Similar to the first short story compilation, this set brings us to Dark Haven on another themed night – this time it’s Western night. 3 authors bring us back into the BDSM world within the club where we are introduced to yet another group of Doms.
A Good Sub Would… By Sierra Cartwright is the first short story in the series. She introduces us to Masters David and Trevor while they are at Dark Haven for a charity poker game. The dynamic between these 2 is very tense- they have a short history of Master Trevor stealing David’s subs….although i’m not quite sure how one can ‘steal’ a sub. So this evening, Master David has Shelby with him, his ‘sometimes sub’ – as she is a long time friend and sometimes sub when she’s in town. Their relationship is a relatively casual one but it works for them. The challenge between these 2 is that Shelby sometimes tops from the bottom (a phrase that i’ve learned reading these types of stories) – she may be the sub, but she usually gives the direction to Master David in scenes. Master Trevor on the other side though is one of the most domineering Doms that Dark Haven has known. He’s got a reputation of expecting perfection from his subs, he dominates completely and punishes strongly when he’s not obeyed to the letter.
During the Poker game, some how Shelby is put up as a prize if the hand is lost by Master David, and some how that happens…..meaning that Shelby is in for the shock of her life. She’s going from the safety of a dom that she’s known and knows what to expect to that of Master Trevor – 100% the unexpected yet that’s highly arousing
I enjoyed this story by Sierra much more than i did her story from Doms of Dark Haven (1) – i feel like there was much better development of the relationship between Shelby and the doms. what i also REALLY ENJOYED was that Destiny was brought into this story as more than just a receptionist type character. We see that she’s strong, caring and clearly very aware of everything that goes on in the club and around her. i hope that one of the next stories that we read has her as a main character.
Hunting Holly by Belinda McBride is the 2nd story that we check into in the compilation and true to what we saw in Doms of Dark Haven 1, we’re revisiting the wolf pack. Instead of meeting up with Harte’s pack, we’re back with the wolves from Chase’s crew – as they are summoned to Dark Haven by Master Xavier. There seems to be something amiss that the Xavier seems to think that the wolves can help with and upon arrival, they find another young boy – similar to the one that we encountered in Doms of DH1 – and the wolves claim him since they know that he was ‘delivered’ by the Abraxas. backing up a bit – once the wolves get to the club and learn that they are there for ‘someone’ – 2 wonder if it’s one of their own – a female (holly) that had run away from the pack a year ago. Xavier confirms that it’s not a female and both Hunter and Tex seem a bit deflated since they were both hoping that they’d find her.
After claiming the boy, the wolves turn to leave when they get the sense that another one of their own species is in the club and while 2 leave with the boy, Hunter and Tex tune into the scent to figure out who it is. That’s when they discover that in fact it IS Holly and that she’s there – and they go on the hunt to find her, and then stake their claim.
What i found in this story though, is that even though they are in a BDSM club, there really isn’t much of that at the forefront of the story. Hunter is clueless in anything sexual since he’s quite the virigin, and although Tex has been at the club before and is comfortable with the environment (he has his own bag of toys) – he’s really not a commanding dom. at least not compared to all those other doms that we’ve met at Dark Haven. The little love triangle that kind of develops is really anti-climactic since it seems very PG to me.
what i did like though is that Destiny again takes a role in this story – she’s always watching out for what’s going on and Holly even gets a little sense from her that something’s up but she can’t put her finger on it and doesn’t give it another thought. I hope that sometime soon we get to see more of a story about her.
Welcome to the Darkside by Cherise Sinclair again reminds me of the reason to keep her as a fav and to read any collection that includes her since she truly is a good author. This story is written in the same tone as all others, and ocntinues along with characters that we’ve met and enjoyed in previous books. In this story, we re-meet Virgil who is Kallie’s cousin (from Master of the Abyss- Mountain Masters series). …and he’s not quite sure if BDSM is for him since he know how much he didn’t care for the lifestyle in the series. He never looked favorably upon the reputation that it had from Logan/Jake in the series. So here we are, finding Virgil at Dark Haven one night because he’s trying to determine if he’s a ‘pervert’ as he likes to call himself or if he’s just into a bit of kink and can put it on the back burner.
That same night we are re-introduced to Summer whom we met in Doms of Dark Haven 1 – when Rona was first involved with Simon and discovers Summer with a BAD DOM (Dirk) who isn’t respecting the use of a safe word. So, because of that, Summer’s a bit gun shy around doms, yet she knows that she’s a submissive through and through. Simon knows what Summer needs, and also knows a bit about Virgil, so it’s an easy pairing in his mind to put the two of them together.
So this story continues on that path, developing that relationship so much better than the other authors in the collection did with their pairings and that make the story so much richer and deeper. Cherise doesn’t shy away from kink or dirty/rough sex scenes which is also nice compared to some of the more vanilla tones that we saw in the previous stories.
the question just becomes – what will Virgil decide about the BDSM lifestyle and how it works or doens’t work with his life as a cop in a small town. Will Summer be ok in another relationship or has Dirk ruined her forever? I have to give this story a 4 out of 5 stars because it was great – just not long enough to get any of that anticipation and anxiety that i do so love.
Again, these collections have something for everyone who’s into BDSM, Erotica, paranormal, and fantasy. check it out!