Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel

“I could stay,” she offered.

“No.” He made a shooing gesture. “Go get Jayce. Please?”

“Okay.” Rika turned and walked away, but she paused at the doorway and said, “I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

When Rika reached the skate park, she stopped and remained invisible briefly, standing behind the mortals who were gathered there. She felt a strange mix of inclusion and exclusion around Jayce’s friends. On the other side of a wire-mesh fence—coated steel far too toxic for a faery to touch—Jayce sat with Del on metal bleachers while Kayley was on a vertical half-pipe. The boys watched her. Del’s skateboard was propped next to him, but neither of the boys took it out to the ramps. Kayley was the artist here.

Jayce grinned at Del as Kayley executed another nice trick. Several other people noticed her prowess as well. “Your girl would shame me if I went out there,” Jayce said.

Del preened. “She shames me. I swear I’m going to get as good as her, but she comes out harder every time.”

They watched her for a moment, and Rika was struck at how different they were from the men she’d known in her human life—and the faeries she knew in the courts. Keenan had believed that women were to be delicate, that men were to be better at every act of skill. Rika had tried to be that, even after she was fey. It hadn’t worked. She smiled to herself at the thought of Donia, the girl who’d become Winter Queen. She wasn’t ever meek, and from the rumors that had made their way to the desert so far, neither was the Summer Queen. Not for the first time, Rika hoped that both formerly mortal faeries were making Keenan squirm.

On the other side of the chain fence, Del and Jayce continued to discuss Kayley. “She outskates me, but on a climb”—Del grinned at Jayce—“I get her back.”

After a few more minutes, Kayley walked up to the guys.

“Nice.” Jayce gestured with his chin toward the ramp where Kayley had been.

Although she shrugged like she was unconcerned, her posture and the grin on her face revealed her pleasure as she accepted the compliment Jayce offered her.

“I’ve seen worse.” Del extended his bottle of water to Kayley.

“Yeah, you.” Kayley drained the rest of the bottle and tossed it into a recycling bin. She smiled at Del, who promptly caught her by the hips and pulled her toward him.

“Compared to you?” He paused and kissed her lightly. “Every day.”

“Get off your ass then.” Kayley looked from Del to Jayce. “Neither of you are going to get any better if all you do is sit around watching me.”

At that, Rika decided it was time to interrupt. If Jayce went to the ramps, she’d be left in the awkward position of trying to explain why she couldn’t come inside the park and why she couldn’t stay. She backed farther away from the park, and then after a quick glance around to verify that no one was looking in her direction, she became visible to human eyes. Jayce and Del wouldn’t notice her for a few moments, so she waited, walking slowly toward them. She couldn’t approach the metal bleachers and the fence surrounding the park, but she wouldn’t have to. They’d see her, or she’d call out.

After a few steps, Kayley noticed her and waved. Del glanced over his shoulder, waved, and then grabbed his board. They both said, “Later, Jayce.”

Rika waited, knowing that Jayce would come to her so she didn’t have to come any closer to the poisonous metal. She felt her cheeks flush as he smiled at her, and she couldn’t believe that he was hers now, that he saw her and wanted to be with her.

“Everyone okay?” Jayce asked as he reached her side.

She nodded, and he pulled her into his arms. Before the last few weeks, Rika had only been kissed a few times in her life, chaste kisses that didn’t leave her feeling consumed, but in the past couple of weeks, she’d discovered why people kissed. As Jayce’s lips pressed against hers, his arms tightened around her. Even still, she felt like they were too far apart, and when he pulled away, she wanted to whimper at the loss. Instead, she asked, “Come with me?”

She entwined their hands, unable to be this close to him without touching.

“Anywhere,” Jayce agreed.

This was what she’d wanted, this togetherness, this hunger to be with another person. She’d thought she’d lost the chance at it when she’d believed Keenan’s lies, and now, she couldn’t imagine life without it. Someday, this would pass. Unless they were cursed, mortals didn’t become faeries, so Jayce would leave her someday. Rika hadn’t told him that, not wanting to bring up how fleeting their time was. For now, she had found the heady mix of like and want that she’d been dreaming of for years.

She smiled, and they started across the desert . . . fading to invisible as they walked away from the people in town. Things might be unstable in the desert, and she had no doubt that there would be conflict until Maili realized that she couldn’t become Alpha. Right now, though, Sionnach was alive and healing, and Jayce was at Rika’s side. Both her faery friend and her mortal boyfriend were safe, and Rika couldn’t stop the smile that came over her.

CHAPTER 12

Sionnach knew that the Summer King was standing nearby: Keenan didn’t exactly try to hide the heat that radiated from his body. No one else, save for the newly ascended Summer Queen, would exude such heat, and there was no reason that the new queen would visit the home of a former Winter Girl. So without opening his eyes, Sionnach knew that the Summer King stood in the mouth of the room in Rika’s cave where Sionnach was reclining, half-propped on the mound of pillows Rika had arranged behind him.

When he did open his eyes, Sionnach had to resist the urge to grin. The wide- eyed shock on the Summer King’s face was enough to improve even the lowest of moods, and his temper was accompanied by eddies of heat that made the air shimmer.

“What are you doing there?” Keenan didn’t gesture, but the disdain and possessiveness were both clear in his tone. Even now, the Summer King did not expect to see someone else in the bed of one of his former pseudo-beloveds.

Sionnach offered his practiced expression of wide-eyed innocence and said, “Recovering.”

The bowl with the hilt of the knife in it was hidden on the opposite side of Sionnach’s body, so Keenan wouldn’t see it. To keep the Summer King’s temper pricked and his attention diverted, Sionnach smiled in the way of the falsely modest and added, “Forgive me for not standing, but I can’t find the energy just yet.”

The answering heat flare was enough to raise the temperature in the cave, enough to explain the fine sheen of sweat on Sionnach’s body. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was useful at hiding the truth. He waited as Keenan’s gaze took in the candles, the glasses beside the bed, and the fact that Sionnach was seemingly naked. There were moments in every faery’s life that were too perfect to have been planned, and Sionnach was having just such a moment as he reclined in Rika’s bed grinning while the faery who had caused such upheaval in Rika’s life— and in their desert—very obviously misinterpreted the clues.

“Were you looking for something?” Sionnach queried. In a moment of feigned modesty, he pulled the blanket higher as if to cover his upper chest, intentionally drawing the Summer King’s eye to his bared arms and shoulders. In shifting the blanket, one of Sionnach’s legs became partially exposed. The result, as Sionnach intended, was that he appeared to be sans trousers too.

After a disgusted look at Sionnach, Keenan asked, “Where is she?”

“Rika?” Sionnach stretched and, trying not to wince, rolled onto his hip. “She’s out.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“Hmmm. I don’t think she’s interested.” Casually, Sionnach reached down and lifted one of the glasses Rika had left next to him. He took a sip, stalling to hide his fight with pain, and watched Keenan. Then, he swallowed and said, “You had your chance. She’s moved on to better things.”

“I’m not here for that. I respect Rika—”

Sionnach couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped his lips. “Sure you do.” He dragged out the words. “I respect Rika; you upset her. You hurt her. I’ve been