2. Tatiana
2
Tatiana
T he shot glass feels cool against my palm as I stare at the amber liquid inside. It’s my third? Fifth?
I’ve lost count, which should probably concern me more than it does. The cabana has become our impromptu party zone, with music washing over us in muted waves and the distinct scent of expensive cologne... specifically Dom’s... making my head swim in ways entirely unrelated to the alcohol.
Leo materializes at the center of our merged group, a mischievous grin playing across his face. He’s got that look people get when they’re about to suggest something wildly irresponsible.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announces with theatrical flair, fishing small vials from his pocket. “It’s time to elevate this party.”
Oh fantastic. Drugs. Because alcohol alone wasn’t enough to make this professional boundary violation complete.
“What is that?” Sabrina asks, leaning forward with immediate interest.
Leo winks. “Just a little party enhancer. Takes the edge off. Makes everything... more. ” He makes a gesture with his hands like he’s expanding the universe.
“That’s not... GHB, is it?” Jess whispers loudly to no one in particular.
“The gentleman’s version,” Leo confirms. “Pharmaceutical grade. No sketchy shit.”
Because that makes it so much better. Nothing says ‘responsible adult’ quite like taking random drugs from your boss’s friend’s friend in Vegas.
Thankfully Sabrina is on my wavelength.
“Uh huh.” She crosses her arms. “And GHB is never sketchy, right?”
“What’s GHB?” Amara asks.
“Bad news,” Sabrina replies. “Sorry, we’re not those kinds of girls.”
I open my mouth to agree when Dom’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
“I knew it,” he says, a slight challenge in his tone. His eyes are focused on mine across the cabana, dark and amused. “She’s too professional even for Vegas.”
Something hot and defiant flares in my chest. Along with anger. “What exactly are you saying?”
He shrugs, the movement rippling across those irritatingly perfect shoulders. “Just that some people come to Vegas but never really leave the office. Mental handcuffs.” His lips curve into a smile. “Nothing wrong with that. Christopher values your... restraint.”
“You don’t know the first thing about me!” I reply, aware that my voice has taken on a slightly dangerous edge.
“I know you alphabetize Christopher’s protein bars,” he counters.
Leo waves the vials between us like a hypnotist’s watch. “Children, children. Less arguing, more partying.”
I lock eyes with Dom. There’s a challenge there, a dare. He thinks I’m some buttoned-up office drone incapable of letting loose.
This is monumentally stupid. Career-ending stupid. ‘Remember that time I took drugs with Dominic Rossi and ruined my professional reputation’ stupid.
I grab a vial from Leo’s hand.
“Tatiana!” Amara gasps, but there’s excitement in her voice.
“When in Vegas,” I say, uncapping the tiny container. Before I can reconsider, I tip the clear liquid into my mouth. It tastes faintly like saltwater with an artificial cherry finish.
Dom’s eyebrows shoot up, genuine surprise crossing his features before a slow smile spreads across his face. “Well played, Tatiana Cole. I was actually teasing... normally I wouldn’t touch this stuff with a seven foot pole... but now...” He takes a vial for himself.
“That’s the spirit!” Leo says.
Sabrina shakes her head, then sighs before grabbing one, too. “Shit. Tatiana.”
Jess and Amara exchange glances before following suit. Leo looks delighted, like he’s just successfully corrupted a convent.
Oh great. Now I’ve peer-pressured my friends. Mother would be so proud.
“To temporary insanity,” Dom says, raising his vial in my direction before downing it.
“To professional suicide,” I mutter, but I’m smiling despite myself.
The effects hit faster than I expected. One minute I’m sitting on the cabana couch wondering if I’ve made a terrible mistake, and the next, the world has crystallized into something sharper, brighter, more immediate. The music feels like it’s flowing through my veins instead of just hitting my eardrums. Dom’s dark eyes seem to contain entire galaxies.
Oh wow. Oh. Wow. This is... different.
“You feeling it?” Dom asks, suddenly beside me on the couch. I don’t remember him moving there, but I’m intensely aware of his thigh pressed against mine.
“I feel amazing,” I admit, my honesty surprising me. “Everything’s just so... here.”
He laughs, and I can see clear crinkles forming beside his eyes. “That’s one way to put it.”
His hand brushes against mine, and the contact sends electricity shooting up my arm. I gasp involuntarily.
“Sensitive?” he asks, his voice dropping to a register that does dangerous things to my insides.
“No,” I lie, then immediately confess, “Yes. Everything feels amplified.”
He leans closer, and I can smell those sandalwood and citrus notes, and something else underneath, something uniquely him that makes my mouth water. “Truth serum too, apparently.”
I should move away. I should rejoin my friends, who seem to have melted into the background of my consciousness. I should remember that this man is essentially a work contact.
Instead, I find myself asking, “Do you find me attractive?”
Filter malfunction. Please stand by while professional Tatiana reboots.
But Dom doesn’t laugh or dodge the question. His eyes darken as they move over my face. “Intensely. Since the moment you fell into me at the pool.”
“Before that,” I admit, the words tumbling out. “I’ve noticed you. At Christopher’s office. You never really looked at me.”
His hand slides up my arm, leaving goosebumps in its wake. “I looked. I just didn’t let you catch me.”
“Why?”
“Professional boundaries. Christopher’s very protective of his staff.” His fingers trace patterns on my skin that feel like they’re burning straight through to my soul. “But we’re not in his office now, are we?”
I shake my head slowly, my entire body humming with anticipation. “No, we’re not.”
Time becomes fluid after that. His mouth finds mine, or maybe mine finds his, and the kiss is explosive. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I can taste the alcohol and something sweeter underneath, can feel every ridge of his lips against mine. When his tongue slides against mine, I make a sound I’ve never heard myself make before. Hungry, raw, passionate.
My hands are in his hair, which is somehow both silky and slightly rough against my fingers. His hands, meanwhile, are everywhere. At my waist, my back, sliding down to grip my ass through the borrowed bikini bottoms. I’m practically in his lap now, all sense of public decorum evaporated.
Dimly, I’m aware that we’re still in the cabana with others around. I break the kiss, breathless. “We can’t... not here.”
Dom’s eyes are nearly black with desire. He glances over at one of his security guys and makes a quick cutting motion across his throat.
“What are you telling him?” I ask, fascinated by the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.
“To make sure we have complete and utter fucking privacy,” he growls, the profanity sending an unexpected thrill through me.
He stands, pulling me with him. We’re moving through the cabana toward the back where I changed earlier. The bathroom. My drug-addled brain catches up just as he pulls me inside and locks the door behind us.
I barely have time to register where we are before Dom has me pressed against the wall, his mouth on my neck.
“Tell me to stop and I will,” he murmurs against my skin.
“Don’t you dare,” I gasp as his hands find the ties of my bikini top.
With a deft movement, he unties the knot Sabrina so carefully created earlier. The fabric falls away.
I should feel exposed, vulnerable. Instead, I feel powerful as his eyes drink me in.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he breathes, cupping my breasts in his large hands.
When his mouth closes around my nipple, my knees weaken and I collapse from the intensity of sensation. Everything is heightened. The wet heat of his tongue, the slight scrape of stubble against my sensitive skin, the pressure of his thumbs as they circle my other nipple.
Is this real? Has the drug just made mediocre foreplay seem earth-shattering? Or is he actually this good?
“Stop thinking,” Dom commands, somehow reading my mind. “Just feel.”
And then he’s kissing his way down my stomach, dropping to his knees in front of me. His hands hook into the waistband of the bikini bottoms, pulling them down with agonizing slowness. I step out of them when they pool at my feet, completely naked while he remains frustratingly clothed.
“Not fair,” I protest weakly.
He looks up at me from his position on the floor, and the sight of Dominic Rossi on his knees before me is almost enough to make me cum on the spot.
“Life rarely is,” he says with a wicked grin before pressing his face between my thighs.
The first swipe of his tongue has me clutching at his shoulders. The second has me biting my lip to keep from screaming. By the third, I’ve lost all capacity for coherent thought.
He devours me like a man starving, his tongue alternating between broad strokes and precise flicks against my clit. His hands grip my thighs, holding me steady as my legs threaten to give out. When he slides a finger inside me, curving it to hit exactly the right spot, I cum with a suddenness that startles us both.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” I chant, my hips bucking against his face as waves of pleasure crash through me.
Dom doesn’t stop, working me through the orgasm and straight into another one that hits even harder. My hands find his hair, gripping tightly as my body convulses.
Just when I think I can’t take anymore, he rises to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in a gesture so erotic I feel myself clench in response.
“Turn around,” he commands, his voice rough with desire.
I comply without thinking, facing the large mirror above the sinks. Behind me, I hear the rustle of his board shorts dropping to the floor, followed by the distinct sound of a condom wrapper tearing.
His reflection appears behind mine, his chiseled chest pressed to my back, his impressive cock sheathed and ready. Our eyes meet in the mirror, and the raw hunger I see there matches my own.
“Look at us,” he murmurs into my ear, one hand sliding around to stroke between my legs again. “Look how beautiful you are when you want something.”
I barely recognize myself... flushed, wild-haired, pupils dilated. I look wanton, desperate, nothing like the controlled professional who schedules Christopher Blackwell’s life to the minute.
I like this me better.
Dom positions himself at my entrance, teasing me with just the tip. “Tell me what you want, Tatiana.”
“You,” I breathe, pushing back against him. “I want you inside me. Now! ”
He enters me in one smooth thrust that has both of us groaning. He’s big, stretching me in ways that border between pleasure and pain, but the drug transforms even that slight discomfort into something transcendent.
“ Fuck ,” he hisses against my neck. “ You... feel... incredible. ”
He begins to move, each thrust deliberate and deep. One hand grips my hip while the other finds my breast, pinching my nipple in time with his movements. I brace myself against the counter, watching our reflection as he takes me.
There’s something unbearably erotic about seeing us together like this. His larger frame surrounding mine, his face twisted in pleasure, the muscles in his ripped arms flexing with each movement. I find myself pushing back to meet his thrusts, demanding more from him with my body.
“Harder! Faster!” I scream.
He obliges, his pace increasing until the sound of skin slapping against skin echoes in the marble bathroom. I’m building toward another orgasm, this one promising to be even more intense than the last.
“Touch yourself,” Dom commands, his voice strained with effort. “I want to feel you cum around my cock. Right now. ”
I slide my hand between my legs, finding my clit swollen and sensitive. It takes only a few circles of my fingers before I’m clenching around him, crying out his name as pleasure explodes through me.
“Dom!”
My orgasm triggers his, and Dom thrusts deep one final time, his body going rigid as he pulses inside me. He collapses against my back, both of us breathing hard, sweaty and sated.
For a long moment, we stay like that, connected and speechless. Then slowly, carefully, he withdraws, turning me gently to face him. There’s something tender in the way he grips my hips.
“That was...” he begins.
“Yeah,” I agree, words still beyond me.
The drug is still pumping through my system, but there’s a clarity breaking through, a realization of what we’ve just done. I wait for panic to set in, for my usual post-hookup regret to flood me.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, I feel light, giddy even. Dom disposes of the condom and pulls his shorts back on while I gather my bikini pieces. We clean up as best we can, but there’s no disguising what we’ve been doing. My carefully styled hair is a mess, my lips swollen, my skin flushed.
“You’re beautiful,” Dom says, catching me examining myself in the mirror.
I blush, finally feeling a hint of my usual self-consciousness returning. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
He grins, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “So... what now?”
“Now we go back out there and pretend we didn’t just have mind-blowing sex in a bathroom?” I suggest.
Dom laughs, the sound rich and genuine. “Is that what you want?”
What I want is to do it again. Preferably in a bed next time. Maybe after that on a table. Then against a wall. And in a hot tub. And—
The drug is definitely still working.
“I don’t know what I want,” I admit. “This wasn’t exactly in my Vegas itinerary.”
“Spontaneity looks good on you, Tatiana Cole.” He steps closer, tilting my chin up. “Almost as good as I did.”
I roll my eyes but can’t help smiling. “Your ego is showing.”
“Among other things,” he quips, and I laugh despite myself.
As we prepare to rejoin the others, Dom catches my hand. “For the record, this wasn’t just the drug.”
“No?” I ask, something warm unfurling in my chest.
“No. But it definitely helped bypass some... barriers.”
Before I can process that confession, Leo’s voice booms from outside the door. “You two done christening the facilities yet?”
Dom rolls his eyes but smiles. “Fuck off.”
“So that’s what you’re doing in there, huh??” Leo retorts with a laugh.
I look at Dom and we exchange a giggle.
I keep expecting my self-consciousness to kick back in. Normally I’d be super embarrassed about doing something like this in a bathroom next to my besties.
But I’m only smiling.