Heller's Revenge (5 page)

“You are a very greedy boy.” He
grinned again.

I raised my body and lowered
myself slowly onto his erect shaft. He made a low pleasurable
growl. I grasped his hands and stretched his arms out over his
head, pinning him to the bed while I moved my body up and down on
him. We kissed deeply, tongues twisting together, and I pumped
vigorously until waves of ecstasy rolled through my body. A few
pumps later, he shuddered and moaned also. I collapsed onto him,
breathing heavily. He wrapped me in his arms and rolled me over,
assuming the dominant position.

“You always run away at
midnight. You’re like Cinderella,” he complained, nibbling on my
ear.

“That must make you my Prince
Charming then,” I teased, kissing his nose. “Although I don’t
remember Mum reading me the part in the story where Prince Charming
shagged Cinderella’s brains out all night.”

“He didn’t get the chance, did
he? Because she kept running away. If she’d stayed past midnight
for once, all I can say is if the pumpkin coach is a-rocking, don’t
come a-knocking.”

I giggled and pushed him off me.
I managed to make it off the bed this time and dressed quickly in
my work uniform again. I pulled on my socks and slipped my feet
into my boots. I didn’t bother putting my utility belt back on,
slinging it over my shoulder instead. I probably should have gone
home to change before I came to his house, but I hadn’t wanted to
waste any of the precious little time we had together.

“Tilly,” he remonstrated in a
sulky tone.

“Will,” I replied patiently. “I
have to go. My ride will be here any second. And he hates to be
kept waiting.”

“You never stay all night. It
would be nice to wake up next to you one morning. I want to make
you breakfast.” His soft brown eyes regarded me plaintively as he
ran his fingers through his wild, curly brown hair. We’d been going
out for about three months now and had had this same conversation
every time we’d seen each other. To tell the truth, it was becoming
a little tiresome.

I suppressed a huge sigh. If
only he knew what I had to go through to even be allowed to spend
half the night with him. I leaned over the bed and kissed him
gently.

“I know you do, babe, but I have
to go.” I checked the time on his bedside clock. “Shit! I’m
late.”

I kissed him again hurriedly,
leaving him watching after me unhappily as I raced out his front
door. I flew down the front path, vaulted over the gate and threw
myself in the passenger seat of the black Mercedes 4WD that was
idling outside his house.

“You kept me waiting, Matilda,”
said the man in the driver’s seat.

“Sorry. I lost track of the
time.”

He leaned over, grasped my chin
in his hand and searched my face intently, taking in my satiated
features. He rubbed the back of his thumb gently over my lips. “You
have a rash. You should tell him to shave more carefully.”

I gazed into his piercing blue
eyes and smiled lazily. “I don’t mind. It was well worth it.”

“You had a pleasant
evening?”

“Very.” I stretched languorously
and yawned hugely as he drove off. “Did you?”

“We had a poker match. Niq won.
He scammed twenty dollars out of me and forty dollars out of
Daniel.”

I laughed. “We’ll have to keep
our eye on him in the future. Last time I played with him, he did
me for fifty bucks! He’s practicing on the internet, you know. He
could turn out to be a card shark.”

“Tell me about what you did
tonight.”

“No! Don’t be an old perv. It’s
private.” He smiled at that.

I rested my eyes on him while he
drove. It was almost a sinful pleasure to view him, with his strong
chiselled features, spiky blond hair, strikingly blue eyes and
beautiful mouth. He was in his thirties, very tall with a sexy,
muscular body and was quite easily the most beautiful human being
I’d had the fortune of setting eyes on. All this deliciousness was
topped off with a very charming German or Scandinavian accent (as I
said before, I’m not good with accents and he refused to tell me
where he was from). He was also the most enigmatic person I’d ever
met and I couldn’t quite believe anything he said about himself. He
called himself Heller, although he’d told me once that it wasn’t
his real name. I lived with him and his assortment of ‘lost boys’
that he’d collected during his life – mountain-sized identical
twins, Sid and Clive; vulnerable, scarred Daniel; teenaged Goth,
Niq; and his mysterious, never-sighted valet, Victor – at the
Warehouse, his fortress-like business premise and residence.

My name’s Tilly Chalmers, but
Heller always calls me by my full name, Matilda, for some reason
he’s never bothered to explain, even though I hate it. I thought I
wanted to be an actor before I landed my current job with Heller
about five months ago. We’ve been through a lot together already,
including a fairly bumpy road determining the exact nature of our
own relationship, but had currently settled on a cease-fire. He let
me see my boyfriend, Will, but insisted on picking me up at
midnight and wouldn’t let me stay over under any circumstances.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you all
asking why the hell would I put up with such chauvinistic nonsense,
being the modern woman that I am? Well, the truth is that this
is
the compromise position. If Heller had his way, I
wouldn’t be allowed to see or visit, or
especially
sleep
with Will at all. He’s a little over-protective like that.

But when I turned my back on
acting (with no real loss to the acting world, I should confess), I
made a commitment to Heller to be his loyal employee and to abide
by the Rules of Heller. In return, he promised to allow me some
freedom, which is how I get to be with Will. It sounds restrictive,
but my job comes with many perks, including interesting, varied and
sometimes dangerous work, free rent, an enormous salary, free food
and entertainment, free styling and clothes, good friends, and best
of all, Heller himself. He’s kind of a boss with benefits, if you
know what I mean, and we fooled around from time to time. Not that
we’d ever slept together, I just want to make that perfectly clear.
I mean, he’s my
boss
, for God’s sake! How smart would that
be? Although I’d be lying if I said I’d never been tempted,
especially before I met Will and hadn’t had any action for a long,
long time. I’d been very tempted by my beautiful boss.

“So when do I get to meet this
‘boyfriend’ of yours?” He always made that word sound like some
kind of disease I’d accidently picked up while on holiday.

“Never! You did say you would
like to hurt him when you met him or have you forgotten that?
Because I haven’t.”

He shrugged. “It was merely an
expression.”

“Sure it was. But I’m not
willing to risk it.”

We’d had a very tense moment a
few months ago, after Will’s and my first proper date. Will had
taken me to a movie and we’d eaten at a nice restaurant, sharing
some delightfully romantic smooches sitting on a vantage point near
the harbour while we watched the boats coming and going.
Afterwards, he’d invited me back to his place for a nightcap and
the second he’d closed the door, I’d jumped his bones, sex-starved
and desperate. The poor guy hadn’t stood a chance and I’d used him
mercilessly for hours, to the point of collapse. We never did get
around to having that nightcap.

There had been a dossier sitting
on my kitchen bench when Heller had picked me up and I’d returned
to my flat late that evening. I’d approached it slowly and warily.
The name on the front had been written in Heller’s bold, elegant
script –
William Joseph Armstrong
. I’d been
immediately and exceptionally pissed off. I had explicitly asked
Heller
not
to run a check on Will, because I didn’t want to
know everything about him before we had even started to get to know
each other.

Unfortunately though, I am a
naturally nosy creature and instead of having the integrity to
refuse to look, I had found myself opening the file and flicking
through the pages. There were school and university records, notes
about his family and friends, details of his career as a high
school science teacher. A couple of speeding fines. A court
appearance for being drunk and disorderly after a buck’s night ten
years ago when he was twenty-five. Handwritten notes, obviously
recorded after covert interviews with ex-girlfriends and ex-bosses.
A few photos, including a cute one of him in his graduation robes
taken with his parents, grandparents and sister. Nothing dramatic.
No current or ex-wives, no children, no prison records, no arrests
for child molestation or domestic violence, no psychopathic family
members. A blameless, innocent life. Which is the only reason
Heller lets me see him, I suppose.

I had grabbed that dossier,
marched straight up to Heller’s flat on the floor above and pounded
loudly on his door until he opened it. He hadn’t been surprised to
see me. He knows that I have a temper and would have been expecting
some fireworks from me once I returned home and saw his handiwork.
He stood there, leaning on the doorway, a sexy but arrogant smile
on his face, one hand on his lithe hips, one eyebrow raised
quizzically. I had glared at him and thrown the dossier on the
floor at his feet, where it skidded on the polished timber, papers
and photos spilling out everywhere.

“Stay away from Will,” I had
angrily demanded.

“You read it though, didn’t
you?” he had smiled, with a confidence that pushed my buttons.

“Piss off, Heller.”

The second it was out of my
mouth, I’d wished I hadn’t said it. He hates it when I swear at
him. Despite his amorality about almost everything that I
considered important in life – like murder and arson – he never
swore, didn’t smoke and was virtually a complete teetotaller.

Before I could even turn to
stomp away, his hand had shot out and grabbed me cruelly by my
upper arm. He had pulled me up close to him and stared me down with
his glacial eyes, face stony, until I’d had to blink and look away.
I had shaken off his arm furiously and pushed past him into his
flat to pick up the papers strewn across his floor. I had shoved
them carelessly back in the folder and dumped it ungraciously on
his side table, before pushing past him again, glaring at him all
the while. I had walked away without saying another word to
him.

He hates it even more when I’m
angry with him.

~~~~~~

Everyone was still awake when
Heller and I arrived back at the Warehouse. We climbed the stairs
up six flights to the rooftop, the building’s antique lift still
not repaired after months of being out of action. When I’d first
started working for Heller, a trek upstairs like that would have
left me red-faced and breathless, but I was a lot fitter these days
and climbed with little effort. Of course Heller himself was
exceptionally buff and probably could have carried me up the stairs
without even breaking a sweat.

The rooftop offered an
unspectacular view of the surrounding semi-industrial buildings and
grungy neighbourhood, but was a pleasant place to laze away a
couple of hours. Heller had generously fitted it out as a leisure
centre for those of us who lived with him, complete with a barbeque
and hot tub.

There was a general cheer of
greeting for me at my entrance. I waved vaguely at everyone in
return as I kicked off my boots and pulled off my socks.

Daniel immediately went to the
small bar fridge located in the barbeque area and poured me a glass
of pinot grigio. I was delighted to notice that he was wearing a
short-sleeved t-shirt, attire appropriate for the late autumn heat
we were currently experiencing. It was something he’d refused to do
when I first met him, being incredibly self-conscious of the ugly,
self-inflicted scars slashed across both his wrists. He had many
other scars as well, physical and emotional, the legacy of an
horrendous childhood. Not the least was a conspicuous, jagged scar
that traversed in a semi-circle from the edge of his left eye down
to the corner of his mouth, marring his otherwise attractive face.
We all celebrated each small step he took towards building his
self-confidence.

“You always seem to know when I
need some wine, my lovely Danny-boy,” I smiled, taking the glass
from him and giving him a quick peck on the lips. I hadn’t seen him
all day and I’d missed him. We were the same age and had grown very
close over the last five months.

“That’s because you
always
need some wine,” Heller commented dryly, before
joining Niq and the twins, Sid and Clive, who were huddled around
an open laptop. I poked my tongue out at him in rebuke once he had
safely turned his back and wandered over to the others, curious
about what they were doing.

“Hey, cutie-pie,” I said,
ruffling Niq’s jet black Goth hair, which he hates me doing,
spending ages styling it each day. He complained loudly,
immediately rearranging it back into its ordered perfection.

“What are you guys up to?” I
asked casually.

“We’re watching something,”
grinned Daniel. Sid smothered a laugh, Niq started giggling and
even Clive appeared slightly less dour than normal. I glanced over
at Heller and saw that the corners of his lips were twitching with
barely suppressed amusement as well.

Instantly suspicious, I
demanded, “What is it? And why are you all laughing?”

“Well,” Daniel explained,
flashing me his appealing crooked smile, the scar tissue on his
face preventing him from smiling in full. “Niq and I were browsing
YouTube to see if we could find any footage of the lingerie show.
You know, footage that people took with their phones.”

“Why?”

“For research purposes,” he
replied, straight-faced.