When it became too difficult to keep a friendly distance between himself and Micah, he knew it was time to escort Micah back to his room. And when he tried to scrawl a word across the page, only to see the fine ink make an erratic pattern instead of the shape he envisioned, he understood he wouldn’t be able to complete even a single line of verse. His mouth was dry, but no amount of water, or tea, or even brandy, could help. His face and the back of his hands itched, as though something was stretching his skin tighter and tighter.
The last time he felt this way, he had been young enough, and foolish enough, to act on the raging emotions. He remembered hoping, believing, that if he just indulged his cravings once, his system would be purged of them. That belief had been wrong-headed, to sa
