Cesar was losing it. He knew he was losing it. But he couldn’t take his mouth off Lexie’s. He’d never tasted anything so sweet. Or so wicked. The way that lush mouth softened under his, the feel of that body under his hands …
Dios.
Cesar finally pulled back, heart hammering. He did not ravish women in the back of his cars. He was cool, calm, controlled. Right now he felt anything but. He could hardly see straight. His body was on fire.
Lexie was looking at him with huge eyes. She thought he’d done that on purpose. And he had—but not for the reasons she obviously suspected. He wanted to make sure there was no ambiguity about how he felt about her.
He cupped that delicate jaw. Her mouth was pink, swollen. He couldn’t help running his thumb across that pouting lower lip, feeling its fleshy softness.
‘Make no mistake, Lexie, I want you … and not just to distract the crowds. You know the truth of what I said earlier. We will be lovers for real.’
BLOOD BROTHERS
Power and passion run in their veins
Rafaele and Alexio have learned that to feel emotion is to be weak. Calculated ruthlessness brings them immense success in the boardroom and in the bedroom. But a storm is coming with the sudden appearance of a long-lost half-brother, Cesar, and three women who will change their lives for ever …
Read Rafaele Falcone’s story in: WHEN FALCONE’S WORLD STOPS TURNING February 2014
Read Alexio Christakos’s story in: WHEN CHRISTAKOS MEETS HIS MATCH April 2014
And read Cesar Da Silva’s story in: WHEN DA SILVA BREAKS THE RULES June 2014
When Da Silva
Breaks the Rules
Abby Green
ABBY GREEN spent her teens reading Mills & Boon® romances. She then spent many years working in the film and TV industry as an assistant director. One day while standing outside an actor’s trailer in the rain, she thought: There has to be more than this. So she sent off a partial to Mills & Boon®. After many rewrites they accepted her first book and an author was born. She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and you can find out more here: www.abby-green.com
Recent titles by the same author:
WHEN CHRISTAKOS MEETS HIS MATCH
(Blood Brothers) WHEN FALCONE’S WORLD STOPS TURNING (Blood Brothers) FORGIVEN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN? EXQUISITE REVENGE
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Contents
PROLOGUE
CESAR DA SILVA hated to admit that coming here had had any effect on him, but his gut was heavy and tight as he stood on the path near the grave. He asked himself again why he’d even come and reflexively his fingers closed around the small velvet pouch with its heavy weight in his hand. He’d almost forgotten about it.
He smiled cynically. Who would have thought that at the age of thirty-seven he’d be obeying urges and compulsions? Usually he was the king of logic and reason.
People drifted away from the open grave a short distance across the hilly green space. Ornate mini-mausoleum-style headstones dotted the cemetery in the hills of Athens, its grass no doubt kept generously watered in the Greek heat.
Finally there were only two men left by the grave. Both tall, of similar height, with dark hair. One had slightly darker and shorter hair than the other. They were broad, as Cesar was, with powerful builds.
It was no wonder they were all similar. He was their half-brother. And they had no idea he even existed. He saw one put his hand on the shoulder of the other. They were Rafaele Falcone and Alexio Christakos. They all shared the same mother, but had different fathers.
Cesar waited for icy rage to surge upwards upon seeing this evidence of the family he’d always been denied, but instead he felt a kind of aching emptiness. They came towards him then, talking in quiet voices. Cesar caught his youngest half-brother’s words on the slight breeze—something like, ‘Couldn’t even clean up for the funeral...?’
Falcone replied indistinctly, with a quirk to his mouth, and Christakos riposted, smiling too.
The emptiness receded and anger rose up within Cesar. But it was a different kind of anger. These men were joking, joshing, just feet away from their mother’s grave. And since when did Cesar feel protective of the woman who had taught him from the age of three that he could depend on no one?
Galvanised by that very unwelcome revelation, Cesar moved forward and Falcone looked up, words dying on his lips, smile fading. Falcone’s gaze was enquiring at first and then, as Cesar drilled holes into him with his stare, it became something else. Cold.
With a quick flick of a glance to the younger man by his half-brother’s side, Cesar noted that they’d also all inherited varying shades of their beautiful but treacherous mother’s green eyes.
‘May we help you?’ Falcone asked coolly.
Cesar glanced over them both again and then at the open grave in the distance. He asked, with a derisive curl to his lip, ‘Are there any more of us?’
Falcone looked at Christakos, who was frowning, and said, ‘Us? What are you talking about?’
Cesar pushed down the spreading blackness within him and said with ominous quiet, ‘You don’t remember, do you?’
But he could see from the dawning shock that his half-brother did, and Cesar didn’t like the way something inside him tightened at that recognition. Those light green eyes widened imperceptibly. He