Author's Note: So sorry for the delay in updating! This scene has been hard to write, and I've been busy with work and classes. My apologies!

A long night, a long night

The words reverberated inside Lisa's throbbing head as Jackson wrenched her back inside and slammed the door behind him. She looked up at him. His normally collected blue eyes were darting around the room, his complexion flushed. For the first time that night, Lisa had the sense that he had no idea what he was doing.

"Jackson," she whispered. "Jackson, I don't think we should be standing by the windows." She regretted her words instantly. Why the hell did she care what happened to him? She hoped a tree would come crashing through the bay window and flatten him.

"Yeah." Without saying anything else, he took her by the arm and guided her to the basement. Her stomach clenched as they descended the stairs, into an even blacker room with even fewer escape options.

She grabbed the railing and stood still. Jackson stumbled and glared at her. "What now, Lisa?"
"I don't know—I don't know if the basement is such a good idea. I meant we should just go somewhere else-"
"Like where?" Jackson sneered. "Your bedroom? Good idea. Maybe we can hide under the covers. Build a fort. Have a tickle fight. What a great time that'll be."

Lisa scowled. "I just meant, it's dark, and it might flood, okay?"

"If it starts to flood we'll go back up," Jackson reasoned, his voice inundated with impatience. "But right now, it's the only place without windows. Our greatest danger right now is falling trees. I swear to God, Lisa, I don't know why the fuck you'd pick a house that practically floats in good weather…"

"I don't think it's your name on the mortgage, asshole," Lisa muttered, following him downstairs. He made a beeline for the storage closet, rummaging through it. It made her stomach turn to think that he knew the layout of her house almost as well as she did. He knew that there were blankets and bottles of water in that closet.

He wasn't paying attention to her. She turned away from him and headed towards the workbench her father had given her. She'd never used the damned thing, so the tools were still sharp and at the ready.

Her intention had been to find a flashlight, but when she opened the top drawer she remembered the full extent of the gift. Her fingers closed around a hammer.

"What are we building tonight, Lisa?" Jackson's fingers closed around the hand that held her hammer. Lisa withdrew quickly and, in the darkness, stumbled into his chest. She cried out as he righted her and turned her around.

"I didn't-"

"You didn't think I was paying attention," he murmured, scanning her face. "We're awfully handy tonight, aren't we?"

Lisa wanted to respond but couldn't think of a retort. His closeness made her uncomfortable and cold. She retreated to the futon, wrapping herself in one of the blankets that he had draped over the cushions. Jackson approached her, hands stuffed in his pockets.

The wind was whistling outside, but its frequency was becoming lower pitched, like the deepening of a growl. She could hear the rain pelting the roof even from the lowest depths of her house. Jackson could kill her tonight and nobody would ever find her.

He sat next to her but a safe distance away. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between them. Neither of them were going anywhere. She should have felt relief at the fact that she couldn't make a phone call until the power was restored, but she realized that Keefe's flight was probably delayed, anyway. He would arrive in Miami. And she would have to either make that call or sacrifice her father. Or save herself somewhere in between.

"Why me?"

Jackson looked at her. "What do you mean, why you? It's a hurricane, Leese. The entire coast is being hammered. Don't think you're so special."

She shook her head. "You know what I mean. Why my hotel? Keefe's on a tour across the entire state. There would be more convenient times, more pliable managers who would willingly give him up for a few bucks. He's not the most popular guy, you know."

"But you like him."

"I didn't say that," Lisa responded slowly. "I just have a better sense of right and wrong than you do. I'm not going to sacrifice a man's life just because he annoys me."

"Wherever you get this idea that I have no sense of right and wrong, forget it," Jackson told her. He cleared his throat. "I know exactly what I'm doing that's wrong. If I didn't know that, I would have done what I wanted upstairs. You wouldn't have been happy, and it certainly would have been wrong, but it would have happened. So before you get all fucking pious with me, think about how lucky you are."

Lisa stood up, balling her hands into fists. Blood rushed to her face. She was pissed, undeniably pissed. She couldn't remember ever having been angrier. "I'm lucky? Why, because you didn't rape me? Of all the misogynistic things, Jackson. Jesus! I mean, what, because you're in control here, you get to take advantage of me?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh, what then, because you're attractive?" Lisa snarled. "You're a horrible person and a liar. You deserve nothing less than a slow death in this fucking storm, and I hope that's what you get." She turned away from him. The stairs were close. She bolted for them.

In a way, she'd known all along that Jackson would pursue her, that he would overcome her. And he did. She had craved the fight. She needed to fight him. Wherever this newfound aggressiveness was coming from, she didn't know, but she knew her fear in him was shrinking with every sentence that slipped from his mouth. He was unbearable, a sham. He wasn't half the man she'd thought he was in the beginning, and her disappointment was reflecting itself in her blossoming hatred of him.

In what seemed like the fifteenth time of the night, Jackson was on top of her, straddling her and forcing her to the floor.

"Aren't you getting sick of this, Lisa?" he sighed as she fought against him. She was growing desperate. Her teeth grazed his arm. His arm grazed her face.

"Get off me, Jackson," she hissed. "Of course I'm sick of this. But what do you expect me to do? Sit back and play Truth or Dare with you?"

He smiled at her. "Why aren't you afraid of me?"

"Because you probably weigh less than I do. Because you're a fake. Because I can see who you really are, and it's disgusting. You have nothing to hide, Jack."

"You're right. You're the one doing all the concealing, Leese," he remarked, raising a single eyebrow. "Tell me. Tell me about everything. I've just been dying to know. In all those weeks of watching you, I've just had this one burning question."

"Really? And what's that?" Lisa managed to push his arms away, but he restrained her in seconds. "Why I got raped? Because I'm weak, apparently. According to him, because I was a slut. Because I wanted it. Because I was a dirty whore. That's why. Okay? That's why."

She was crying despite her best efforts to hold it back. She suddenly realized that Jackson couldn't see this. The basement was too dark. She could only see his eyes when he turned and the meager light from the flashlight balanced on the workbench caught it.

"That wasn't my question," he told her. "I wanted to know why you refused to let anybody close."

"I think what I just said could probably answer that, don't you?"

"No," Jackson responded. "I don't think so, not at all."

Lisa didn't answer. She didn't like that he was chewing at her. She didn't like that this man, this person who was trying to take everything away from her, for the second time in her life, was getting to her.

She didn't realize she had closed her eyes but started when she felt his lips on her cheek. She made a noise but it didn't quite register in her brain. Her body locked up as his lips moved to her neck and followed the chain of her necklace to her cleavage.

He was kissing her, kissing her with a tenderness she didn't think he possessed. And she wasn't fighting him, but God knew she wanted to. She stirred as his fingers began to pull back the hem of her shirt.

"Lisa," he emitted her name in a rush of exhaled air. "I'm not going to tell you anything, except you're beautiful."

She stared at him. "What does that mean?"

"It means that what happened to you wasn't because you were weak. It was just life being a bitch. And you've gotta let go of that."

Again, she was left without a response. Jackson took her silence to be acceptance and pulled her shirt down to expose her to the chilled air of the basement. Her bra slipped off. She hadn't realized that someone, maybe Jackson, had unhooked it. He ran his fingers over her breasts, his eyes locked on hers during his caresses.

"What are you doing?" she whispered. Goosebumps had erupted all over her body. She was too cold to move, too cold to push Jackson away. And in a way, she didn't want to. She was tired. She wanted to fall asleep, possibly to the rhythm of the throbbing storm, or to the soft, slow heartbeat of a man lying next to her. It had been so long since she'd even been touched.

He didn't answer her. "Just say the word," he replied. She knew what he meant. She arranged her lips in the shape of the word 'stop,' but she couldn't form sound. She wasn't fighting him and it terrified her.

Her shirt had disappeared, and so had his. Everything was moving so quickly she barely had time to process it. She lifted her fingers, more out of curiosity than anything else, to his bare chest, running her nails over a small, round scar near his navel. She looked up at him.

"Bullet. Cured by good scotch and bed rest."

Jackson lowered his lips to the ridge on her chest. He ran his tongue along the crest, eliciting a moan from Lisa. She cut it off halfway through, and sounded strangled. He smiled at her and kissed her gently, just once.

She was still pinned to the floor. Without requiring her to move, he removed both her skirt and his pants. Her stockings were a shredded mess and slipped off easily. Lisa, her breath shaking and her hands trembling, lifted her index finger to Jackson's boxers, where a large protrusion evidenced his arousal. She ran the pad of her finger along the shaft and watched as his body tensed.

"Why did you do that?" he whispered.

"I don't know," she replied, equally hushed. "I guess just…curiosity."

"Curiosity killed the cat."

"You're going to kill me."

He smirked at her. "Then we'd better enjoy this."

Jackson slipped her panties from her flattened hips and Lisa avoided looking down. She kept her eyes on him as he removed his own underwear. She closed her eyes as he lowered himself. Her discomfort throughout the whole ordeal was now intensified and she suddenly felt out of control .This wasn't happening. Why was she allowing this to happen, and with him? A murderer. A man who had lied to her throughout their whole relationship, or façade, or whatever the hell it was.

Jackson's fingers touched her eyelids, and then moved to brush her hair from her face. She felt his fingertips on her breasts and then a wetness between her thighs.

She climaxed after a few minutes, surprised at herself because she'd never imagined it would be that way, not with a man she hated and who hated her. And then as she opened her eyes he was suddenly inside her, pushing, probing, pressing against her. She screamed and he wrapped his fingers around her arms, pushing her gently back to the floor.

"Lisa," he managed as he pushed slowly into and back out and into her again. "Please. Tell me something."

"What?"

"That you want this."

She looked up at him and drew her nails across his lower back. His blue eyes locked onto hers and she remembered him. He was the same person she'd known for a while.

"I want this."