Beauty

Hephaestus, smith of the gods, son of Zeus and Hera, watched the scene before him from his hiding place, his eyes glittering with outrage, and yes, lust, as he looked at the two of them on his own bed.

Ares, the perfect warrior. Hephaestus watched him as he mounted his Aphrodite, how the muscles in the god of war's perfectly formed legs flexed as he pumped into the delicious warm body of the goddess of love. Her head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth twisted in the passion of the moment, her legs wrapped around him. Ares cupped her perfect breast, kissed her roughly as she wrapped her fingers through his hair.

"Lying bitch," the smith muttered. His anger boiled up in him but he was fascinated, fixed to the spot. The beauty of them together, the magic aura of their mating, with their perfectly formed limbs, glistening with sweat, twisting around each other, almost stopped him. To disturb them felt like breaking a sacred mystery, too sacrilegious even for an outraged husband, ugly, and misshapen, to contemplate.

"Tell me you're mine," Ares demanded. His mouth worked his way to her neck, to her collar bone.

"Only yours," Aphrodite gasped, then arching back, yelled out her climax.

It was too much, and the spell was shattered. Hephaestus pulled the lever that released the net he had crafted just for this, pinning them both to the bed. The more they tried to free themselves, the more tightly they were bound.

"Ares might have the superior spear, my dear wife," he murmured, as he watched them struggle in the golden net, "but this old smith has a few superior tools of his own. Not the smith of the gods for nothing." And limping onward, he stepped out from behind the curtain to savor his vengeance.

A/N: In the Odyssey, a singer tells the following tale: Aphrodite, disliking the idea of being married to unsightly Hephaestus, began an affair with Ares, the god of war. Eventually, Hephaestus found out about Aphrodite's promiscuity from Helios, the all-seeing Sun, and planned a trap for them during one of their trysts. While Aphrodite and Ares lay together in bed, Hephaestus ensnared them in an unbreakable chain-link net so small as to be invisible and dragged them to Mount Olympus to shame them in front of the other gods for retribution. However, the gods laughed at the sight of these naked lovers and Poseidon persuaded Hephaestus to free them in return for a guarantee that Ares would pay the adulterer's fine.