02 Heller's Revenge - Heller Read online

  Heller’s Revenge

  by JD Nixon

  Copyright JD Nixon 2011

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or real locations, is purely coincidental.

  Also by JD Nixon at Smashwords:

  Heller series

  Heller (free ebook!)

  Heller’s Revenge

  Heller’s Girlfriend – due end January 2012

  Little Town series

  Blood Ties (free ebook!)

  Blood Sport – due end November 2011

  Cover design by JD Nixon (and friend)

  ~~~~~~

  Chapter 1

  “Sweet baby Jesus, your ass is so big in that!” he wailed in his heavy accent, clutching fistfuls of hair in anguish. “It’s like watching two planets collide when you walk.”

  The other women in the dressing room with me sniggered softly behind their beautifully manicured hands, smugly confident in their own prodigiously perfect posteriors.

  He circled me again, face creased with sheer wretchedness, almost on the point of tears. “I’m ruined! Your huge ass is going to destroy my business!”

  I stared down at the little man raging in front of me and thought to myself, client or not, if he made one more crack about the size of my butt, I would seriously damage his ability to pass on his genes.

  When I’d rolled out of bed this morning, running late and quietly cursing that final glass of wine I’d imbibed the previous evening, I certainly hadn’t expected to end up on a stage in front of five hundred people. Especially wearing nothing but a skimpy matching bra and panty set consisting of little more than a few tiny strategic strips of black leather held together with enough silver chains to overpower the entire cast of True Blood. The whole ensemble was accessorised with a pair of black leather and silver chain wristbands and a killer black pair of fuck-me high heels that I wobbled in dangerously every time I took a step.

  As I reluctantly stepped out onto the stage, I surveyed the audience, realising that it was like one of those awful dreams where you find yourself naked at work for some unknown reason – but worse, so much worse, because this was actually happening to me. And although I visited the gym regularly, any woman was bound to start wondering how big her butt really looked in those bitsy panties when five hundred shallow, easily bored people were casting critical eyes over her body.

  I scanned the crowd for my workmates, finding them easily by their black uniforms, gigantic heights and their stance, beefy arms crossed with menacing inference. Then I clocked their face-splitting grins at my predicament, not to mention their appreciative nods and winks at each other as they checked out my bare flesh. Fuming, I contemplated how to make three huge men permanently disappear, to prevent news of my embarrassing situation finding its way back to the office and our boss, Heller. Perhaps a chainsaw and an acid bath might help?

  It had all started well. As a newly licensed security officer, Heller had personally chosen me to join the three men in a job at a major upmarket department store. The brief was to provide security for its annual lingerie fashion show and from the conversations I’d overheard in the security section of Heller’s Security & Surveillance, competition for the job amongst the men had been feral. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that Jenna Mackenzie, the nation’s top lingerie model, would be making a guest appearance modelling the world-famous Masquerade brand of racy burlesque lingerie. Or maybe it was just because mountain-sized men surging with testosterone seemed to be extraordinarily interested in attractive young women parading around in scanty nothings.

  I wasn’t sure how the three men with me had won their coveted positions on the assignment. I suspected it had something to do with man-to-man combat in a crowded arena wearing loosely-tied miniscule loincloths, bodies oiled, using nothing but their hands and incredible muscles as weapons. Okay, that’s probably just my own personal fantasy, but it could have been true if Heller didn’t run his business so tightly. Heller’s was a monument to muscled machismo and as the business’ only female employee, I still struggled to find my place among all the brawny men, despite having worked there for five months.

  I’d been surprised by who had been chosen in the end. Heller and his hard-arse security manager, Clive, hadn’t been able to spare any of the older, more experienced men like Rumbles and Tysen, because they were needed for more important jobs. But the assignment wasn’t judged by anyone to be potentially dangerous, even though in the past Jenna had been the target of a couple of over-zealous male fans who verged on being stalkers. So the privilege had fallen instead to three younger, greener men. At twenty-five, I was the oldest of our team and with the least experience, but my first impression of the trio was that they were all of an age to still instinctively think with their little heads rather than their big ones. And that would make the lingerie show assignment just that tad more interesting for everyone.

  We had driven to the department store in one of the Heller’s black fleet 4WDs, wearing our uniforms – black polo shirt with a gold monogrammed H logo on the pocket and SECURITY written in gold across the back, black cargo pants, chunky black boots and a black utility belt. The men were fired up and swapping wisecracks on the way, and on arrival, we’d taken up our positions well before the show started. One guy, Tony, and I were at the front near the stage, the other two at the back, keeping an eye on the crowd and grumbling about the distance between them and the catwalk. Four of us seemed like overkill to me as the organisers had carefully handpicked the guests. I’d read in the paper that not getting an invitation was the social kiss-of-death in that circle of people who didn’t work too hard for a living in this city. I hardly need to mention that I hadn’t received an invitation, but casting my eyes over the assorted posers, butt-kissers and Z-grade celebrities in attendance, I had no great regret about that.

  The show was going smoothly and the audience was behaving itself, but the continuous stream of young lovelies strutting down the catwalk distracted Tony from his duties. I guess that’s why Heller sent me along, so that at least one of us could keep our mind on the job. Tony stared up at the women, his mouth agape, an expression of pure craving on his face that made me wonder how long it had been since he’d last scored a shag. I’d seen that look of desperate, despairing sexual hunger before – in the mirror, before I started working for Heller.

  Thank God those days were long gone, I thought happily, letting my mind dwell momentarily on my planned evening of carnal excess, before dragging it back to Tony’s dilemma. I reckon a colossal mothership, all strobing lights and futuristic sound effects, could squish half the audience as it landed and release an army of aliens to take me away for a thorough probing, and Tony wouldn’t even notice, all his attention captured by the procession of perky boobs and butts in front of us. He thought his cup runneth over, and I thought so did quite a few of the bra cups of the buxom models on display and speculated on how much of that perkiness was surgically acquired.

  The first half of the show finished and the models disappeared offstage. In the interval, before the Masquerade parade started, the guests were plied with French champagne and canapes made from
hideously expensive ingredients, but so small in size that plankton would still have been hungry after eating a couple. We weren’t meant to eat on duty, and certainly not food prepared for guests, but my tummy was growling because I’d missed breakfast in my rush to be ready on time.

  I managed to nick three canapes from a tray borne by a spotty teenaged waiter whose attention was momentarily diverted by the unnatural cleavage of one of the nation’s top soapie stars. I remembered her from my own brief stint as a minor character on the soapie Summer Days – a woman so thick that she thought climate change was when winter turned to spring. The bitchy joke circulating at the time amongst us lesser beings on the set was that she didn’t have a body double, but a brain double.

  I shrank back into a dark corner in the doubtful case that she’d recognise me. Hastily, before anyone noticed, I shoved the canapes in my mouth, mulling over the flavours as I chewed. Truffles – tick; Wagyu beef – tick; west coast lobster – tick; southern coast oysters – tick; caviar – tick; hint of saffron – tick; and I believed that the shiny substance on top was 24-carat edible gold leaf. I had just dined on the world’s wankiest titbits.

  “Hey you!” hissed an accented voice in my direction.

  Guiltily I spun around, desperately swallowing the last evidence of my misbehaviour. Oh shit! I was in trouble now. That mouthful of mine had probably cost the organisers close to $200.

  “Come here!” the voice hissed again.

  Now the models had left the stage, Tony finally noticed me again and raised his eyebrows in question. I shrugged, squared up and went to face my bollocking. I was probably going to be fired, sent back to Heller’s in disgrace and replaced with a colleague who was more professional and less hungry. I dreaded what Heller would say about that. He could be a little scathing sometimes.

  “In here,” the voice hissed once more and I was grateful that I’d be fired in private, not in front of everyone, which wouldn’t have done Heller’s branding (nor my lifespan when he found out) any favours. With one last rueful glance over my shoulder at Tony, I pushed through the gold curtains that separated the catwalk from the backstage area to confront my accuser.

  He was a tiny man, so camp that boy scouts could have pitched their tents on him. He had shoulder-length brown hair generously tinted with blond, a wisp of a pencil moustache across artificially inflated lips, thick black straight eyebrows and black bedroom eyes enhanced with a touch of makeup.

  He was wearing something straight out of The Dominatrix Doctrine for Diminutive Dudes – black singlet top featuring a sparkling silver silhouette of Lady Gaga, silver-studded black leather jacket, tight purple leather pants blatantly stuffed with socks, knee-high chunky black military boots that made him look as though he was considering invading a small country in his holidays, and more piercings than a porcupine’s blow-up sex doll. I’m not great with accents, so couldn’t tell where his was from, but I guessed some part of Europe – maybe France? It was certainly different to Heller’s accent, which I also had miserably failed to identify.

  “Oh God, look what I’m reduced to,” the man groaned, glowering up at me with disgust. “I’m fucking ruined.”

  “Pardon, sir?” I asked, bemused.

  “You work for the organisers, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you walk?”

  What a weird question. “Of course I can. You just saw me walk over to you.”

  “Not that gorilla gait! Can you walk? Strut? Display the goods?”

  What the hell was he talking about? “Of course I can walk,” I repeated, emphasising the word just as he had done. Maybe he was hard of hearing or his English wasn’t very good?

  “Fine, because I’m desperate and you’ll just have to do. At least you’re tall enough.”

  “Hey, if you need a tall person, my colleagues are taller than me and –” I helpfully began to tell him as he scampered down a hall, impatiently beckoning me to follow.

  He stopped and spun around, angry disbelief on his face. “Are you jerking me off?”

  “What?” I asked, startled. “No!” Eww!

  “I don’t need fucking men!”

  That’s not what my gaydar was telling me. I thought for a moment. “Did you mean, am I jerking you around?”

  “That’s what I said,” he insisted huffily.

  I wasn’t going to correct him. I didn’t know who he was and he might have been someone who could get me fired. I hadn’t failed to notice that the canape-eating incident hadn’t yet been mentioned and I sure as hell wasn’t going to raise it if he wasn’t.

  “No, I’m not jerking you –”

  “Hurry up!” he snapped, interrupting. “We’re going to be late. Merde! I’m finished in this business if I don’t sort this out!”

  I followed him to a crowded dressing room buzzing with pre-show panic and activity. I wasn’t unfamiliar with that, having done some live acting before. Yeah, okay, I was playing a piece of fruit in a play for primary school kids, but the atmosphere was the same. Trust me.

  In the middle of the melee sat Jenna Mackenzie, minions flapping around her making last minute touches to her makeup and hair. She ignored them, looking serenely divine, staring at herself in the mirror, practicing her provocative pout. She wore a red leather bustier that cupped her impressive boobs, hooked by suspenders to red fishnet stockings. A miniscule pair of red satin panties, not enough material to blow your nose on, and impossibly high red stilettos completed her ensemble. All the other women wore a riot of styles and materials, but each in solid black. Jenna would be a standout in her scarlet-woman red.

  “I found someone!” the tiny man shouted into the chaos and everyone stopped what they were doing to turn and cheer. “It’s not good, but it will have to do.”

  I sure hoped that I wasn’t the ‘it’ he was referring to. I could feel my blood temperature rising already. He dragged me through the crush to a clothes rack filled with lingerie, his eyes scouring my body before choosing a set.

  He thrust them at me. “You’ll be wearing my fabulous Chain Gang, the latest in my Captivating Convict range. So get changed and snap to it.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a lady down tonight and . . . Oh mon Dieu! I’m so desperate!” he sighed dramatically. “You’ll have to fill in for her. Otherwise we’ll be lopsided.”

  “Lopsided?”

  He pushed me towards a small changing cubicle. “Do you keep your lady hedges trimmed?”

  “What?” Suddenly we were talking about gardening? I was confused – conversationally, this guy was all over the place.

  He sighed with exaggerated exasperation. “Down there! Is your girlie garden well-tended?”

  “Huh?”

  He stared at me as if I was an imbecile. “Do you bare your goods in the downstairs department?”

  Now he was talking about shopping? “I-I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he complained, eyes rolling to the heavens at my stupidity. “Do you wax your pussy?”

  “Oh!” Geez, how much more personal could a man be? “Um . . . yes . . . everything’s in order down there, thank you very much,” I replied with Antarctic frostiness.

  “Well, that’s something to be thankful for at least. I don’t want any of my ladies looking as though they’re trying to smuggle a Yeti through Customs.”

  I felt as though this had gone on long enough and rounded on him. “Okay, who the hell are you and what exactly are you expecting me to do?”

  There was a sudden hush and every eye flew to me in shock. A hum of offended whispering rippled around the room as the tiny man drew himself taller and addressed me with dignity. “I am Jules Roux.”

  I stared at him blankly, no wiser.

  Annoyed at having to explain further, he continued, “The designer of the world-renowned Masquerade brand of lingerie.”

  “Oh. That Jules Roux,” I pretended.

  He huffed and pushed the lingerie set into my hands again. “
I’m a model down tonight and you are going to fill in for her. On the catwalk.”

  “Oh no,” I said, shaking my head and backing away. “I couldn’t possibly do that. I’m just a security –”

  “I don’t give a shit what you are! You work for the organisers and you are filling in for them. For me. I won’t have my beautiful Jenna lopsided at her grand finale. I need you to make up the numbers. It’s a great honour to be asked by me, you know. Models over the world beg to be chosen to be in my shows.” He thrust the lingerie at me once more. “Now get ready.” He stalked away.

  “No,” I repeated to his retreating back. It was a ridiculous request – I was no model. I’d only recently committed to becoming a security officer and I didn’t want to change careers now.

  He turned around. “Do you want me to tell the organisers that it’s all because of you that my show was a failure? That Jenna was embarrassed in front of all of those important, influential people out there because of you?”

  Important, influential people? Had we been looking at the same crowd? “Well no, of course –”

  “Your choice, darling,” he snapped, interrupting. “And you have five minutes to get ready.”

  He departed, leaving me behind with a disagreeable dilemma. I asked myself what Heller would want me to do, but I already knew the answer. Always with an eye for a business opportunity, Heller would want me to keep the client happy. This would improve his chance of being chosen again to provide security for the same show next year, and maybe also some of the department store’s other fashion parades throughout the year. But still I hesitated, lingerie dangling in my hand, glancing at the women surrounding me in various states of undress.

  “I can’t,” I said to them faintly. “I’m a security officer.”

  “Please?” asked Jenna in a soft wheedling tone, slinking over to me, the minions in her trail complaining that she’d never be ready in time. “It would mean so much to me. It’s a huge show for me and I won’t have the right number of women behind me on my grand finale if you don’t.”