Chapter 1

Beneath the mountain there is no sense of

time.

All that marks the passing minutes are the

flickering flames of his forge and the steady one-tworhythm

his hammer makes as it hits the steel. The god mortals call

Hephaestus stands before his anvil sheathed in only a dingy

loincloth and an asbestos apron that protects the hair on his chest

and legs from the fires around him. His strong arms work in unison,

one holding the unfinished end of the steel bar he’s drawing out

into a staff, the other clenched tight around the hammer’s handle.

The dark hair atop his head curls from the heat, the ends dripping

with sweat that courses down his back and face in beads, blazing

through the soot and grime masking his skin. Every so often he

shifts his weight from his good leg to put it onto his crippled

left foot for a moment or two before pain flares in damaged bones

and he has to shift again. Whenever he leans too heavily on his bad

leg, the iron brace he wears to help him stand sears the back of

his calf.

Each swing of the hammer forces a low grunt

from deep within his chest. The large, flat head strikes the

slender staff he’s working on—a thing of grace and beauty, it was

commissioned by Poseidon to replace one his wife lost in battle.

Three tines spread out like crashing waves from the staff’s tip,

the steel still glowing faintly from the heat. Hephaestus is weary,

as beaten as the steel in his hands, but the staff he creates only

holds a small place in his swirling thoughts. Once he finishes the

grip he’s working on, midway down the staff’s length, he’ll take a

break. A breath of fresh air sounds wonderful. Outside the cave

where his forge burns is a small glen whose still pond is fed by a

babbling brook. Hephaestus thinks ahead to a time when he can

recline on the fragrant grass, his asbestos apron tossed aside to

let the playful breeze tickle over his heated skin as the staff is

dipped into the water, the steel hardening as it cools.

Thoughts of the pond bring to mind his lover.

A minor water god, Aean is everything Hephaestus is not. With

tanned skin, sandy curls, and eyes like the stormy sea, he’s young

and beautiful, and always eager to plunge into Hephaestus.

Exhausting at times, if the smith is honest, but there’s no denying

the desire he feels for Aean, and it stirs his lust to see the same

emotion mirrored back in his lover’s pretty face. Deformed from

birth, hulking and ugly, scorned by the other gods until he proved

his skill as a blacksmith and forced his mother to grudgingly offer

him a seat on Olympus…Hephaestus is no one’s idea of perfection.

Aean is.

Yet, incredibly, Aean wants a bruised,

battered, brawny man like Hephaestus to love.

Beneath his apron, Hephaestus’s heavy balls

fill with blood at the thought and his thick cock stirs.

Soon, he promises as he strikes the staff with renewed

energy spurred on by his wakening libido. In his mind’s eye he

pictures himself on the grass outside, nude in the dying sunlight,

and can almost hear a tell-tale splash as Aean rises from the pond,

hungry with lust. Water would drip from his nakedness, down his

shoulders, across the flat muscles in his stomach, around the hard

erection already pointing Hephaestus’s way. The smith’s knees

weaken at the image, and he swings the hammer harder to keep his

focus.

But it doesn’t drown out the siren voice that

ripples through Hephaestus, disturbing his concentration like a

rock skipped over a still pool. The sound of his name, whispered in

Aean’s breathy tone, makes his whole body shudder with need. He

imagines how cool his lover would be above him, how refreshing that

sexy body of Aean’s would feel after slaving over a hot anvil for

hours. He can almost taste those salt-flecked lips as the head of

his cock thrusts against the apron he wears.

Then he hears a splash again, real this time

and not dreamed into being. He pauses in mid-swing to glance around

his cluttered workroom. Fires burn in an open pit behind him, a

pyre worthy of Hades himself. A variety of steel weapons lie

scattered across a nearby work bench, each a project Hephaestus

started and set aside. Bulky armor covers the dirt floor of the

forge, most of it damaged and awaiting repair. There is no water

here, nothing that might have made the sound he heard. His fires

burn too hot to allow him even a small drink. Any liquid evaporates

quickly, which is why he keeps his quench tank filled with oil or

brine.