He didn't let so much as a flicker of emotion crack his facade, he couldn't allow it. Were he to, he would find himself begging and that he refused to do. He'd done it far too often for this witch as it were and that he was on the brink of it again had him slapping another brick onto his quickly rebuilding wall. He'd let her in so deep, had let her remove every last brick between them, and he chafed from the rawness of it all.

It was the spark in her eyes when she yanked her wrist from his grip that first nudged that newly laid brick. He didn't let it show, though.

The moment her back was to him, it was a very different story. The ice in his gaze melted, desire for her burning in them next as he watched the enticing way that the short hemline of her gown flirted with him, threatening to shift enough to give him a bit of a show, though never quite doing so.

It was pure torture.

He only caught himself in time when she spun to look at him, a sneer tugging at his lips as he folded his arms when he stood. It was the heartbreak of emotion that tumbled from her that had him next.

He slammed the brick harder into place.

And yet, even as he did, words from the letters she'd penned him, phrases, fell from his lips as he held her gaze.

"'I can taste you, your skin, and feel the way your hand presses me against the bed, holding me there'." He paused, took a step towards her. "'I can feel nothing else but how you touch me, so intimately that I can barely breathe at the memory. To feel you is to lose myself, and I do so with abandon every night..'" The words fell from him as a mantra as he took another step, his eyes locked on her own. "'Ask anything of me. Anything. Make me feel needed, Justin. I need to.'"

His last word was a breathed along the skin of her cheek, though he didn't dare to let himself touch her. And then, breathing into her ear, his breath hot, he spoke again.

"But you didn't respond to me. I needed you to. You didn't."

The words were hot and accusatory as he pulled back from her, his eyes daggers into her soul, his body so close to her own that they shared the heat of their skin.