"You mean he escaped" Marissa said confused

No one responded to Marissa because no one knew, and both men were waiting for the other to speak. Ryan and Sandy realized how shaken Marissa's world was everything she had trusted, her parents, her boyfriend were destroyed. The last thing either of them wanted to do was make her feel like her physical safety was vulnerable as well.

"No Marissa I'm sure that it was legal what ever is going on, He didn't escape. What I'm gonna do is call a friend of mine at the department of corrections and clear this all up! Why don't you two relax for a while."

Sandy walked out of the kitchen and headed to his office. Ryan didn't move, just stood there leaning slightly against the counter, and slightly against Marissa, trying to think about what was happening.

Marissa saw that Ryan was lost. She had never seen this look on his face. Desperate wide eyes a tight drawn jaw, thin lips; His face was a face of pain.

Marissa slid around Ryan, fully embracing him. She buried her face in between his shoulder blades and rubbed her hands up from his stomach to his chest.

Ryan's mind was numb; he didn't have a thought in his head. He couldn't have a thought in his head, not if he wanted to survive. If Chino and his abusive dysfunctional family had taught him anything it was how to be numb. He had learned how to drown out thought and function on a primal, instinctive level.

All the training in the world though couldn't push the feeling of Marisa wrapping herself around him off his radar. He felt her unlike he had ever felt any other girls he had ever been with. She wasn't innocent, really but she wasn't jaded and hard either. She was pure, she was honest and she had life experience without the coldness that had seemed to filter into all the girls in and around Chino. He definitely felt Marissa begin to nuzzle herself into his back, tickling his nerves and grazing his calves with her own.

"I want to help you." Marissa said, almost a whisper or a prayer into his back, not expecting anything from him. She squeezed him tight as she said this hoping her warmth and softness would pull him back from where ever he was.

Something inside Ryan snapped just then. Marissa's words fondled Ryan's trigger and there was no going back now. Ryan whirled around and in one clean movement dislodged himself from Marissa's grasp picked her up and set her down on the counter slightly rougher than she thought he was capable of at this point.

Ryan was flushed with passion and desperation. And Marissa, well Marissa was shocked and aroused, and despite her better judgement sort frightened.

Ryan had always been fairly hands off or unsure of himself when it came to physical contact. On their "date" he could not of been anymore tentative when he tried to push her in the pool, coming very slowly and not letting her get close enough to the edge that she would have to cling to him, and then he had apologized and backed off almost instantly when they had woken up spooning. She just hadn't expected this much aggression from him, and it frightened her for a second.

Ryan leaned in fast and captured her lips, kissing her gently but quickly. There was urgency and desperation both to his kisses and his hands that gripped, rubbed and scratched their way around her back and over her arms.

His tongue invaded her mouth, but didn't attempt to possess her like he had done so many of the girls he had tried to take comfort in back in Chino. He didn't want to possess her, he wanted to seduce her into possessing him. He needed her to over take him. He needed to lose himself in the warmth and compassion she had and finally find the comfort he knew she offered him. Even if he wasn't sure he deserved it.

All those other girls in Chino he had possessed. They had been his subordinates; he had made them lose themselves in pleasure. While his quest for physical pleasure had not been unfruitful those girls were never warm, never compassionate. No matter how many different girls he tried non of them were capable of giving him comfort.

It was something about Chino. Chino had the ability to suck the humanity right out of a person, isolating their soul behind a wall of scars that was impossible to break through. Or impossible at least while still in Chino, with Chino girls. How can a mute person help another learn to talk; how can one cold person warm another? They can't.

Marissa was warm, and pliable. Not a part he could find on her was hard, not an area of her was cold, and that's all he needed, to be warmed.

Marissa would always be above him. His salvation from a world of alcoholic mother's and water polo jerks trying desperately to keep him down. And it seems now, more then ever he needed her, need not just the pleasure that shoot through all his senses where their bodies and tongues touched, but the connection as well.

With all the pain, all the need, all the desperation that fueled him he challenged her to dominate him. His hands were demanding, but his lips were pleading. He was begging her to take him.

Ryan's tongue was tentative; stimulating hers then retreating trying to draw her in to his own mouth. He needed her to erase him with a sweep of her tongue. He needed her to bury him within herself.

Ryan broke the kiss. "Wrap your legs around me" he breathlessly said pleading with her.

To Marissa Ryan sounded so unsure of himself so young in his request. He had none of that cool jaded bitterness that she had first heard when they had meet at the bottom of the Cohen's driveway. She didn't think she just followed his lead.

He carried her over to the French doors in the kitchen leading to the patio and opened them. He brought her over to the chaise lounge up the stairs just off of the pool. Then what he did next surprised her. She expected him to lay her down to get on top of her, but he didn't. He sat them on the lounge with her in his lap and leaned back. His torso propped at a 45% angle making her a few feet from him lips now.

He needed her, needed her to cleanse him of his past, of his future, of everything. And he needed to know it was her that was doing it, not his own imagination imposing actions upon her.

Marissa leaned in compelled by Ryan's hands that were still insistently rubbing over her back. But before she captured his lips again his breath took on syllables and she could have sworn it said comfort.

In fact it had, Ryan had tried, unsuccessfully as always, to express his emotions to tell her what he wanted what he needed. His resolved had weakened the moment his lips opened, so what was meant to be a full statement asking her to comfort him just became a single barley audible word, breathed more then spoken.

"Comfort"

Marissa was driven by that plea and by the opened mouth panting sexy Ryan she was growing to love from all rational forms of thought. Instead she was pushed into thinking in song. She had never had this happen before, her own emotions her own feelings were being expressed inside herself not by her own voice but by an echoing vocalist that she hardly recognized.

Just you and me

On my island of hope

The breadth between us could miles

Let me surround you

My sea to your shore

Let me be the calm you seek

(Sarah McLachlan)

Marissa felt him surrender. Se locked her hands into his sandy blonde hair and began to ravish him. She knew he was letting her consume him, letting her swallow him up into herself and she was grateful. It had been years since she had felt useful, since she had felt she had any semblance of control she could act upon and help with.

Her body started to move of it's own volition. Her hips rocked and ground against his. Her chest rolled up and down against his stationary but trembling one. She felt powerful but she barely kept herself in check. She was going to lose it if this kept up the way it was going. She was in control and loosing it quickly.

She scratched her nails down Ryan's neck and over his chest. She wrapped her tongue around his own filling his mouth as best she could. Making sure to caress every depth every hidden recess of him mouth.

Ryan knew everything was getting out of control. He had felt himself push up her shirt, felt himself start to massage and tickle her stomach just below her breasts but he couldn't stop himself. He needed her. He needed her teeth nibbling on his lips, catching his lower lip for an extended second that felt like an eternity as she gently tugged it sucking it into her mouth and running her tongue along the inside of it.

"Ryan I . . .Oh my God!" Sandy shouted startled at the sight of the two disheveled and aroused teens so obviously in the middle of a passionate make out session in his back yard.

Ryan and Marissa had broken apart at the sound of Sandy's voice. Breaking the moment between the two of them. Neither really wanted to think about the mixed emotions on disappointment and relief that raced through them.

Marissa felt awkward and Ryan was back in reality alone and conflicted. Marissa saw the dullness seep back into Ryan's expression and felt her heart crack a little. Slowly she stood up, pulling Ryan with her, and embracing him before he could sink completely into his own little world.

He had clung to her, allowing her to pull him out of himself just moments ago, she only hoped she could do it again.

Just as quickly as he had appeared he disappeared slamming the door behind him with out intention, just due to his own momentum. As soon as Sandy stepped back into the kitchen he was startled again but this time by Kirsten standing, stewing in the kitchen by the counter.

"SO what exactly am I supposed to tell Dr. Kim when Ryan shows up late to the first day of school?"