Lame, with harsh features, brooding eyes, a wiry beard crackling with flame, and ropy muscles, the god mortals call Hephaestus is nobody's idea of perfection. Indeed, far from it. A lingering odor of burnt solder clings to him, adding to his manly stench of sweat and musk. His bed is narrow and lonely, his sheets filled with soot and regret.

Blacksmith to Olympus, he hides from his kin on an island in the Mediterranean, commissioned to forge a hero's sword from unbreakable metal. But a brief tryst with a minor water god distracts him. Aean is everything Hephaestus is not -- young, beautiful, sexy. He stirs in Hephaestus a savage lust the smith has never felt before.

Now Hephaestus wants Aean for his own, and he won't rest until the water god is his.