Page 33 of Merrick

Wilder eyed him, expression mostly unreadable in a way that made Merrick terribly horny.

“I’ll touch all of your things,” Wilder warned.

“I don’t mind.”

“Neither do I.”

They stared at each other another beat, Merrick waiting for Wilder to tell him what to do. The instructions were not a constant thing from him, but when they came, Merrick did enjoy obeying.

“Go get dressed,” Wilder finally said. “Bring me clothes too.”

“What do you want to wear?”

Wilder glanced down, both of them in nothing more than their underwear.

“Your choice,” he said.

Merrick climbed off the couch to his feet, hip cracking as he straightened his legs, and he headed for the bedroom. He was far too young for his joints to be so stiff, but tattooing was a physically demanding job. He spent hours hunched over other people’s bodies and his knees and back were the first parts of him to pay that price.

Standing in the middle of Wilder’s bedroom, Merrick braced his hands on his hips and swayed side to side, trying to draw out some of the tension he always carried. It seemed useless, so he got dressed and then grabbed a pair of shorts and a T-shirt out of the dresser for Wilder. Merrick turned the lights off on his way out, hesitating when he caught sight of the unmade bed in his periphery. The sheets were wrecked from the night before, and the mess stood out in the otherwise simple cleanliness of Wilder’s house.

Merrick took Wilder his clothes and asked, “Can I change the sheets before we go?”

Wilder’s eyes went wide, but he was quick to school his face. “Can you?”

“May I?” Wilder corrected without much thought.

“Sheets are in the hall closet.”

Merrick made an affirmative sound, which earned him a raised eyebrow.

“What?” he asked.

“Just wondering if you wanted to try a different response to that.”

Merrick bit the tip of his tongue, mind racing before the correct answer clicked into place in the middle of his mouth. “Thank you, Sir,” he said quietly.

Wilder was the one who made a pleased sound then, jerking his chin toward the hallway in dismissal.

Merrick went back to the bedroom, stopping in the hallway to get a clean set of sheets. He ignored the way his cock thickened when he called WilderSirand grabbed a set of navy sheets off the shelf. They were soft and smelled like laundry soap, and he set them down on the dresser so he could strip the others off the mattress.

He’d gotten three corners of the fitted sheet yanked up when Wilder appeared in the doorway. He leaned against the door jamb, dressed, with his arms folded in front of his chest.

“Did I do something wrong?” Merrick asked nervously, tugging at the last corner. The sheet gave way and he balled it up, tossing it onto the floor with the pillows and the top sheet.

“No.”

The short answer had Merrick uncertain, but he took Wilder at his word and began the tedious process of making a king-sized bed without help. He could have asked for assistance, but he didn’t want it. Even as he struggled with getting the deep fitted sheet into place around the corners of Wilder’s mattress, it was something he wanted to do by himself. Wilder’s scrutiny from the doorway only made Merrick hornier than he already was,and by the time the pillowcases were changed and the pillows themselves were fluffed, Merrick was hard as a rock.

“Why did I like that?” he asked, turning to face Wilder, his erection obvious.

Wilder let his stare move slowly from Merrick’s face down to his zipper, nostrils flaring.

“I can’t answer that for you,” he said. “Maybe you can think about the answer while you’re painting this afternoon.”

“Won’t that be boring for you? If I’m just painting?” Merrick scrunched his nose. “It’s sort of a process to get set up and once I get into it, I really don’t like to stop. I kinda get into this zone or…my brother calls it a flow state, but I just lose myself in it and I don’t want to ignore you.”

He snapped his mouth closed.