История кривого билда: Баф-машина. Сергей Вишневский

people to their breaking point. But he did it in a playful way. Unfortunately, most people did not get his confrontational humor.

      “I have to go,” Stryke said. He nodded toward a crowd of young women bundled up in bright ski pants and boots. Pom-poms bobbed on their heads and mittens, plus a few at their boot ties. A cavalcade of sex kittens. “Got a date.”

      “A tangle?”

      “If I’m lucky.” He winked. “You going to the fireworks?”

      “Kelyn and I usually head out together. I’ll see you later, Stryke.”

      He kissed her cheek, a cold smack that made her giggle, and strode off toward the pom-pom kittens.

      Sighing, Daisy tugged out the paperback she always took along to public events and found the bookmarked page. She wore gloves with rubber tips on the fingers, designed for operating touch devices. Books were the ultimate touch device. Immersing herself in the fiction, she strolled slowly along the packed snow embankment that edged the hockey rink where makeshift teams had gathered to play. Should have brought her skates. What she wouldn’t give to slap sticks for a while...

      All of a sudden, someone charged into her. Daisy dropped her book and made to shove away the annoying guy, but she paused when she saw who it was. The sexy wolf she’d run into the other night at the edge of the forest.

      “What is it with you and the need to ram into me every chance you get?” she asked.

      “Uh, sorry. I had my eye on the puck.” He tossed the hockey puck he picked up from the snow toward the guys outfitted in knee pads and skates waiting on the ice. “Besides, this is the first time I’ve rammed into you. If you’ll remember correctly—”

      “Yes, yes, I recall. So you’re playing with the mortals?”

      “Exclusivity to one’s breed is not wise in this small town.” He swept a hand toward the players who had continued the game without him. “They’re a great bunch of guys. I love hockey. There you go.”

      “I like hockey, too, but I don’t think the boys would like a woman joining them.”

      “Probably not. All the girls are over at the food booths making cocoa and serving us men.”

      Daisy’s jaw tightened. “I don’t serve any man.”

      Beck swerved his gaze toward her. “Huh? Oh. Right. Sorry, that was—”

      “An asshole thing to say.”

      “Whoa. This is fast going down an icy slope I don’t want to slip on. Let’s start over.” Tugging off a leather glove, he then bent to pick up her book and handed it to her. “Sorry. The pages got snow on them. Don’t you have one of those fancy e-readers like I see everyone carrying nowadays?”

      “I have a few of them,” Daisy said proudly. “Sometimes I prefer the touch, feel and smell of a real book.”

      She pressed the closed book to her nose and inhaled. Snow had dampened a few of the pages, but she couldn’t be upset because she also owned the digital copy of this book.

      “It’s so personal to hold a book in my hand. I can open it to any place I like with a few flutters of the page. I can trace my fingers down the words, rereading phrases that speak to me. The stories make my heart race and my skin flush. My toes curl when I’ve read a well-crafted sentence. Mmm...”

      “Uh...”

      She glanced at Beck, whose mouth hung open. Oh, those eyes could attract wise men on a clear winter night beneath a velvet star-filled sky.

      He scratched his head. “You just made reading sound sexual.”

      So she had. “Books turn me on.” Daisy resumed her stroll along the snowbank shoveled up around the rink.

      The wolf in hockey skates followed, blades sinking into the packed snow. “Really? They turn you on?”

      She nodded. She wasn’t sure she’d ever find a man equal to the heroes she read about in her stories, but she held out hope. Of course, the stories were fiction. She knew that. But it was okay to dream. And besides, when she finally did find a hero of her own, she felt sure she’d recognize him immediately for his gleaming honor and smoldering sensuality.

      “So it’s one of those sex books?” he asked.

      Daisy stopped and toed her boot into a chunk of snow. Oh, she pitied the poorly read. “Just what implies a sex book in your mind?” She waved her book between the two of them. “Anything with a pink cover?”

      “Anything with sex in it, I guess.”

      He was out of his league, and he knew it. Daisy smiled triumphantly. Points to the women’s team.

      “Says the wolf who’s probably never read more than fast-food menus and car manuals.”

      “Don’t forget The Iliad. I may have been home-schooled, but I don’t think there’s a way for any breathing teenager to avoid that snorefest.”

      Daisy rolled her eyes. She wasn’t much for mythology, but wouldn’t admit to him that she agreed with his assessment of the classic tome. That would be too much like flirting. Of which she did not partake.

      “I have read a lot of car manuals,” he added. “I own a shop at the edge of Burnham.”

      “Hockey, cars and tromping through the forest without a shirt on. Such a guy you are.”

      He stabbed the hockey stick into the snow and propped both wrists on the end of it. “I can’t tell if you’re admonishing me or trying to flirt awkwardly.”

      “I—” Stymied, Daisy turned her gaze away. She did not flirt. Because if she did, it would be exactly as he’d implied—awkward.

      One of the men guiding the puck across the ice with the mortal crowd called to Beck to return. He waved and said he’d be right there.

      Shoving up the sleeve of his jersey to reveal the long thermal sleeve beneath, he winked at her. “If you’re in the mood to test your flirtation skills later, come find me.”

      “I, er—”

      Without waiting for what would surely be the awkward reply of the century, Beck tromped off, blades cutting hashed tracks toward the ice.

      Daisy couldn’t help but notice the flex of his quadriceps with each stride. Clad in jeans and a fitted long shirt, over which he wore a big loose hockey jersey, the attire highlighted his awesome physique.

      “Nothing new,” she said to herself. All the wolves in the local packs were ripped. It was the very nature of a werewolf to be so muscular.

      Unless of course he was Kelyn, her youngest brother. Who wasn’t actually a werewolf at all, but rather, had inherited their mother’s faery DNA. He was lean and lithe, yet her father deemed him the most deadly of all his boys. Faeries were swift and malicious, Malakai would often say.

      Daisy hated to think of Kelyn as malicious. And he was not. She hoped he wouldn’t develop a complex because of her father’s words.

      No longer interested in the book, she stuffed it in her coat pocket and wandered under a massive willow tree where a half dozen tween girls were sipping hot chocolate and cider from thermoses and texting on their cell phones, fingertips bared by half gloves.

      “Why is your hair pink?” one of them asked as Daisy walked by.

      “Because my mom dropped a can of paint on it when I was born,” she offered, smirking. “Why is yours red?”

      The befreckled girl shrugged. “Yours is pretty. I wish mine wasn’t so ugly.”

      “Yours is gorgeous,” Daisy offered. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently. It’s good to be unique, not like everyone else.”

      The girl sat up a little straighter. The friend beside her, sporting a hot-chocolate