Free A Bite to Remember by Lynsay Sands Page B

all. I am simply surprised that someone who knows so well what we are, and has worked with us for so long, would be soshocked and outraged when she sees us doing what it is in our nature to do.”
    “Doing what it is in your nature to do,” Jackie echoed grimly. For some reason the words reminded her of the old fable about the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion convinced a frog to give it a ride across a river, but stung it halfway across. As the frog began to sink under the river’s surface, taking the scorpion with it, he asked why, and the scorpion said it was “in his nature.”
    It was a good reminder to her, Jackie supposed. She mustn’t ever forget that Vincent was an immortal, a vampire with a vampire’s nature and attitudes. She and Tiny—and every other mortal he encountered—were probably nothing more than walking dinner to him.
    Still, his irritation with her upset urged her to remind him, “The others of your kind drink blood from a cup, or even straight from the bag, but you’re the only one who actually bites people.”
    “Hardly the only one,” Vincent said with a shrug that drew her attention back to his bare chest. “Simply the only one you’ve met.”
    Jackie knew that was true, but she was finding it terribly difficult to think with the man standing so close.
    “Besides,” he pointed out. “You wouldn’t have seen it at all if you’d simply minded your own business, rather than followed me in here.”
    That, unfortunately, was also true. She’d followed him in here expecting to catch him in the act, had even wanted to, but this was his home and it really was none of her business. Unfortunately, Jackie was very curious about his feeding.Tilting her head to the side, she gave in to that curiosity.
    “Do you prefer men or women?” she asked and then—when he stiffened—added hastily, “To bite.”
    Vincent relaxed and shrugged. “Do you prefer meat from a male or female cow?”
    “There isn’t a difference,” she said with confusion. “Steak is steak.”
    “And so it is with me. When I’m hungry, I don’t care. Whichever is handiest or easiest to get to; it’s all blood whether from a male or female.”
    “Oh.” While she could understand that blood was blood, Jackie still found it surprising that—to him—feeding was just feeding. None of the files had got this in depth into their feeding habits. Most had been filled with data about the history of their people, each person’s individual history, and so on.
    The only thing any of the files had said about their feeding habits was that they could survive on blood without food, but not food without blood. That they were now restricted by their council to feeding off bagged blood rather than off living hosts except in cases of emergency, or necessity such as in Vincent and his father, Victor’s, case. And the only exception was love bites as they were called, bites between an immortal and a consenting mortal or immortal lover. Jackie had some experience with the last rule. She’d consented to let Cassius bite her while they were dating and it had always been an incredibly erotic experience. In fact, it made it hard for her to imagine that feeding might not be that mind-blowing, sexy, whole-body rush of pleasure that she’d known.
    She wasn’t willing to discuss Cassius with Vincent,however, so simply said, “I guess I’ve been influenced by books and movies over the years. They always portray it as much more—well, it appears somewhat…intimate and sensual, yet you make it sound like sitting down to a sandwich.”
    “It can be both,” Vincent acknowledged. “Though more often than not it is like sitting down to a sandwich. I am hungry, so I feed.”
    “Do you always bite from behind?” she asked.
    “I prefer to approach men from behind; it makes it easier to alter their memory. They can look at television or at the scenery and I can put the memory in their mind that while they continued to watch T.V. or to look