Wrapped in Pleasure Read Online Free Page A

relationship with anyone. “Any siblings?” she decided to ask.
    He nodded. “Yes, I have two sisters, Arielle and Johari. Arielle is nineteen and is married to a sheikh in a neighboring sheikhdom, and Johari is sixteen and has just completed her schooling in my country. She wants to come to America to further her studies.”
    “Will she?”
    He looked at her like she had gone stone mad. “Of course not!”
    Delaney stared at him, dumbfounded, wondering what he had against his sister being educated in the United States. “Why? You did.”
    Jamal clenched his jaw. “Yes, but my situation was different.”
    Delaney lifted her brow. “Different in what way?”
    “I’m a man.”
    “So? What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Evidently it means nothing in this country. I have observed more times than I care to count how the men let the women have control.”
    Delaney narrowed her eyes. “You consider having equal rights as having control?”
    “Yes, in a way. Men are supposed to take care of the women. In your country more and more women are being educated to take care of themselves.”
    “And you see that as a bad thing?”
    He gazed at her and remembered her sassiness from the first day and decided the last thing he wanted was to get embroiled in a bitter confrontation with her. He had his beliefs and she had hers. But since she had asked his opinion he would give it to her. “I see it as something that would not be tolerated in my country.”
    What he didn’t add was that the alternative—the one his stepmother used so often and had perfected to an art—was for a woman to wrap herself around her husband’s heart so tightly that he would give her the moon if she asked for it.
    Taking another sip of coffee, Jamal decided to change the subject and shift the conversation to her. “Tell me about your family,” he said, thinking that was a safer topic.
    Evidently it’s not, he thought when she glared at him.
    “My family lives in Atlanta, and I’m the only girl as well as the youngest in the third generation of Westmorelands. And for the longest time my five brothers thought I needed protecting. They gave any guy who came within two feet of me pure hell. By my eighteenth birthday I had yet to have a date, so I finally put a stop to their foolishness.”
    He smiled. “And how did you do that?”
    A wicked grin crossed her face. “Since I never had a social life I ended up with a lot of free time on my hands. So I started doing to them what they were doing to me—interfering in their lives. I suddenly became the nosy, busybody sister. I would deliberately monitor their calls, intentionally call their girlfriends by the wrong name and, more times than I care to count, I would conveniently drop by their places when I knew they had company and were probably right smack in the middle of something immoral.”
    She chuckled. “In other words, I became the kid sister from hell. It didn’t take long for them to stop meddling in my affairs and back off. However, every once in a while they go brain dead and started sticking their noses into my business again. But it doesn’t take much for me to remind them to butt out or suffer the consequences if they don’t.”
    Jamal shook his head, having the deepest sympathy for her brothers. “Are any of your brothers married?”
    She stared at him, her eyes full of amusement at his question. “Are you kidding? They have too much fun being single. They are players, the card-carrying kind. Alisdare, whom we call Dare, is thirty-five, and the sheriff of College Park, a suburb of Atlanta. Thorn is thirty-four and builds motorcycles as well as races them. Last year he was the only African-American on the circuit. Stone will be celebrating his thirty-second birthday next month. He’s an author of action-thriller novels and writes under the pen name of Rock Mason.”
    She shifted in her seat as she continued. “Chase and Storm are twins but look nothing alike. They are