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Review: Doms of Dark Haven 2 – Western Night

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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!

Review: Doms of Dark Haven

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Since I love all things Cherise Sinclair i felt that i owed it to myself to read this supplement to the Mountain Masters series.  This one comes with the good and the less good (can’t quite make myself say bad at least).

so…The Doms of Dark Haven is a series of 3 short stories that surround a few of the doms of the illustrious Dark Haven BDSM club on Victorian Night.  Each of these 3 stories are written by another author yet, they all seem to be occurring at the same time.  (meaning that there are small references to the other stories in each of the subsequent ones

The first story is by Sierra Cartwright  called Met Her Match where we are introduced to Torin Carter – a special agent (i guess) who works for Hawkeye which is a private body guard type firm.  Since we’re meeting him as he’s storming into the club, NOT in Victorian attire, we can guess that something’s bothering him quite significantly and my guess would be a woman.  which….leads us to Mira who is strapped to a spanking bench being ‘played with’ by another dom.  i should note that she is his Partner – at Hawkeye, and is the same woman that crawled naked into his bed last night in the hopes of enticing some reaction that would lead to sex.  didn’t work…but that’s not where their story ends.

So Torin finds Mira, manages to ‘convince’ her admit to Xavier (the club owner) that she’s ‘with’ Torin, and the night’s entertainment ensues.  As we’ve come to expect in stories like this, especially with doms that we’ve been introduced to at Dark Haven is that they are very experienced and skilled and are quite able to get women to do what they want.  Torin though, as much as he wants to go down that path, he also doesn’t want it to compromise their working relationship. The night continues with Mira being ‘educated’ by Torin in all things BDSM, and as a result, they have to figure out the boundaries of what they are doing.  The story goes thorugh a few ups and downs, and then of course the last 1/3 of the books has the expected bit of anxiety and excitement which leads to some unexpected places.

The next story Educating Evangeline is by Belinda McBride takes us back to the club although it takes on a slightly different twist.  i feel like it’s a bit BDSM and a bit TWILIGHT, but that’s not me judging (since i actually like twilight).  we meet Eva as she’s trying to blend into the crowd and make her way into Dark Haven in the hopes of escaping a few guys that are following her.  This is where we meet Harte, who comes to her rescue in a sense.  he steadies her when she’s frightened in the club, and takes her away from some of the craziness to understand what’s going with her.  this is where she finds out that she’s got more in common with him than either expected – they are both of the super-natural.  Harte knows who is after Eva and he and his friends take it upon themselves to help protect her all the while, he gets to entertain himself with Eva – whom he finds incredibly attractive.  He’s so drawn to her that he’s pleased that he gets to introduce her to all things BDSM.  The path that this story takes is one that brings us further into the supernatural, which i’m not quite sure why it was needed, but it happens, and then there’s power struggles, and anxiety.  you really don’t know how things will end on this one…

The third and final story is Simon Say: Mine by Cherise Sinclair and was the story that i was waiting for since she really is one of my favorites.  Cherise reintroduces us to Simon who is a master that we’ve met before and whom exudes power and sensuality on a night where he’s giving a demonstration that Rona is able to catch a piece of.  She’s one of the more mature females that we’ve met and we get a deeper insight into her than we’ve seen from a lot of other subs.  Rona has her apprehensions about men and that’s because she was in an unfulfilling marriage.  So Simon comes in and he’s kind of had a taste of that in his life and knows what he wants – someone that’s more able to keep up with him.  In any event, What Simon offers, Rona’s heart wants to accept and her head DOES NOT, yet often her body wins…so that takes us on a bit of a roller coaster with these 2.

In this story, we are reintroduced to a few of the Mountain Masters folks, Logan, Rebecca and Jake which is really pleasing.  I missed those guys.  We also get to see Rona taken from the comforts of Dark Haven to a house party and even out and around a bit.  The relationship development here is a bit deeper than we’ve seen from a few other short stories, and i think that if you’re accustomed to all things Cherise Sinclair, you’re enjoy this as well.

all in all, i’d say this collection is a 3 out of 5 stars, or 3.5 out of 5 stars.