Scott Beach manages to get into bed with his literary hero, and doesn't want to get out. Abruptly dismissed following their first heated encounter, the 28-year old San Francisco writer goes on to engineer a second round some days later, and it is there that Lucian Paul Sperring, 58-year-old famed man of letters, warns him away: ''Don't mistake this for intimacy, Scott. It's fucking and I mean to keep it that way.'' A relationship nevertheless ensues but entirely on Sperring's terms, which spring from his emotional distance, the result of unrelenting grief over the sudden death of his longtime partner.

Dale Chase's newest erotic novel promises listeners a torrid tale of obsession and a roller-coaster ride of emotions.