Venus and Mars are the tradition's pair for sexual union, and the pairing is older than astrology's use of it. Aphrodite and Ares are lovers in Greek myth, and the two planets keep that relation as the benefic and the malefic of the night sect. One supplies attraction, agreement and pleasure. The other supplies drive, heat and the will to close a distance.
Astrologically the pairing does more than name a couple. Venus and Mars in combination are read as desire proper, distinguishable from affection, which is Venus with the Moon or with Jupiter, and from mere appetite, which is Mars on its own. Their aspect in a nativity, and its condition, is where a traditional reading of a person's erotic life begins.
Scorpio carries the same material by sign. It is the fixed water sign, ruled by Mars in the traditional scheme, and the tradition gives it what is intense, withheld and not easily released. The eighth house, natural to Scorpio, holds death, the dowry, legacies and other people's resources: what is shared, merged and no longer separable into two portions.
That is the point the eighth makes and the fifth does not. The fifth holds the pleasure of the thing. The eighth holds the entanglement, the loss of a boundary, and what cannot be taken back afterwards. A tradition that put both in one house would have said less than this one does.