Aura Montgarten needs to find her sister, Natalie, in Danica Winters’ paranormal romance, Montana Mustangs.
At first, Aura hopes that Natalie just went off with friends and didn’t bother to call. But the silence continues for more than a week. Aura jumps in her truck to search the last place Natalie’s cell phone had been used, a mountain near Somers, Montana, behind a place called the Diamond Ranch. Before she can get onto the mountain to search, Aura becomes embroiled in a darker mystery when she finds a mutilated hand near where Natalie had been staying. With the gruesome discovery, she fears that Natalie ran into more serious trouble than she had first suspected.
When a handsome sheriff’s deputy questions her, Aura feels a stirring she hasn’t ever experienced.
Dane Burke, a no-nonsense lawman, has a case to solve. He shouldn’t be thinking about the mysterious, beautiful drifter in any way except as a possible suspect. With one failed marriage and a non-existent relationship with his estranged brother, he can’t allow himself to feel anything, not even lust. Little does he know, Aura feels much the same, but for very different reasons. Aura keeps her true identity hidden: a shape-shifting nymph. As part of her supernatural nature, any man who loves her or that she loves will die. The two delve deeper into the mystery and the search for Natalie, and their feelings become impossible to deny.
Dane and Aura have juxtaposing relationships with their respective siblings.
Aura and Natalie couldn’t be closer. As demigods, the two nymphs have lived for over five hundred years. They share the same curse, connecting them by something else–the need, but inability, to love. Because they cannot allow themselves to find love in a mate, they only have each other. Though Natalie has often “gone wild” and let her Mustang side free for days or weeks at a time, she always returns to her sister who hasn’t shifted in many years. In fact, the two have never gone seven days without speaking before. Aura will do anything to find her sister, even if it means using her nymph powers of seduction to force Dane to help her.
Dane and his brother, Zeb, couldn’t be further apart. For over twenty years, Dane has stayed away from the Diamond Ranch, once his childhood home and owned now by Zeb. Dane vowed to never return to the ranch when he caught his wife in the arms of his brother. Absence has not made their hearts grow fonder. When Dane shows up at the ranch to question his brother, Zeb meets him with a shotgun, and when Dane releases Zeb from custody, the two brawl in a parking lot. Aura can’t understand their interactions because of her closeness with Natalie.
Aura and Dane must both face their fear of love.
Dane was hurt before, however Aura knows that for her, life and death hang in the balance of her love. She wants to protect Dane from her curse. This presents an ironic twist considering Dane, the consummate protector, has sworn to save lives even at the cost of his own. Aura seems fearless, but in truth her fear of love controls her to the point she has never shared her secrets with any man. She uses her hundreds of years of watching humans cruelly hurt animals as part of her excuse—how could she possibly love them?
Despite her fear, Aura can’t deny she actually enjoys Dane’s controlling nature, the predator and prey feelings that excite her nymph nature. Her feelings go beyond lust, though, coming from “somewhere hidden,” a place no man has ever touched. These new feelings make her consider allowing herself to love and be loved. Though she has always prided herself on being free, she knows she has never truly been so because of her fear of love. Dane’s love becomes the very thing to break her from the bonds of that fear.
