The Sound of Salvation (Deliverance Book 1)

  Copyright © 2020 by I. A. Dice

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by: Net Hook & Line Design

  Edited by: Cynthia Castillo

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  www.iadice.co.uk

  Other books by I. A. Dice:

  “Broken Rules”

  “Broken Promises”

  You can fool the world with your smiles,

  but you can never fool your heart.

  Unknown

  CHAPTER 1

  THOMAS

  Nice to meet you

  I glanced over my shoulder to find my assistant, or rather, an ex-assistant—Ann—sitting on a round sofa in my office, adjusting her clothes. She pulled a blue skirt down, and then up by a few inches, realizing she covered too much. After she smoothed the creases on her blouse, getting it back to the previous state, Anne walked across the room, swaying her hips.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” She licked her lips, giving me a slow, shameless once-over.

  One. Please, just one woman who wouldn’t expect round two, three or a ring. One who wouldn’t expect declarations, proclamations, whispered confessions, or my number. One who would let herself out not looking back.

  Too much to ask for?

  Shit.

  “Yes,” I said, focusing my attention on the pile of paperwork on my desk. “Pack your things. You’re fired.”

  “Fired?” she choked. “But… but why?”

  Either women were getting dumber, or I was getting crankier. Lately, not one came up with anything more creative than “why”, and at least a dozen others found themselves in a similar predicament as Ann.

  I’m an asshole. Nice to meet you.

  “What did you expect?” I asked, crossing my arms. “A promotion? You failed your probation.” I reserved the patronising tone of my voice for women I fucked, and my best friend Nicholas if pissing him off was on the agenda. And it often was.

  Whoever invented the probation period deserved a Nobel Prize. I hired, fucked, and fired women on repeat for two years now causing no problems to the business, as long as my victims weren’t employed longer than three months. None lasted half the time, so I was safe.

  Advertising the job and interviewing new candidates every two to three weeks caused unnecessary staff downtime. Nicholas lost his patience once or twice. Or more, but who was counting? He even threatened to put an end to my extracurricular activities if I didn’t stop dumping the workload on his assistant, Anthony, whenever I fired mine.

  To keep my hobby and maintain Nick’s and Anthony’s good moods, I organised an open house and gathered twenty CVs to minimise staff downtime.

  A good assistant had to possess four qualities to secure the position: she had to be tall, skinny, blue-eyed and blonde. Slutty was a bonus but not a necessity. They all ended up crushing on me whether it took one week or three.

  Panty peeler. Nice to meet you.

  Nick considered my attraction to that specific type a mental problem. He urged me to see a specialist, claiming I had issues. Well… Yes, yes I did, but not in that department.

  There was no special reason for hair colour preference. I simply liked blondes. I liked their blue eyes, long curls, and even longer legs. Five foot eight was a minimum, and heels were a must.

  Ann propped her hands on her waist like an outraged high school teacher, ready to scold my wicked behaviour.

  “You fired me because I had sex with you?”

  “I had sex with you” didn’t paint the picture quite well. “You fucked me” described the five minutes Ann spent with her legs spread wide open much better.

  “Yes.”

  What else could I say? It would have been thoughtful to lie, but I was short on thoughtfulness and refused to hand it out to just anyone.

  Her eyes widened and lips parted, but words failed to arrive. She retreated out of the office, slamming the door to give an outlet to the frustration caused by losing her job and not getting satisfied when her boobs were pressed against the wall ten minutes earlier.

  Not one assistant held back longer than a month before giving me the green light. I could bag them more than once since they were handing themselves over on a silver platter with a bow tied around their waists, but once was enough.

  Fucking my assistant, or any other girl, more than once never ended well. I learnt the lesson the hard way when Nick and I started the company.

  Grace was perfect—my kind of perfect—a tall, skinny blonde with eyes like sapphires. She was a model we hired for a promotional video. Half an hour after she introduced herself, she dragged me to my office, took her panties off, and spread her legs on my desk nice and wide. Ten minutes later, she stood up and left like a good girl should.

  We repeated the little ritual for a week. It was fun until she asked me to accompany her to a party. She said her friends were dying to meet her new boyfriend… A week of quickies somehow made her think I was looking for a relationship. A few minutes on my desk didn’t exactly scream “I care about you,” but Grace had a weird outlook on the world.

  From then on, I kept it to one occasion only. And those didn’t last longer than fifteen minutes because I didn’t care about a warmup nor their enjoyment of the moment.

  I’m a dick. Nice to… See what I mean?

  I took out a pile of CVs from the bottom drawer, opened the first one, and called the girl. Marie Hill was ecstatic to come in for an interview on Monday morning. Little did she know the job was hers, provided that she hadn’t gained weight or dyed her hair dark.

  Twenty minutes later, Nicholas walked into my office with two white paper cups of steaming coffee. The bitter aroma reached my nose before he closed the door. A contorted expression on his face had me bracing for another one of his monologues titled “Drawbacks of fucking and firing your assistants”.

  He took a seat across from me and pushed a take-away latte my way while drumming We Will Rock You on the armrest.

  I raised my hand to stop him before he started complaining. “Spare me. I know, you don’t approve. We talked about this already.”

  He shot me an annoyed look. “Yes, like ten times, but you still take no notice of what I say, Thomas. You want to keep changing your assistants every fortnight? Fine, but quit fucking them at work. Anthony is uncomfortable when they’re screaming their heads off in here.”

  Nick didn’t care about his assistant or his feelings. He just enjoyed giving me shit for no reason, like with his fiancée Amelia. Every now and then, he warned me to stay away from her even though he knew that for exactly three different reasons, I would never touch her.

  Boundaries—dicks and assholes have them too.

  Reason-slash-boundary number one—Amelia was Nick’s fiancée. Girlfriends, fiancées, and wives were off limits, just as sisters, mothers and the rest of the family. Maybe apart from cousins—those were a bit of a grey area.

  Number two—Mel had red hair. Even if she weren’t engaged to my best friend AKA business partner, AKA the huge pain in my ass, she wouldn�
��t appeal to me.

  And three—even if she weren’t his, and dyed her hair platinum, I still wouldn’t touch her because I liked her. We had a nice platonic relationship going on, and once a girl slipped into my friend zone, there was no coming out.

  Amelia was fun, down to earth, and easy-going. Although not always, sometimes she was an even bigger pain than Nick, but I guess it made me appreciate her more. Not many girls had the courage to stick up to me. Not many guys, either. Come to think of it… none, actually.

  Nick didn’t count. He was a pussy—pussy whipped, to be precise.

  “Next time, I’ll wait until James leaves.” I brought the cup to my lips, hiding a grin. “What time do you want to leave?”

  Nick’s face lit up at the reminder of our afternoon plan—a trip to the airport to pick up his sister, Nadia. He talked about her non-stop since she rang two weeks ago to say she was coming back home to London for good.

  Nick went bat-shit crazy with happiness. Literally.

  Fine, not literally, but close enough.

  I understood that brothers loved their sisters, but what Nick had going on was a borderline obsession. He worshipped the ground Nadia walked on. He would lie down on a puddle and let her use him as a bridge. It never ceased to amaze me just how much he cared about her, but I was yet to find out why every time her name left his lips he sounded like a fanatic.

  “Any time now. She lands in an hour, but you know how bad the traffic gets around Heathrow airport. Especially on a Friday.”

  “Fine by me.” I pushed the paperwork aside and rose from my chair. Nick walked out the door before I put my jacket on. “I’m done for the day,” I told Caroline when we passed the reception desk in the foyer. “Marie Hill will be here at nine a.m. on Monday for an interview.”

  Caroline too, was a blond super-model, but I never touched her. Not that I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. She was married and in love with her husband, who happened to be one of our brightest accountants. Good, honest accountants were much harder to come by than slutty blondes, so Caroline remained the only blonde girl to ever work at C&G Records, whom I didn’t fuck.

  Before taking the wheel, I lit a cigarette and hung my jacket at the back of the car. The temperature reached thirty degrees Celsius three days ago, and according to the weather forecast, it wouldn’t cool down for a few weeks. The United Kingdom hadn’t seen temperatures like that for seventy years! At least that was what the newspapers claimed … every year, really.

  In the passenger seat, Nicholas played with the radio, looking for his favourite station. “Is the boot empty? Nadia will have a lot of luggage.”

  Of course. As he mentioned fifty-eight times since Monday, Nadia lived in New York for two years, so coming back home meant she had to pack all her belongings. Honestly, if he hadn’t told me, I would have never figured it out myself.

  “Yes. I cleared it out. We can put bags on the back seat if all of it doesn’t fit in the boot.”

  He grinned when I backed out of the parking lot and took a shortcut to get to the airport faster. As much as I enjoyed Nick’s company, I wasn’t up to hearing, yet again, how excited he was to get his little sister back. The emphasis he put on “little” had me convinced Nadia was three inches tall. Nick put his shades on and drank the last of his coffee. He still hadn’t done one thing, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether he understood there was some decency to me, or he forgot to warn me in all the excitement.

  Either way, despite talking about Nadia twenty-four-seven, he didn’t once ask me to keep my hands off her. She wasn’t blonde, but neither was Mel. I expected to hear some kind of warning, since Nadia was one of the most important women in his life.

  Correction—undeniably the most important woman in his life.

  I lasted twenty minutes before my curiosity won over common sense. “No ‘Stay away from my sister’ speech? You’re slacking.”

  Nicholas chuckled, glancing at me from above his round red shades. “There’s no way she would trade Adrian for you.”

  That’s right—Nadia had a boyfriend. Nick mentioned him, but I chose to forget. To be honest, I paid little attention when he talked about his sister. I recalled vague information, like the fact she studied art, but not much more. Instead of listening, I busied my mind with more important matters, like: What would be the worst thing to put in a recycling bin? Or why do people use cutlery to eat a burger?

  I mean, how can you trust someone who doesn’t trust themselves with a fucking sandwich?

  We sped through the city and reached the airport ten minutes early. Nick got out of the car, beaming, and left me to wait. I put Die Hard into the DVD slot ready to watch it for the seventh time this month. It didn’t occur to me to keep a few different movies in the glove compartment just in case.

  The boot to my BMW opened forty minutes later. I glanced at the side mirror. A dark-haired girl stood with her back to me, next to a trolley with at least five bags stacked one on top of another. I got out to help Nick. He lacked muscles to load the luggage.

  Nadia was short. Really short. I hadn’t seen a girl shorter than her. Or maybe I did, but five foot eight was a minimum to grab my attention. Nadia wouldn’t hit it even if she jumped.

  “My Range Rover is being cleaned after Mel left a can of Pepsi on the dashboard in full sun,” Nick said. “You’ve no idea how much mess one tiny can makes when it explodes.”

  “Then whose car is this?”

  Her voice was pleasant. Melodic, but not too high.

  “Mine,” I replied, and watched her spin around. “Thomas Calix.”

  She knew who I was, but it seemed appropriate to introduce myself since it was our first encounter. I took her hand and kissed it softly, discovering a gentleman in me to please Nicholas.

  He was born with old-fashioned manners. I wasn’t, but I figured it wouldn’t kill me to try.

  Despite being a brunette, and as far from my type as possible, I would have to be blind to miss how attractive she was. I liked blondes, but it didn’t mean I considered other girls ugly. Nadia got shelved under gorgeous, and few girls hit that rank. In fact, there was only one other girl who deserved the gorgeous tag—Maya, and she wasn’t turning three for another few weeks.

  Nadia and I were checking each other out in the middle of the parking lot, and for the first few seconds our eyes didn’t lock. I watched her face, small nose, full lips the colour of peaches, and a cascade of dark brown hair, which complimented her olive skin.

  Her eyes lingered on my chest longer than appropriate. Intimidation washed over me instead of the expected pride. Finally, she tilted her head to look at my face—that’s how short she was. She would need a fucking ladder to get eye-level with me.

  Another two seconds passed before our eyes locked, but once they did my heart just stopped. For twenty-eight years, it was beating fine. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but it was always beating.

  Until I looked into Nadia’s eyes.

  They were like a window right through to her tormented soul. She acted happy and at ease, but hurt and pain hid underneath the mask. I waited for her to say something, but she looked me up and down again.

  Her eyes darkened when she moved her gaze back to my face, studying it as if I were a sample under a microscope.

  “You must be Nick’s sister,” I offered, lacking better ideas.

  Our stare down lasted half a minute but with my heart skipping a dozen beats, it felt more like an eternity.

  “Nadia,” she said.

  Her proximity was both soothing and disturbing. I wanted to avert my gaze and keep staring at the same time. And suddenly there were more things I wanted to do, and I wanted to do them to her or with her.

  I wanted to taste her lips, touch her skin, rip her clothes off, and take her right there in the middle of the car park. I wanted to bend her over the hood of my car, grab a fistful of her hair, and make her tremble in my arms. I wanted her, and I had no idea why.

  We met two minutes ago; s
he wasn’t blonde, tall or slutty, but desire erupted under my skin, and images of her naked body filled my mind.

  I realised she was Nick’s sister. His off–fucking–limits little sister. I couldn’t have her, and considering I always got what I wanted, not being able to bag her was frustrating to say the least.

  Within seconds, Nadia transformed from a girl with whom I had no reason to be interested, into a forbidden fruit. And that meant trouble. Big trouble.

  Fine, not that big—something like five foot two.

  Nicholas struggled with the first bag, and I stepped in to help him. Frustration found a way out of my system when I lifted the heavy bags. It would have helped more if I threw one across the car park. Once all were loaded, I closed the boot and took the driver’s seat.

  “What’s the plan? Or should I just ask who’s coming?” Nadia’s voice penetrated my walls, but I didn’t dare look.

  “We’ll have fun tonight. I can promise you that,” Nick said.

  He planned the evening in detail. First, a house party, then, a night out at the club because Nadia loved dancing. Half an hour ago, I looked forward to spending time with friends. Now? Not so much.

  Considering what I wanted to do to Nadia—but couldn’t—being in the same room with her seemed like a bad idea.

  My hands were shaking, and I squeezed the wheel harder, backing out of the parking space. Nadia brought me to my knees after thirty seconds, and it took just one look. What the hell would she do if she had, say, an hour or two? The evening ahead turned into a game of survival, and I fucking sucked at games. How could I keep my hands to myself if all I could think about was touching her?

  I peeked into the rear-view mirror to find Nadia resting against the window, watching the streets with moderate interest.

  Those full lips of hers were going to haunt me in my sleep.

  “Nothing changed here.” She moved her attention to Nicholas.

  He chuckled, turning around. “You were only gone for two years, not two centuries.”

  Two years too long. If she hadn’t left for New York, I would have met her two years ago. Not that I had a single idea on how we could have spent that time since I wasn’t allowed to touch her. Even thinking about her, the way I had for the past fifteen minutes was a no-no.