Samantha Sinclair will never trust another man, but her friends decide to lure her out of her celibacy with a special Christmas gift-a night with a sensualator. John-Kuno is no ordinary man. He takes Sam away from her fears, her homogenized, synthesized existence and introduces her to the enigmatic, sensual world of the shifters. With their starlight passion burning brighter than a supernova, John and Sam do not know that in the cold reaches of space a monster is biding his time. He demands nothing less than the universe as his due, starting with Sam, but first he must destroy John and the whole race of humans and their shifter allies.