Page 47 of Devil’s Night (The Shadows of Darkness Universe #3)

Chapter thirty-five

Mine

Katya

T he gown fits like a noose.

Tight at the ribs, cinched at the waist, the fabric gleams with golden thread woven into the black silk like veins of power stitched straight into my skin.

It’s one of my father’s favorites. picked not for my comfort, but for how it frames me.

How it reminds everyone in the room whose blood I carry.

And whose future I’ve been promised to.

I don’t look at myself in the mirror. I’ve seen enough reflections in this house to know they lie.

Two of my father’s attendants circle me like vultures, their hands cool and detached as they finish adjusting the clasps on the back of the gown, brushing invisible lint from the bodice, smoothing my hair with clinical precision. I feel like a doll in a box. Pretty. Perfect. Hollow.

One of them leans in to adjust the low-cut neckline and I barely suppress the urge to slap his hand away.

They don’t speak to me. Not really. They speak around me. About me.

“Dress is flawless.”

“She’ll turn every head.”

“Dimitri will be pleased.”

The words slide over me like oil. Cold. Unclean. I stand still, jaw tight, wondering how many more lies I’ll have to wear before I can finally tear them off and breathe.

A knock sounds once. Sharp. Commanding.

Before either man can react, the door swings open.

And then he’s there.

Echo steps into the room like he’s claiming territory. Dressed in a black suit that fits him like a second skin, the collar of his shirt open at the throat, his eyes darker than the shadows he walks through.

The moment he enters, the temperature shifts.

He doesn’t bark or raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.

“You’re dismissed,” he says, low and final.

The two attendants hesitate, barely, but one look from Echo has them moving. Fast. They disappear down the hall, the door clicking softly behind them, leaving only silence in their wake.

And him.

I don’t turn. I stay facing the mirror, my heart hammering now, not from fear, but from something hotter. He watches me from behind, and I feel it like a current running under my skin. The weight of his stare. The quiet reverence in it.

“You clean up nicely,” I murmur.

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, I hear the soft shuffle of fabric as he reaches into his jacket, withdrawing something I don’t have to look at to recognize.

His steps are slow, deliberate, and when I finally turn, he’s already standing in front of me with the compact silver pistol cradled in his palm. It gleams under the low chandelier light, sleek, feminine, deadly.

“It’s time,” he says softly. “We go in armed. Always.”

I nod, heart thudding harder now for an entirely different reason.

He lowers himself to his knees in front of me, like a knight in devotion, and my breath stutters. There’s something unholy about the way he kneels. Something dangerous about a man like him bowing for a girl like me.

Not in submission.

But in worship.

His hands slide up my calf, slow and reverent, gathering the hem of my gown until the cool air kisses the bare skin of my thigh. His fingers ghost over my inner leg, and I swear my pulse migrates there, drumming wild beneath his touch.

He wraps the leather holster around my thigh, firm but gentle, his thumb dragging over the soft flesh just below the strap. His breath hitches when his eyes flick up to meet mine and find me watching him.

“You can’t think of any other use for it?” I ask, my voice a soft dare, honeyed with heat.

He freezes.

The question hangs between us, heavy and charged. “You can’t think of any other use for it?”

He freezes.

And then, something shifts. The air thickens with tension, the kind that makes my thighs clench and my breath stalls.

He looks up at me slowly, still crouched at my feet, his hands resting just beneath the hem of my gown.

His eyes burn with something darker now, need laced with reverence. Hunger laced with restraint.

His fingers trace the line of the holster strapped tight around my thigh, then slip under the leather, tugging the small silver pistol from its place.

For a moment, he just looks at it. Holds it in his palm like he’s weighing not the steel, but the moment.

And then his gaze lifts to mine.

“You trust me?” he asks, voice low. Controlled.

My pulse pounds in my ears. “Always.”

That one word unlocks him.

He stands, slow and deliberate, the pistol still resting in his hand. The weight of it looks obscene in his grip. Wrong and holy all at once.

Without a word, he backs me toward the bed, hand slipping around my waist. When the backs of my knees hit the mattress, I sink, heart racing, skin burning. He follows me down, pushing the skirts of my gown up until they pool around my waist, baring my thighs, my hips, my heat.

He kneels between my legs again, and the look on his face is almost reverent, like I’m something sacred. A battlefield and a church.

He sets the gun on the inside of my thigh.

Just the cold press of the barrel, resting against the soft skin there, makes me gasp. I shift, but he grabs my hips with firm hands, holding me still.

“Stay,” he murmurs. “Let me worship you with this.”

I nod, breathless.

His touch is slow, precise. He trails the gun up the inside of my thigh, the cool metal dragging against overheated skin, and my breath stutters. It’s not the danger of it, it’s the trust. The obscene intimacy of letting him this close with something that could ruin me.

He presses the barrel against the thin lace of my panties and watches me squirm.

“You’re soaking,” he murmurs. “From this.”

“Yes,” I breathe.

He moves the gun in slow, teasing strokes, dragging it up and down my slit through the lace, the metal slicking quickly with my arousal. The sensation is maddening, cold steel against swollen heat, the edge of the barrel pressing into the thin barrier of fabric like a promise.

I arch against it, needing more.

Needing him .

“Beg for it,” he growls, voice ragged.

“Please,” I whisper, legs falling wider. “Please, Echo...fuck me with it.”

His breath catches.

And then he tears the lace aside with one sharp tug.

The first press of the barrel inside me is slow, so slow I cry out from the stretch, the chill, the sheer filth of it. He watches every inch disappear, his thumb rubbing slow circles on my inner thigh as he thrusts the gun in and out, using it like he knows exactly how to unravel me.

Every glide is precise.

Every twist deliberate.

My hands claw at the sheets, my head falling back as my hips grind toward the rhythm he sets. The pressure builds fast, sharp and overwhelming, as my body pulses around cold steel and unbearable need.

“You feel that?” he whispers, leaning in close, lips brushing my ear. “That’s mine. All of it. Every part of you... mine. ”

I moan, loud, broken, completely undone.

He curls the gun just right and my world snaps. My body jerks, release crashing through me like fire. I cry out, trembling, thighs clenching around his shoulders as he fucks me through it, letting me ride the wave until I’m limp beneath him.

Only then does he pull it free, slow, wet, glistening.

He places the gun, slick and warm now, back into the holster at my thigh, his hands lingering.

“You’re armed,” he says, voice husky. “And thoroughly fucked.”

I blink up at him, dazed. “That’s one hell of a pre-op ritual.”

He smirks. Then kisses me, deep, slow, claiming.

“Next time,” he murmurs against my mouth, “you’ll beg me to use the silencer.”