This is a gloriously haunting vampire novel set in the glittering world of elite New York. Jean-Luc "Jack" Courbet has the perfect life. His art critiques appear regularly in the "New York Times". His Greenwich Village apartment is filled with tasteful antiques. And his finely chiselled face and body make him an object of desire for the men he meets in clubs and bars - men who satisfy his dual need for pleasure and cruel pain. For Jack, though, the antiques aren't antique at all. And the need for pleasure and pain is an instinct rather than a predilection. Beneath the glittering whirl of his elite lifestyle lies a simple, deadly secret: he is a vampire, transformed a century ago in Paris by his powerful stepfather. Now, driven by an age-old thirst for vengeance and locked in a game of cat-and-mouse with the mother who wants to destroy him, Jack haunts the streets of New York City, hunting for sex and blood - until he falls for aspiring actor and model Claude Halloran. In Claude, Jack glimpses the innocence he has lost - an innocence that gives new meaning to his life lived in darkness. An erotic journey of the heart will take Jack beyond the threshold of desire into the pain of his own past - from France's closeted nobility to the hidden obsessions of Victorian London - and finally into a present-day world of flesh and fantasy where love and lust are more than appetites: they are the keys to survival.