As impossibly good as it felt, she didn’t want that. She hated that he thought he had to reciprocate every single time she took him in her mouth. She did it because she loved doing it, because tasting him and feeling him against her tongue, swallowing him gave her more pleasure than she would ever have imagined, or had ever experienced before with another man.
Dylan pulled him up to her and with her free hand, tugged her underwear down. Mark, impatient, ripped it off and in a shuddering motion, surged forward and buried himself deep in her. As he entered her, he sighed as though he had taken his first breath and lay still for a moment while they felt each other. Dylan felt herself fuse to him, holding him in, pulling him deeper, even though they were both motionless. That was when Mark kissed her for the first time, his tongue moving restlessly, frenziedly about hers, his hands going up to her chest, pushing her bra up so he could cup and hold her breasts.
“Dylan . . .” he breathed. “You feel . . . you feel . . .”
He couldn’t seem to complete his sentence, because he didn’t take his mouth from hers long enough. She reached down between them, her hand slick as she held him, urging him to move, shoving her hips up to meet his. Mark pulled her hand away and finally reared back, pounding into her energetically, their contact with each other and the kitchen floor making moist, slapping noises that only heightened Dylan’s excitement. Then he was sitting up, pulling her with him.
Dylan shrugged her dress over her head so she was naked, except for her bra, shoved above her breasts. She sat astride her husband, hands on his shoulders, rolling into him, looking down at his face, loving the look of dazed pleasure softening his features. But in this position, she felt almost dominant, and that was not what she wanted. She had fallen to her knees before him not only to give him pleasure, but to let him know that she submitted to him; that despite her defiance of his wishes about her staying in Palm Springs, she accepted his authority as her husband.
So she lifted off him now, and turned, positioning herself on her hands and knees. Mark wasted no time kneeling behind her and entering her again from the rear. Dylan let her head hang low, finding it incredibly erotic to open her eyes, watching between her arms and legs as he sunk into her and pulled back, a part of him disappearing into her.
Soon, the sounds of their moans filled the room and Mark wrapped one arm at her waist his fingers between her legs. Dylan screamed as she climaxed, her head raised like a wolf baying at the moon, and feeling equally as wild. Concentrating all motion in his hips, Mark pushed into her harder and faster, finally grabbing her into a bear hug, and pulling her back against him as he groaned out his own climax, jerking and twitching, Dylan’s muscles clenching and unclenching about him.
She could feel his heart skipping an irregular beat against her back, his chest rising and falling. Dylan reached behind her awkwardly trying to hold him, and Mark moved her hair aside, kissing the back of her perspiration-dampened neck.
“Baby,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”
She craned her neck to try to look at him and Mark leaned in to kiss her, his lips soft against hers. Then he was pulling out of her and standing, pulling his sweats back up. Dylan, though, was naked, her bra still askew. Mark held a hand out and pulled her up, his face marginally more relaxed. But only marginally. He was still angry with her.
Dylan removed her bra, now completely nude. When Mark tried to release her hand, she wouldn’t let him.
“Let’s go take a bath,” she said.
After a moment Mark nodded and followed her upstairs.
If she thought the bath would complete the distraction, she was mistaken. Sitting opposite each other in the large tub Dylan was reminded that the last time they’d taken a bath together, when he’d confronted her about not following through on her law school application. Bathing together was quickly becoming associated with her deceptions and misdeeds.
“Palm Springs was boring and awful and I should have listened to you,” she said, thinking it best to strike preemptively.
Mark raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“Please,” Dylan said after a moment. “Mark, stop this . . .”
“Stop what?” he asked, his voice cool.
“The silent treatment. I said I was sorry.”
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately.”
There was no response to that, because it was true. Dylan slid closer to him, kneeling between his legs and pressing her face into his neck, pursing her lips to avoid apologizing yet again. It took a moment, but Mark’s arms came up and he held her against him.
When she was with him, alone, just the two of them, everything seemed so much clearer. The things she bought, the parties she went to were so obviously trivial when Mark was nearby, but when he was gone, everything became clouded and confusing again. But that was okay, she told herself. Because after the Phillies series, he would be home for a good long while, and then everything would be different.
15
“You need to stop whatever you’re doing and get to a computer right now.”
Dylan strained to hear Ava’s voice over the din of the game, pressing a finger into her ear. She was sitting in the section reserved for players’ families, surrounded by wives gossiping and the squalling of babies and toddlers.
“I’m at the game,” she said loudly.
“Dylan, believe me. You need to go check this out now.”
“Wait a minute. I’m going someplace quieter.”
Dylan stood and apologizing as she went, tripped over Stephanie and her kids, heading inside. In
the VIP suite, it was only slightly less noisy, so she instead made her way to the ladies room. “Ava? Are you there? What’s going on?”
“What took you so long?” Ava demanded.
“I was trying to find . . . never mind. Tell me what’s going on. Is it something with Max?” “Max?” Ava sounded confused for a moment, as though she didn’t even recognize her own
boyfriend’s name. “No, this is about you.”
“Me? What do you mean?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“Ava, just tell me.”
“I wish you were at a computer, Dylan. It’s going to sound a lot worse than it . . .” “Ava!”
“There’s a picture in the Daily News of you making out with Ray Hernandez.”
It took Dylan a moment to even comprehend what was being said.
“Dylan?”
“That’s impossible.”
“It’s from Palm Springs,” Ava began.
“I don’t care where it’s from. I’ve never made out with Ray Hernandez so it’s impossible.” There was a pause and Dylan realized Ava was considering whether to believe her. “Ava! Listen to me very carefully. I never made out with Ray Hernandez.”
“Well, you two were a little chummy and the way he looked at you on the plane . . .” “Tell me exactly what you see in that picture,” Dylan said, her voice trembling. “Okay. You’re standing in front of a fountain. There’s a gate, and . . .”
Dylan closed her eyes. Oh god. That first night in Palm Springs, when Ray found her at the park
across from the nightclub. She tried to remember. For sure he hadn’t kissed her, but the photo . . . “So I’m looking at it, and it’s kind of ambiguous,” Ava said. “The shot is from an angle where it
looks like he’s kissing your neck or something.”
“He was speaking into my ear,” Dylan said, her voice dull. “He wasn’t kissing my neck.” “Well . . .” Ava let the word drag out. “It’s hard to tell that from this shot. And it doesn’t help that
there’s a couple others . . .”
“Don’t tell me,” Dylan said, putting a hand over her face.
It all came back to her in flashes now. Ray holding onto her arm, holding her hand as they crossed
the street.
“Honestly?” Ava said. “It looks pretty intimate. Almost like a lovers’ quarrel or something. He’s
grabbing your arm
.”
“Ava, you know better than that.”
“Yes, I do. But . . .”
Yes, but. Mark.
“And what was going on there, Dylan? I mean, it looks pretty . . . damning if you want to know
the truth.”
Mark’s parents. Miri. The other Mets player. What would everyone think?
“Well, the good news is that they don’t seem to know who you are,” Ava said. “They’re calling
you a ‘mystery woman’. Ray Hernandez is known to be a big cheat, so . . .”
“Everyone who knows me will know who I am,” Dylan said, her voice lifeless. “That’s the
important thing. Cindy. Everyone.”
“If you’re at the ballpark, Dylan, my advice would be for you to go back to the hotel. Now. Call
Corey.”
Corey. Mark’s agent. He was also Mark’s de facto PR guy because Mark didn’t believe in
manufacturing a public relations image. And up till now, he hadn’t needed to—he was fast
approaching Ray’s status as the most popular player on the team and the press loved him as well.
Now that ‘love’ was certainly going to be put to the test.
“Okay,” Dylan opened the door to the ladies room, looking about her guiltily, as though everyone
knew what she had just learned. But everyone in the suite was still occupied by the game, or drinking
and socializing.
Feeling like a fugitive, she headed for the exits, finding one of the security guards to get her a car
back to the hotel. Once there, she washed her face clean of all her makeup and changed out of her
expensive outfit and into sweats and a t-shirt. Her heart could not seem to stop racing. After about an
hour of pacing the room, she plucked up enough courage to call Corey.
At first, she got only his voicemail, but after trying twice more, he finally answered. “Pardon me, Dylan,” he said, “but what the fuck is going on?”
“Corey . . .”
“Are you sleeping with Ray Hernandez?”
“Corey, not that it’s any of your business, but no! Of course I’m not . . .”
“It sure looks like you’re pretty chummy with him. These pictures, Dylan . . .” Corey groaned. “It
almost doesn’t matter what you say to try to explain them.”
“I will explain them. But only to my husband, and . . .”
“Here’s what I’m going to do,” Corey cut her off. “As soon as the game is over tonight, I’m going
to grab him and bring him back to the hotel. I’ll do my best to make sure he doesn’t talk to anyone,
anyone at all, and then you’re going to tell him. And I mean everything.”
“Okay,” Dylan said, feeling her heart drop to her stomach.
“I don’t want Mark being waylaid by some smart-ass reporter who breaks the news that his wife
was canoodling with the supposedly injured Ray Hernandez while he was out winning games for the
glory of the Mets.”
“Jesus, Corey . . .”
“Well that’s the story they’re going to write, Dylan. Like it or not.”
She kept her mouth shut after that, listening as Corey instructed her on how she should broach the
subject. After all, she thought, Corey had known Mark a lot longer than she had.
Dylan spent the next several hours on the phone with Ava, purposely avoiding getting online to
look at the pictures herself. She could only hope they were fuzzy and indistinct, and that she wasn’t
smiling in any of them. She remembered being tense at Ray’s closeness and that once she recalled that
Mark would hate her being alone in his company, even in a public place, she’d grown even more
uncomfortable. Dylan prayed that discomfort would come across in the photographs.
Somehow she’d managed to fall asleep. And when she opened her eyes again, the suite was dark, the only illumination coming from the skyline, outside, Philadelphia lit up at night. Dylan’s eyes adjusted to the inky blackness in the room and realized that she was still alone. It was late, just after eleven p.m. according to the clock on the desk across the room, and Mark still had not come.
Dylan turned on the television, checking local stations to see whether the game was over. She sat through the entire news broadcast until they got to sports and learned that way that the Mets had lost to the Phillies. Just as she was about to turn off the set, the sportscaster added an afterthought.
“But perhaps their luck will change,” he said, “when Ray Hernandez rejoins the team for the next game of the three-game series.”
Sitting up, Dylan reached for her cell phone and dialed Mark’s number. There was no answer, and her call was forwarded almost immediately to voicemail. Feeling her heart pounding in her chest, she instead called Corey. After two rings he answered, sounding exhausted and irritable.
“Yes, Dylan?”
“I thought you said you were going to bring him straight here,” she said. But before Corey responded, she already knew what he was going to say.
“I was. Someone got to him before I did,” Corey said. “I’m sorry, Dylan but he didn’t want to . . .”
“Okay,” she cut him off, not wanting to hear the rest of the sentence. “I understand. Can you tell him for me that . . .”
“He just wants to get through the series, Dylan.”
“Of course,” she said, feeling the tears beginning to surface.
He just wants to get through the series. That was Mark. Disciplined. Focused.
All she was right now was a threat to all of that. So it made sense that he would want to stay away from her. She’d never been good for him, and now, because of those pictures, he would begin to realize it. She crawled back into bed and pulled a pillow against her chest, wanting to cry but not being able to produce a single tear. To cry, she would first have to get past the fear.
Now that Mark didn’t want to see her, there was no reason to stay in Philadelphia. She could go back home. And it was that word—home—that finally caused the tears to break free.
“I don’t want to look at them,” Dylan said turning over in bed and showing Ava her back.
“Well, it’s not that there’s anything to see,” Ava said. “It’s what they’re saying. Someone is talking to them, telling them things.”
Dylan glanced over her shoulder, afraid to know, but afraid not to. The pictures with Ray had gone on to become a full-blown scandal overnight. Now the entire tri-state area knew that the woman in the pictures was Mark Acosta’s wife of less than six months, and that they were taken in the resort town of Palm Springs while Ray was on the Mets injury list. Much was being made of the fact that Ray’s reported injury was to his groin. It had been grist for the late night talk show comedy routine mill, that was for sure.
Tonight, all eyes would be on the second game of the three-game series with the Phillies because Ray was returning to the dug-out. Just the thought of it gave Dylan a stomachache. Mark still hadn’t returned any of her calls and his voice mailbox was full. Over the last few hours, it didn’t ring at all. Even Corey wasn’t returning her calls, and all the while, the Acostas had been calling the house almost non-stop. Dylan had no idea how they were taking the news because she had been too scared to pick up.
“So, this has to be asked,” Ava said, sitting on the bed next to her. “So I’m just going to come out and ask it.”
“Go ahead,” Dylan said, her voice muffled as her face pressed into the pillow.
“Were you interested in Ray Hernandez? Are you?”
“No, Ava. I’m not interested in Ray Hernandez.”
“Dylan, I swear I’m not saying this just to torture you, but maybe you need to see these pictures. At least to see what Mark will or has seen. I mean, it’s not . . .”
“Fine,” Dylan sat up, crossing her legs and heaving a deep sigh. “Show them to me.”
> Ava moved closer and turned the tablet so that Dylan could get a good look at it.
The pictures were surprisingly sharp and didn’t look like they’d been taken with a cell phone camera by a casual passerby. Rather, they were the work of a professional, using state-of-the-art equipment and captured every tiny detail, down to the small dimple in Ray Hernandez’ chin.
As soon as she saw the first photo, Dylan knew that things were going to be far worse than she had imagined. In the shot onscreen, it looked like Ray was nuzzling her neck, his hand gripping her arm. And the expression on her face did not to disavow that interpretation; she looked slightly surprised, but not at all uncomfortable, almost like a woman receiving a surprise kiss from a lover.
Feeling her heart drop to her stomach, Dylan scrolled to the next shot, of her looking directly up and into Ray’s eyes, her own eyes soft and attentive. She could only guess that the photographer had captured the moment when Ray had told her he liked her company because she was “real”, when she had felt a moment of deep compassion for him and his isolation.
Another photo showed her with her mouth open, looking as though she was arguing with him, his mouth set in a hard line as he listened to what she was saying. And the final shot, the one that was least intimate but perhaps most damning, was the one of her crossing against the traffic with Ray, him holding her hand and both of them laughing.
Dylan slid the tablet off her lap and buried her face in her hands.
“Oh my god,” she said. “If this is what Mark saw. I can only imagine what he must . . . And after the way I insisted that I stay in Palm Springs.”
“Wait. What?”
Dylan hesitated. She had never told Ava about that conversation, where Mark had basically ordered her home; she’d been too embarrassed about it at the time, being treated like a child. But she told her now and watched as her friends face changed.
The Seduction of Dylan Acosta Page 24
