Ambrosia Lane 1-3: Saranna DeWylde Read online

  AMBROSIA LANE 1-3

  SARANNA DEWYLDE

  DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES OF OLYMPUS DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES OF AVALON DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES OF OLYMPUS: ARES

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Desperate Housewives of Olympus

  1. HERA

  2. ABSTINENCE

  3. PERSEPHONE

  4. NYX

  5. DEMETER

  6. HERA

  7. ABSTINENCE

  8. PERSEPHONE

  9. NYX

  10. DEMETER

  11. HERA

  12. ABSTINENCE

  13. PERSEPHONE

  14. DEMETER

  15. HERA

  16. ABSTINENCE

  17. PERSEPHONE

  18. NYX

  19. DEMETER

  20. HERA

  21. ABSTINENCE

  22. PERSEPHONE

  23. NYX

  24. DEMETER

  25. HERA

  26. ABSTINENCE

  27. PERSEPHONE

  28. NYX

  29. THE WEDDING AND HAPPILY EVER AFTER

  Desperate Housewives of Avalon

  1. ARTEMIS

  2. GWEN

  3. MORGAN

  4. APHRODITE

  5. VIVIENNE

  6. ARTEMIS

  7. GWEN

  8. MORGAN

  9. APHRODITE

  10. VIVIENNE

  11. ARTEMIS

  12. GWEN

  13. MORGAN

  14. APHRODITE

  15. VIVIENNE

  16. ARTEMIS

  17. GWEN

  18. MORGAN

  19. APHRODITE

  20. VIVIENNE

  21. ARTEMIS

  22. GWEN

  23. MORGAN

  24. APHRODITE

  25. VIVIENNE

  26. ARTEMIS

  27. GWEN

  28. MORGAN

  29. APHRODITE

  30. ARTEMIS

  31. THE FIRST HANDFASTING

  Desperate Housewives of Olympus: ARES

  Author’s Note

  1. ARES

  2. MORRI

  3. ARES

  4. MORRI

  5. ARES

  6. MORRI

  7. ARES

  8. MORRI

  9. ARES

  10. MORRI

  11. ARES

  12. MORRI

  13. ARES

  14. MORRI

  15. ARES

  16. MORRI

  17. ARES

  18. MORRI

  19. ARES

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  All characters appearing in this work are fiction or from classical mythology now in common usage. Any similarities between persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This author hopes that the deities represented within don’t mind her posing them like Barbies in her sandbox.

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the

  publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  * * *

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is extra shitty with fuck you sprinkles, and also illegal. It’s theft. If you’re broke, ask your library to get a copy and/or get on my review team where I give you books and all you have to do is post your opinion. Thanks!

  * * *

  Published in the United States of America by

  Saranna DeWylde and Corvus Corax © 2015

  * * *

  © 2011, 2012, 2013 Saranna DeWylde

  This, dearest readers, is for you.

  Because of you, my daughter got braces.

  Because of you, I can keep my lights on.

  Because of you, I can do what I love.

  Thank you!

  DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES OF OLYMPUS

  Ambrosia Lane:

  Book One

  1

  HERA

  A new goddess had moved in to the empty temple on Ambrosia Lane. She was thin, hollow-eyed and leggy. Just like a mortal runway model. Hera’s only consolation was the goddess’s breasts were like those of an overweight prepubescent boy—two sickly fried eggs sagging from thumbtacks.

  Hera looked down at her own generous swells and sighed. She liked them. She’d been told they were magnificent. Too bad Zeus didn’t think so. He’d fed her some line about how for every beautiful woman, somewhere there was a man who was tired of her. A little hurtful, she supposed, but she’d told him the last vestal virgin she’d turned into a man had a better package than he did. Maybe not the best route to go when trying to play kiss and make up.

  A sharp sound on the marble floor behind her caught her attention and she paused before popping another champagne grape in her mouth. Hera turned her head all the way around on her shoulders like Athena’s beloved owl. “Don’t even think about it,” she snapped at her god-husband.

  Zeus looked like a goat that had been caught chewing on dirty underwear. Randy old bastard.

  “I wasn’t…” he trailed off, nodding his golden head.

  Of course, he so obviously was. Why he bothered to deny it was beyond her. That only added fuel to the fire, as if he believed her to be so stupid she couldn’t figure out what he was up to. It wasn’t like she’d been married to him for the last eon or anything. She almost snorted out loud. Gods could be so…god-like. Hera growled under her breath in frustration.

  His tanned and well-muscled arms were loaded up with an obscene gift basket filled with Bissinger’s fig truffles, blackberry caramels, Tentation apples, several bars of Mo’s Bacon Milk Chocolate and a bottle of ambrosia wine. That was only what Hera could see. She didn’t know why he’d bother to take her food because it was obvious she didn’t eat and—oh, hell no. Were those the last of her champagne grapes?

  He was a dead man.

  Hera accepted the fact her husband was a lecherous, lying, cheating, fondling bastard. She’d made herself right with it millennia ago, but the part where he was doing it right in front of her and using the last of her champagne grapes to do it? It wasn’t to be borne. Her grapes were the line in the sand. She’d had enough of him taking what was supposed to belong solely to her and giving it away with both hands.

  He could just see how he liked it. She’d been faithful to him their whole marriage. Vestal virgins didn’t count, because well, that’s what they were for. To be fair, she didn’t hold them against Zeus either.

  She wasn’t sure where she’d find a man to measure up to her golden god of a husband, but when she did, Zeus better grab his ass with both hands and hang on tight because he was in for the surprise of his eternity.

  Hera smiled, the expression almost cracking her face. “You know what? Go ahead and welcome the new goddess to the block, but so help me I shall smite you both if you give her my grapes. She can have your ‘mighty thunderbolt’ as many ways as she can stand it, but not my grapes, got it?”

  “Hera, I was just being neighborly.” He said this as if she’d accused him of something.

  “And so you are, but the fact remains my grapes are still wrapped in hideous pink cellophane.” Hera twisted her head back around the correct way and stood. She impressed herself by gliding over to him, regally if she did say so herself, and zapping t
he grapes out of his basket. His mouth dropped open, but he promptly snapped it shut. It didn’t do for gods to be running around agape. “Well, go on. What are you waiting for?” Hera arched a perfectly shaped brow in question.

  “You’re not angry?” Zeus watched her like he would a hungry lion and inched away from her the same as he would any ravaging beast.

  Yes, as if that would save him. Nothing could save him now, not all of the careful maneuvering, his lies, or his damned charm.

  Nothing.

  “Why would I be angry?” she asked as if she really had no clue why he would have such an idea. “You always say I should trust you more. I’m ever a dutiful wife.” Hera almost choked on the drivel she’d spewed—and if he believed that, she had a bridge she wanted to sell him.

  Zeus narrowed his eyes and took a ginger step toward the door. She widened her smile and was aware that rather than looking like a sweet, doting wife, she looked like a vulpine hyena. He took another step before darting out of the door as if Cerberus were nipping at his heels, welcome basket in hand.

  The new goddess could take him with her compliments, but that didn’t mean Hera was done with him. “Thalia?” she called out to the muse of comedy.

  A wispy presence swirled around her like a silk shawl and manifested in the form of a slight woman. “Yes, Hera?”

  “Your father has made me very angry for the last time. I should like some inspiration, please.” Of the most ironic sort, she hoped. Contrary to popular belief, Hera took no issue with Zeus’s children. She adored most of them, all but Hercules. He was as pompous as his father. He’d tried to seduce her once and that had ended badly. In reality, if she’d taken issue with all of his issue, there would be a scant number of creatures she didn’t despise. Yes, creatures. Not people, men or gods, creatures.

  Pervert.

  “Hera.” Her voice was whisper light like a Tibetan bell. “You don’t need inspiration, the ploy is as old as time. Hades has been lonely since Persephone high-tailed it back to her mama.” Thalia winked at her and disappeared.

  Her husband’s bother was as dark as Zeus was golden; Hades was the eternal bad boy. His hair still fell over his brow in the surly way of young men with a grudge against the world, his eyes were blue flame, but she knew they could be dark pools like melted chocolate when he felt tender things. Hera had seen them look like that liquid seduction only twice and more recently it was when he looked at Persephone—the spoiled child of a spoiled goddess who held her breath when she didn’t get her way. He’d looked at her like that once, a long time ago when the worlds were young. Like an idiot, she’d chosen Zeus instead. She thought of his eyes again, when they’d been filled with chocolate promises. There was only one thing Hera liked better than chocolate and that was yanking her husband around by his short and curlies.

  Would she wear the white Grecian dress or the white Grecian—BORING. She hated absolutely everything in her closet. Even her crown was plain. How did a body manage to get saddled with a plain piece of headgear when it was supposed to proclaim to all the universe she was Queen of Gods?

  Hera tore it out of her coif and flung it across the pink marbled floor where it clattered all the way out of the door and off the balcony to drift into the ether. Now she had to buy a new one, couldn’t be running around crownless, could she? Hera felt practically naked without it. She maybe should have saved the disgusted flinging for after she’d gotten a new one.

  First, to Jean Pierre’s. She needed to have her hair done, a massage, and perhaps even a peel before she unveiled her new look and implemented her plan for total Olympus domination. Yes, she rather liked the sound of that. Why stop with cuckolding a god when she could dethrone him and throw his cheating ass in Tartarus where the new object of her affections would be his jailer?

  2

  ABSTINENCE

  A bstinence peered out of the window of her new temple and sighed, her breath marking the glass. She’d heard things about this Zeus character who was currently striding up her front walk as bold as if he’d been invited. It had almost been a deal breaker with her new digs, but she figured she didn’t have to open the door. She didn’t need Hera smiting her for something she hadn’t done. She was Abstinence; she wasn’t going to have carnal relations with Zeus or any man.

  His arms were laden with other gifts she couldn’t partake of either: chocolate, wine, ambrosia fruits… She’d think he’d have done his research before he came over and started trying to get in her toga. Perhaps the other goddesses had made it too easy for him and this was what constituted effort on his part?

  Color her flattered with the bullshit crayon. She didn’t need this today. Or any other day, really. It was bad enough walking around hungry, thirsty, sleepy, and horny all at once without having to deal with a creature that not only wanted to relieve her of all of her discomfort in one sitting, but was capable of doing so.

  This was why he didn’t have to try.

  Well, Abstinence was something different. If she gave in to his seduction, she wouldn’t be Abstinence any longer. She’d be dead. And while that in itself wasn’t so horrible a fate, her duties would fall to her sister in her stead. Her beautiful, lush sister who gloried in her excesses, never leaving any dish untasted, any magnificence unexamined, or any dare untested. She had children that needed their mother, a devoted husband who still made love to her with the same fervor he had when they’d first married twenty years ago. No, the mantle of Abstinence fell to her and she would bear it with pride. No matter how heavy it became or how wide the shoulders were of the man who stood before her.

  Sweet bleeding Hades on fire. What was that in his pants? That couldn’t be what she thought it was. It just couldn’t. She wasn’t sure what else it could be—a pet toga snake? He wasn’t wearing a toga. Damn it. He had been when he’d started up the walk. Now he was wearing CK jeans and a cashmere sweater. Men didn’t wear cashmere, did they? Wow. Her eyes were wide and she knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t fathom that beast. She’d never seen one like it when she’d been mortal. No wonder he was such a man-whore. He probably had to be or that thing would eat him alive.

  It was a simple matter. She wouldn’t open the door, like she’d told herself earlier. Then she was moving back to her own plane and her run down shoddy temple. This was what she got for trying something new. She definitely should have abstained from that as well. Making friends? Having other goddesses to talk to? Abstinence didn’t need this grief.

  She’d talk to the realtor in the morning and get the blue fuck out of Dodge. Or maybe that’s where she would move to. Dodge City, Kansas. Yep. She could buy a nice little tract home, have a garden. Even though she wouldn’t eat whatever she grew, it would give her something to do. And she could give it to the homeless. That was self-sacrificing. Legend had it that if she sacrificed, abstained for long enough, she could free her family line from the curse that demanded one of them serve as Abstinence. That certainly wouldn’t happen if she opened the door and let tall, blond and hot inside.

  He rung the bell without letting go of his package and Abstinence had to wonder if it was his package ringing the bell. Goddess, she had to get her mind back to business and not on him. Otherwise she’d fail her first test and then her sister or one of her nieces would be stuck with this shit-ass gig.

  Over her dead body, no pun intended.

  When she didn’t answer the door, he simply teleported inside. Yeah, that wasn’t creepy at all.

  “Hi, I’m the welcoming committee,” he said with a lopsided grin.

  “I gathered.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Did you? Then why didn’t you let me in?” Zeus asked boldly.

  “Because I know better?”

  “Do you, now? And who may I thank for your education?” He raised a golden brow.

  “Yourself, of course.”

  “How’s that?” He put the basket down on her foyer.

  “Your exploits are legendary.”

 
“My exploits?” he parroted while he picked through the welcome basket he’d brought her and emptied it on her foyer table.

  “Ah, classic signs of deflection. Repeat the question to give the brain time to work to come up with a good lie. Really, you immortals aren’t so different from humans.”

  “Now I’m insulted.” He obviously wasn’t. Zeus was still going about his task as if she hadn’t already told him she’d be interested when purple harpies flew out of his ass.

  “Then why are you still standing here?”

  “I see sweet words and gifts are not the way to get between those bony little thighs.” Still unfazed, but now he almost seemed more interested.

  Wait, what? No. She was not! “Bony?” She stomped her foot. “I’m slender. Not bony, thank you very much.”