Deep Kiss of Winter
“Untouchable”
(Immortals After Dark Book 8)
Kresley Cole

Part Valkyrie, part Icere (Ice Fey) who can’t be touches without pain and the vampire she bloods

This contains two novels. One by Kresley Cole called “Untouchable” and one by Gena Showalter called “Tempt Me Eternally”. This is only a review for “Untouchable”.

Blurb for “Untouchable”:

KRESLEY COLE delivers a breathtaking tale of a brutal vampire soldier about to know love for the first time…and a Valkyrie aching to be touched.

Murdoch Wroth will stop at nothing to claim Daniela the Ice Maiden — the delicate Valkyrie who makes his heart beat for the first time in three hundred years. Yet the exquisite Danii is part ice fey, and her freezing skin can’t be touched by anyone but her own kind without inflicting pain beyond measure. Soon desperate for closeness, in an agony of frustration, Murdoch and Danii will do anything to have each other. Together, can they find the key that will finally allow them to slake the overwhelming desire burning between them?

Murdoch Wroth was the manwhore among the Wroth brothers before they were turned into vampires.

Though he’d once been a rake, bedding a new woman each night, Murdoch hoped it never happened to him. To be mystically tied to a single woman sounded hellish, especially to a woman he didn’t choose, and one who could spurn him, as Myst had Nikolai.

“In my time, taking a virgin meant one risked a sword-point wedding.” Beget no bastards, deflower no maids. As long as he’d followed those two simple rules, he’d always gotten to do as he pleased.

In his mortal life, he’d been considerate in bed. He’d made sure he brought great pleasure to every woman he’d been with. This wasn’t out of selflessness. Quite the opposite. At an early age, he’d learned that the more word got around that he was a skilled lover, the more women dallied with him.

Daniella the Ice Maiden is part Valkyrie and part Icere (Ice Fey). Her body is naturally cold. She thrives in ice and snow, bare-skinned. Overheating is dangerous for her. She can’t touch or be touched by others without extreme pain. But somehow she bloods Murdoch Wroth.

“Vampire, I think you’re afraid to settle down—with anyone. You were single for years and celibate for three hundred more. And now you have bachelor’s panic.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“BP? It’s when a man irrationally fears a woman he especially likes. He gets ascared of said woman’s toothbrush breaching the perimeter of his man cave, et cetera.”

“Panic? I don’t panic,” he sneered the word. “Daniela, you can’t be touched.”

The frigid one. Enough of this. “No, you can’t! Your heart’s colder than mine. You are the untouchable one.”

There is a time lapse of many months, fall to winter to summer to winter again, with Murdoch and Danii living together but unable to have intercourse or touch.

We get bits of other stories from previous books in the series. This starts before Book 1 but ends after all Book 7. We get the endings too, so this should be read in order.

This is one of my favorite couples. Perhaps it’s because they have to wait for actual sex, and they choose to be together even when they can’t touch. I definitely don’t feel like it’s only the Bride connection between them. But I also love the Iceren – ice elves, how I’ve never seen them before, and the answer to how Danii and Murdoch can be together. Cole has an amazing imagination!

Contains graphic sex scenes. No triggers. No non-consent here.

Occasional foul language.

3rd person past tense from Danii and Murdoch.

I found 3 errors, mostly with formatting.

“Untouchable” is 256 pages. The entire book is 444 pages.

$5.99 at Amazon.

The second half is Gena Showalter’s “Tempt Me Eternally”, book 7 of the Alien Huntress Series. I didn’t read it, planning to read it 7th in that series later on. I have read some of Showalter’s Lords of the Underworld series. I don’t remember if I stopped or had read them all. I wasn’t as big a fan of them as I was of Kresley Cole, but I do remember enjoying them. Showalter is an extremely prolific writer, having written almost 100 books so far!

Blurb for “Tempt Me Eternally”:

GENA SHOWALTER puts a daring spin on a tale of huntress and hunted…and concocts a sensual chemistry that is positively explosive.

Aleaha Love can be anyone — literally. With only skin-to-skin contact, she can change her appearance, assume any identity. Her newest identity switch has made her an AIR (alien investigation and removal) agent and sends her on a mission to capture a group of otherworldly warriors. Only she becomes the captured. Breean, a golden-skinned commander known for his iron will who is at once dangerous and soul-shatteringly seductive, threatens her new life. Because for the first time, Aleaha only wants to be herself…. “