After being captured by people smugglers, on the perilous journey by boat along the African coast, the girl they call Chengi discovers from the sheik a taste for the whip and the perverse joys of discipline. As she sheds her rights, as well as her clothes, so she sheds her preconceptions. At the sheik's fort on the edge of the Sahara, she revels in being an object of desire and feels accepted in the harem when the women shave her body and tattoo her in the clan's blue spider.

As Chengi learns her craft as a concubine, she explores the deep mystery of her awakened sexuality, a fairy tale life that ends in betrayal when she is carried off by wild camel herders to the slave market in Timbuktu. She is sold to black magic pagans planning a human sacrifice. Will the sheik save her? Or was their erotic passion just a dream? Chengi must wait until All Soul's Night to learn her extraordinary fate.

Chloe Thurlow lives in a Chelsea attic and writes her stories from two to six in the dead hours of night. At 27, Chloe is the author of three erotic novels praised for their lyrical writing style and unblushing sensuality.