. It might feel unfair.”
“I doubt it.”
Wilder leaned back enough so he could see Merrick’s face.
“It might,” he said again.
“It might,” Merrick agreed. “Would you gag me?”
Wilder’s heart constricted and he wanted the answer to be no because he loved when Merrick talked. There was so much passion in it, so much excitement.
“If that’s what you need.”
“And you would decide?”
He could hear his heart beating in his ears.
“I’d like to decide. Does that sound nice to you or do you hate it?”
Merrick swallowed hard, emotions warring on his face.
Wilder raised his hand and pressed it against Merrick’s chest, finding his heart beating just as frantically as his own.
He pressed Merrick’s hand against his chest, and the two of them sat like that for what felt like hours but had to have only been minutes.
“It sounds nice,” Merrick finally answered.
“We’ll go slow.”
“You don’t have to.”
Wilder pursed his lips. “We’ll go slow.”
Merrick’s fingers curled against Wilder’s chest, and Wilder let go of Merrick in favor of pressing Merrick’s hand harder against his sternum.
“I’ve never done it before, but can I call you Sir?”
The floor could have dropped out from under him and he wouldn’t have noticed, his own stomach already plummeting to his feet at the request. “Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
“Then, yes,” he agreed. “You can call me Sir.”
“And what will you call me?” Merrick asked, tucking his chin against his chest. “Sir.”
Wilder pressed their mouths together again, a soft kiss against the corner of Merrick’s mouth.
“I think I’ll call you mine.”