Once Charlotte Tobias was a prim and severe schoolteacher, wielding her red pencil, writing to imaginary lovers and hiding the letters in a closet. Then, on the night of her fortieth birthday, Charlotte dreamed of love, and her life would never be the same again.

He came to her, her own creation, bold and dark, naked and rippling with muscles. She named him Phanes. She gave him poetry and curiosity, and let him make love to her in ways and places she could never have imagined. She let him awaken her and change her and take her to the edge of her fantasies....

But now Charlotte is losing control of her perfect lover. Her creation is leading her on a voyage through madness and anger and loss, revealing to Charlotte what truths lie just beyond her consciousness, what horrors can grow in the absence of a soul....