Ares & Aphrodite-Forbidden Love

Greetings Everyone!

Today’s my day to chat and blog with you and I’m very happy to be here. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m the author of the OF WAR Series of Erotic/Romantic Paranormal Thrillers centering around Ares God of War and Alena MacLeod. This series is currently up to Book #2 with Book #3 “Child of War-Rising Son” expected in the spring. It’s garnered some awesome reviews on Amazon, Kindle, GoodReads and a whole host of review sites. Currently you can get both books for your Kindle for just $0.99 each! OK, end Shamless Self Promotion…for now.

Let’s talk about love.

My favorite pair of undercover lovers is Ares God of War and Aphrodite Goddess of Love & Beauty. Insofar as History teaches, Ares was the epitome of masculinity and yet he never took a Wife. He is associated with many many many women and noted as having fathered thousands upon thousands of children with Goddesses, Demi-Goddesses, and mortal women alike. Being possessed of such raw sexuality, I imagine he was hard to resist.

While Ares is the Son of Zeus and Hera, Aphrodite predates all of them, old myth tells us that when Cronos cut of Uranus’ genitals and tossed them into the ocean, the sea swelled with foam and gave birth to Aphrodite, Zeus’ half-Sister. BTW, Uranus was his Father, and the Titans and Olympians have a long standing history of Son betraying Father. Very dysfunctional families in that pantheon. In more modern mythology, she is known as a Daughter of Zeus or an adopted Daughter. Either way you slice it, she was related to Ares by Ichor.

All she did was make love, all day, all night, with much wild abandon. So beautiful was she that Ares and Apollo both vied for her hand in marriage causing a rift between the already estranged Brothers that lasted the rest of Time. However, Zeus thought it best if the Goddess of Love and Beauty was humbled a bit. Aphrodite left a wide path of destruction and broken hearts in her lustful wake. Zeus also believed that Love should not be confined only to the Beautiful, Love should be deeper than that. As such, he gave her to his other Son, Hephaestus the blacksmith of the Gods.

By Olympian standards, Hephaestus was ugly. His body and face hideously deformed, he was slow and walked with a pronounced limp. He is a tragic figure who was belittled by the handsome and beautiful inhabitants of Olympus. Ugly from birth, Hephaestus was scarred from the forge, always smelled of smoke, his hands were always rough with burrs. He thought he would never find a woman to love him. He was delighted when he was given Aphrodite, the beautiful and fair maiden, as his Wife.

It wasn’t that Aphrodite didn’t or couldn’t love Hephaestus, indeed, she loved everyone she came in contact with, it was her nature, she couldn’t help herself, but rather that she just couldn’t be tied to down to one person. She didn’t mean to be cruel and break so many hearts leaving rivers of tears in her wake. She simply wasn’t meant to be possessed by one man alone.
It wasn’t long before she was sneaking around with other men while Hephaestus worked his forge making weapons for the Gods late into the night. Chief among her lovers was Hephaestus’ Brother, Ares God of War. It’s no wonder they were so fatefully attracted to each other; he being the embodiment of everything male from his statuesque physique to his badass attitude and she being the essence of everything female from her outward beauty to her carnal desires. They were destined to fall in love. Who else could contend with and quench their fiery passions but each other? Who else could understand their wild ways and not be heartbroken at their inability to be faithful a lover? Who else lived their lives with as much passion and zeal as they?

There is a fine line between Love and Hate after all.

They took to the deep stillness of Ares’ forests for long nights of lovemaking, but one night they became careless when Aphrodite took Ares to her own bed. The one she shared with Hephaestus.

In the deep cover of the forest no one could see them, but as Helios, the Sun, rose the next morning and peered into Aphrodite’s bedroom window, he saw the two lovers and told Hephaestus who was so enraged he set a trap for Wife and his Brother. Knowing he wasn’t strong enough to best his Brother in battle, Hephaestus came up with a clever plan. He worked in his forge day and night until the trap was ready. The next time Aphrodite took Ares to their marriage bed, Hephaestus lay in wait to trap them in an unbreakable net. The heartbroken God of the Forge set his trap around the bed he shared with his Wife, whom he believed loved him, and ensnared Ares and Aphrodite in the act of making love. Hephaestus dragged them naked before off all the Gods who laughed at the adulterous couple, especially Ares, who always considered himself so cunning yet he’d been trapped by his disabled Brother who demanded payment and retribution for the offense. Yet, no amount of payment could ease his broken heart.

Once freed of their chains and shamed before all of the Gods Ares and Aphrodite went their separate ways for a while. Yet, as Love would have it, they found their way back to each other and carried on an affair that lasted long after Hephaestus’ death and that saw fruition in five children the most famous among them (according to more modern mythology) is Eros.

They stayed together, not as Husband and Wife, but as Friends and Lovers, two sides of the same coin, for the rest of Time.
In my updated version of this myth which takes place throughout the “OF WAR” series, Ares and Aphrodite are old ex-lovers who can’t see eye-to-eye on much of anything anymore. She is still in love with him but he’s now married to Alena and has a new family. They often take harsh jabs at each other throughout the course of the story. It is very fun to have two bitter bickering ex-lovers who just happen to be Gods.

Here’s a little excerpt from “Child of War-A God is Born” between Ares God of War and Aphrodite Goddess of Love. Excerpt is definitely on the warm side 😉 I hope you enjoy!

“I’ll show you old.” On the floor crawling toward Ares with stealth, determination, and a renewed desire, Aphrodite gazed up at him with a coy grin. “Let me try again,” she whispered in a sultry voice. Never one to shy away from a challenge, especially not when it came in such a well-toned and brawny package as Ares, Aphrodite slithered up his body, hands roaming over naked flesh, fingers kneading, gripping, flexing and clutching hard muscle from his thick calves to his wide chest. Her soft moist tongue licking every tasty inch of him as her mind fell backward to those long ago days and nights she spent lying under him in an ecstasy she would never know again. Nights when sharp fingernails clawed open precious skin as their bodies locked in a war of lovemaking, when flying high, soaring over the hilltops of their souls wasn’t nearly high enough. All those nights, all that anger and rage, suddenly Aphrodite found that she could throw it all away and get lost in Ares as she used to do, no care, no thought, just primal desire. If things were only the slightest bit different, this night could be one for the lustful history books. Her soft supple body pressed to his rugged one, Aphrodite plucked the straps at her shoulders, letting the sheer material that sheltered (but did not truly obstruct the view of) her body fall to the floor. Grabbing up his hand she planted it on her full breast just as she took hold of the other and forced it to caress the curve of her waist before descending to the roundness of her hip and holding it there. Feeling his strong fingertips begin to flex on her waiting skin and hearing Ares take in a breath, she felt goosebumps rise under her hands. They brought a welcome wave of desire to the Goddess of Love. Wild thoughts went through Aphrodite’s mind just as her moist tongue lapped along her lips. With no warning, she gave him a hard shove. “Take a load off, big guy,” she tittered as he fell to the bed. “These boots, too, they’re no good.” Gloriously naked, she knelt before him, undid the buckles on his steel-toed boots and pulled them from his feet, only to hear a familiar clink upon her shining marble floor. “Armed? You came here armed?” she asked in amused disgust as she gazed down at the dagger with its snake head handle and let out a heavy grunt. “Really, Ares, and you say you’ve changed.”

“I have.”

“We’ll see about that. Those have to go, too,” she mused, gazing down at the leather pants clinging to his knees before she yanked them away. “Better,” she whispered as she lifted one well-molded leg into the air to straddle him with only a pair of glimmering pink panties between them. “I always did like you best when you were completely naked and at my whim.” With great force, she pulled open the vest covering his chest and pushed it away from him just as a pair of silken bonds appeared in her hands. “You remember these, don’t you?” Tying one silken band into a slipknot and wrapping it around his wrist she asked, “You’re mine for the night, aren’t you? Just because you say you won’t enjoy it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”

“In your wet drea–” Ares’ words were cut short when Aphrodite used her powers to suddenly push him down onto the feather bed and hold him there while the silk tied itself to the bedpost. The other did the same. Aphrodite’s Bonds of Love were much like the Chains of Hephaestus, not quite as strong, but they certainly did the trick when it came to holding an Olympian in place for a passionate night of sex games. “Take these off of me,” he growled.

Aphrodite’s lips turned upward as she watched Ares struggle against the Bonds of Love, knowing there was nothing he could do to escape them and the more he pulled, the more he resisted, the tighter the knots became. Ares always did like it rough. Why should tonight be any different if suddenly the tables so drastically turned on him? “No more dreams. Not tonight.” It was hard to tell if her words were those of passion, revenge, or something else, but it was clear in those sapphire eyes that she intended to make the very best of a bad situation. “Tonight you’re mine one more time”¦Lover, and I am going to enjoy this.” Aphrodite stood up and gazed down at her prize. Reaching out with hesitant fingertips, she drew it down through that thickly furred deep crevice space between his pecs. “Say you didn’t mean it,” she whispered, “say you lied.”

“About what?”

Maybe it was the wine she drank before he arrived–nearly two gallons of it before Apollo made his appearance in her bedroom””but Aphrodite was feeling a little old and wondering if she was up to the task. Ares never lay flaccid before her. Never. Not one single time in all the centuries they made love did he not come to her rough and ready. Now he was as limp as a wet noodle. “Say that I do impress you, that I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen.” Slowly she brought her eyes away from that package of his to meet his stare. “You know it’s true,” she whispered with uncertainty. “Perhaps I’ve lost your heart, but tell me I haven’t lost my touch.”

“You never had my heart.” Harnessed to the bed, Ares tilted his head and looked up at her as he marveled at her ego and that for the first time in all these eons, he was seeing it falter.

**

I’m very pleased to say that Coffee Time Romance is currently running a contest on my behalf. You can Enter To Win “The Heart of War” Book #1 in the “OF WAR” Series.

Paperbacks are available through Moon Mistress Publishing for both novels at $5.00 OFF Amazon (and other retailers) cover price. Order by 12/15 for delivery in time for Christmas and the Winter Holidays.

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Child of War-A God is Born in ADOBE/PDF is currently ONLY available through Moon Mistress

Thank you for spending some time with me today. Tell me about your favorite couple. I’ll be back in a little bit to give you my list of Top Ten Famous (and Infamous) Love Affairs along with a character interview with Ares.