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“You’re hiding something.” My gaze skims slowly over her, lingering on her tits beneath the fitted pale-rose T-shirt, drinking in their swell, the rise and fall.

She lets out a small sound, full of distress, and I hate myself more. “Hiding something? You kidnapped me, Demyan, dragged me here, or do you mean on me?”

There’s a flash of wild, feral light, a tangle of anger and pain in her eyes, and she whips off her T-shirt, pushes off the yoga pants and she stands there, in a plain cotton bra and mismatched panties. The bra is white, panties black, and she looks even better than the last time I saw her in a state of undress. She’s more rounded.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

She shoves me. “If you think I’m hiding something, I’m showing you I’m not. Or do you think you need to do a full body cavity search?”

“Seduction isn’t going to work.”

Erin laughs. “You think I want to seduce you? I don’t. I never want to see you again. I want my baby and I want us to be gone. You’re crazy, Demyan. Batshit crazy.”

I move in, and she stumbles back until she hits the door and I cage her in. Her body heat radiates and I buzz, being so near, she’s like an electrical field. I want more.

She’s fucking right. I am batshit crazy.

“I’m a lot of things, Erin,” I say, slipping a finger over her cheek, “but crazy isn’t one of them.”

I might have lost my mind somewhere from Sasha’s room to here, but I’m not sharing that with her.

“No, you’re crazy.”

“Who’s Sasha’s father?”

“You.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“You did when you kicked down the motel door. You did when you threatened to never let me see him, when you claimed parentage. Who do you honestly think his father is? He looks like you. He’s your kid.”

“You can’t possibly know that for sure.”

“I do.” Her voice is tight. “You were the only man I was with that could possibly be the father. I broke up with my boyfriend three months before that. So unless it was a miracle birth, you’re his father.”

I frown. “Erin?—”

“I’ve never heard of this, Niko. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m tired.” She pushes past me, collecting her clothes and pulling them on. “Believe what you want, but don’t you dare hurt that child or I’ll kill you.”

Her words are so matter-of-fact that despite my fucked-up behavior, I want to smile. But instead, I sit on the bed and run a hand through my hair. “I lost it there. I… this Niko is the one responsible for?—”

“Max?” Her whisper is ragged. “I hope you end him. Max… he didn’t deserve that. And neither did Alina.”

“Yeah, well, planting someone here is something he’d do.”

“I’m not— Sasha’s yours.”

Her words play in my head. No one else but me in all that time. And the way she said it, like there’s been no one…

It grips hard, that notion that the last man who touched her was me. “You said you hadn’t been with anyone before me, and after?”

“You’re the father. I know it because since that night I haven’t… There’s… I don’t do one-night stands, and that was an aberration.”

Just me.

It shouldn’t make me hard, turn me on, but it does.

She’s mine, like he is.