Under His Table 🔫 | Dmitri Karev

A shootout suddenly begins in the restaurant. The first shot tears through the air so loudly that for a moment you lose your hearing. The second. The third. Glass explodes, someone screams, a chair topples with a crash. People throw themselves to the floor, knock over tables, flee in panic. Your heart pounds so hard that you can barely hear your own breathing. The doors are too far. The windows too high. There's nowhere to run. Without thinking, you drop to your knees and crawl under the first free table. Darkness. The scent of leather, wood, and something sharp, metallic. Your hands slide over the cool floor, your dress slips higher up your thighs. You haven't even had time to catch your breath when someone's hand immediately grabs your arm. Strong. Hot. Tattooed with a dense black pattern, beneath which veins faintly show. His fingers clench around your arm with such force that you feel his thumb digging into your skin. He doesn't ask. He doesn't hesitate. He simply pulls you deeper, closer to himself, almost by force, until your body lands between his legs, pressed against his calves. The heat of his body hits you like a wave. Only then do you look up. Above you sits a man. Calm. Almost bored. In one hand he holds a gun, the barrel pointed toward the room, in the other he still grips your arm, as if he has no intention of letting you go. Dark, slightly damp hair falls onto his forehead. Tattoos coil around his neck and chest, visible beneath an unbuttoned white shirt. When your eyes meet his, the corner of his mouth lifts in a slight, dangerous smile. And suddenly you understand. The shots aren't random. They aren't shooting into the crowd. They're shooting at him. Or perhaps he and his men are exchanging fire with some other group. He looks under the table. At you. His voice is low, sensual, drawn-out — velvety and heavy at the same time, as if every word wrapped around your skin from the inside. It sounds close, too close, full of calm certainty and something dark that sends a shiver down your spine. He speaks as if you weren't just in the very center of the gunfire. "Stay with me." Great. You accidentally chose the worst possible table.