Page 59 of Merrick

The door cracked open and Wilder slipped inside, closing it quickly behind him. Again, Merrick lost his breath at the sight of the man in front of him. He’d seen Wilder dressed all kinds of ways, to work and from work, casual, dressed up for dates, but he’d never seen Wilder like this. Not his man in a slim cut, black suit, tailored to within an inch of its life and paired with a crisp white dress shirt and pin-straight black tie. Hie hair was slicked back, a few strands falling loose across his temple.

“You better not be,” Wilder warned.

Merrick rolled his eyes.

“What are you doing in here?” Wilder asked.

“Hiding.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m overwhelmed?”

“Why?” Wilder asked again.

“It’s a lot.”

“Says the man who thrives on attention.” Wilder smirked. “Your brother has told me all about the art shows you used to make him sit through when you were younger.”

“That was to get my parents’ attention, noteveryone’sattention.”

“Everyone is an overstatement.” Wilder held out his hand and Merrick took it, letting him draw them closer together. “But there’s a few.”

“A few.”

Wilder kissed the corner of his mouth and slid his hand down, cupping Merrick’s perpetually hard cock in the palm of his hand.

“I know you’re hoping I’m going to distract you right now. Turn around and take down my pants, let you put this beast of a cock inside me.”

Merrick’s knees quaked. “Yes, Sir.”

“But I won’t let you off that easy,” Wilder teased, tugging on Merrick’s bulge. “First you have to go out there with me, talk me through every single painting you put on display, especially the one that matches my tattoo.”

Merrick didn’t have words.

“And after you tell me about all of them, you’re going to tell everybody else,” Wilder went on. “You’re going to go out into that room of people who came here to see you, and you’re going to talk about your art. It’s the third best thing you do.”

“Third?”

“Right behind fucking and also making the art in the first place.”

Merrick managed a weak laugh, grimacing when Wilder took his hand away.

It killed him inside, but he let Wilder walk him out of the room and into the gallery. Everyone might have been an overstatement, but a few was certainly an understatement. There was easily three dozen people there already, including Wilder’s friends Justin, Micah, and Keith, his brother and Holden, Riggs and his boyfriend, Smith, and a man he knew to be the brother of Riggs’s dead husband. There were other faces he recognized but couldn’t place, and he squeezed Wilder’s hand to ground himself.

“Tell me about this one,” Wilder said softly, coming to stop in front of the closest painting. It wasn’t a sunset, instead a random scattering of flowers, almost like tattoo flash. It was something he’d practiced on to work on his techniques, but in the end, it had felt deserving of making the final cut.

So, Merrick started to talk and by the time they made a loop of all the pieces, he didn’t want to crawl out of his skin. Wilder stayed close to him while people asked questions about his paintings and his tattoos, and the night was finished before it had even gotten started. Merrick had sold more than half of thepaintings, the sunset he loved the most the first to go. He was initially sad, but he quickly realized Wilder had been the one to make the purchase.

“Where do you want to hang it?” Wilder asked, leaning against the wall with his arms folded in front of his chest. He’d long ago ditched the jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. The crowd had filtered out, and it was the two of them left, with Roland and Danny in the back.

“What are you thinking?”

“Over our bed would be nice.”

“Over…our?”

“Ours,” Wilder said again, giving him a small nod of his head. “If you think mine will do. For you, I mean.”