Allegra always knew that nothing good could come of waking up in police custody. The corporations that run Arcadia have just banned Bliss, the only known treatment for Acute Empatheia Nervosa, and Allegra Avenson's last hope for a normal life. Allegra's ability to function without the drug is shaky at best, but when Arcadia's finest pick her up for possession, it's like she tumbled down the rabbit hole. Now police are telling her she can serve a prison sentence or help to end a string of murders intimately linked to the illegal trafficking of Bliss. Only her would-be partner Detective Leo Darius seems suspicious of the arrangement. The frosty investigator has been working the streets long enough to know what most of his colleagues refuse to acknowledge. Empaths can do a lot more than read emotions-they can create them. As the pair join forces to stop a murderer, their own feelings get the better of them.

A junkie and a hustler, Allegra can't help but desire a man who seems determined to shoulder the weight of the world all by his lonesome. Seducing this modern-day Atlas is supposed to be a means to an end, but just because she can read truth into the faintest flicker of human emotion doesn't mean that Allegra is impervious to the caprices of her own heart.