Chapter 17: “Allow Me”

Stop refusing me, love.

The words echo through my mind. Stop refusing me. And why am I refusing him? The warmth of the quilt wrapped around me is overwhelming. He is my mate, isn’t he? There’s no reason for me to be so nervous around him. He loves me deeply, I can feel that much. It’s not his fault that I’ve lost my memories, so I shouldn’t keep distancing him because of it.

Slowly, tentatively, I reach my hand out from underneath the blanket and tuck it into his. The moment his skin touches mine, my breath quickens to shallow gasps. My heart starts to thud. I’m grateful for the blanket–it means that Vikrov can’t see how fiercely red my face is.

He saw me. Naked.

And I want him to see me like that again.

I want it so bad it scares me.

I gasp ever so slightly as Vikrov starts to rub something into a wound slicing across the palm of my hand. As he tends to my wounds, I wriggle out of the blankets so I’m no longer burrowed under the sheets. Instead, my torso is wrapped in the blanket,