Late evening, New York City: young American adventuress Faith Ballard makes a reckless and illegal parachute jump off a tall building. Evading the police, she hides in the flat of a very sexy woman. Meanwhile in London, gay but reserved clerk Joyce Wilde awakens and pleasures herself in the afterwaves of a bizarre erotic dream.What links Faith and Joyce is a tontine: an agreement and legacy set up by the late Constance Wilde - Faith's lover, Joyce's mother - and one which takes both women, along with three others, to the savannahs and jungles of Africa. There, the bonds and obligations of the tontine are played out against a background of danger, intrigue and the raunchiest sex imaginable.