Nan Arbuthnot has become all too good at closing her senses to the world, obsessing over details, and controlling time down to the second. Brilliant, bipolar, and driven, Nan longs to free herself from the lockstep of her own self-imposed pursuit of excellence. When she and her friend Margot decide to crash the bar of Thomas Gellert, Nan's cycling partner, Nan discovers that she and Thomas have a sparkling dynamic that leads them to commit to what Thomas calls "the art of the long seduction". The long seduction involves flirtatious banter and teasing lovemaking that enable Nan and Thomas to challenge one another in their restraint.

Yet while deferral and discord feed desire, they also feed doubt, and Nan and Thomas come to doubt themselves as they fall more deeply in love. As Nan throws herself into composing music, and Thomas expands his bar into a restaurant, the two of them find that love has the power to transform them in surprising ways. Nan learns to cede control and compromise even as Thomas discovers that love can be selfless and that it involves not just asserting one's will but submitting.

This contemporary romance mines the topics of mental health and sexual desire to unearth what two people can learn about the power of love as they repeatedly test one another.