Page 45 of Merrick

Merrick didn’t have a dining room table, so they ate on the floor, backs against the couch and legs stretched out in front of them. For the first time, Merrick didn’t need to be told to talk, he didn’t wait to be asked. As soon as Wilder cut into his chicken breast, Merrick started talking. Between bites, and sometimes in the middle of them, Merrick talked about the next tattoo he wanted to get, about how much he really enjoyed painting the sky once he’d gotten the hang of it.

“Have you ever thought of having an art show?” Wilder interrupted.

“I mean, we’ve had them at the shop before.”

“I mean just for you,” he said. “Separate of the shop.”

Merrick scrunched his nose like the idea was impossible.

“You should think about it,” Wilder suggested.

Merrick launched back into conversation, starting with all the reasons a solo show was a horrible idea, but for the first time, Wilder didn’t listen. He vehemently disagreed with Merrick’s assumptions about not being talented or well-known enough to carry a show on his own. Wilder twirled the last of his pasta around his fork, chewed, swallowed, and set everything down on the plate.

“Are you finished?” he asked after Merrick had paused to take a breath.

“Eating?”

“Talking.”

Merrick snapped his mouth closed, looking wounded. “I can be.”

“You will be,” Wilder corrected, “until you’re done slandering the capabilities of a person I’ve come to care for very much.”

“It’s not?—”

“Stop,” he said, and that was their word, and so Merrick did.

He’d taken Merrick’s ball gag back to his house so his options were limited, but Wilder was a creative man and he intended to make do with the tools he had at his disposal. He reached back onto the couch for his tie, then he hauled Merrick to his feet and wrapped the patterned satin through Merrick’s mouth and around the back of his head. He tied a tight knot, not caring if it hurt Merrick’s lips to be stretched so tight.

“Clean up the plates, wash the dishes, and meet me in the bedroom. Understand?”

Merrick’s eyes were enormous, but he nodded his understanding.

His consent.

Wilder stalked into the kitchen and yanked open drawers until he found the kitchen utensils, until he found a slotted wooden spatula that matched the spoon Merrick had used to cook the best dinner Wilder had eaten all year. He passed Merrick on his way to the bedroom, and when Merrick’s stare drifted down to the spatula, his steps faltered.

“Don’t dawdle,” Wilder warned, then he went into the bedroom to wait.

CHAPTER 17

Merrick

Merrick’s handstrembled as he dried the last plate. His cock hadn’t gotten the memo he was in trouble, though, instead tenting his jeans like society would collapse if it weakened even in the slightest. He and Wilder hadn’t been together long, and in that time he hadn’t done anything to warrant apunishment. Merrick understood that was part of the arrangement, though. He understood what Wilder offered him as a dominant, and as he shuffled to the bedroom with his chin tucked against his chest, he reminded himself of all the ways Wilder had shown up for him that others never had.

He joined Wilder in the bedroom, where he was sitting on the edge of the bed with the wooden spatula clenched tightly in his fist. When he saw Merrick, he stood up and gestured to the place he’d vacated.

“Pants down, hands on the edge of the bed.”

The instruction was short and precise, void of the usual tenderness Wilder managed to infuse into his words. Merrick’s fingers slipped against his zipper, but he managed to drag his jeans down to mid-thigh. He bent over and braced himselfagainst the foot of his bed and his pants lost their hold on his quads and slid down to his knees, then his ankles.

“Why do you think we’re here?” Wilder asked.

Merrick could taste bile in the back of his throat. “Because I did something wrong.”

“What did you do?”

“I talked too much.”