Marcus Reed is the most invisible man in Manhattan. Thirty-four years old, a forgettable financial analyst in a Midtown glass tower, he can cross any room without a single head turning. Until the morning he's trapped in a broken elevator and discovers that his sweat has just done something impossible: it drives every woman around him wild with desire.

Three months earlier, for eight hundred dollars, he signed up for a clinical trial he never bothered to read. The result is a synthetic pheromone that turns the smallest bit of stress into an irresistible disaster — and in New York, in the middle of a heat wave, everything is stress. Packed subways, ten o'clock meetings, mandatory happy hours: everywhere he sweats, Marcus becomes the man no one can let go of.

His company wants to exploit him. A rival wants to steal his formula. A Swiss lab wants to bottle him. And a clock is ticking: without an antidote, the effect could become permanent. The only person who still looks at him like a human being is also the only one immune to his power — a razor-tongued toxicologist who finds him more exasperating than irresistible.