Review: Doms of Dark Haven

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.