by KD Jones
Dom
Book 11 Galactic Cage Fighter Series
KD Jones
Copyright 2016 KD Jones
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
Chapter 11:
Chapter 12:
Chapter 13:
Chapter 14:
Chapter 15:
Chapter 16:
Chapter 17:
Chapter 18:
Chapter 19:
Epilogue:
About the Author
BLURB
He’s an alien and ex-fighter from the streets turned businessman.
She’s a human computer genius with a taste for the wild side.
What happens when a strong, domineering man meets his match?
Fireworks like nothing the galaxy has ever seen!
Prologue
Gerald Vargas was loving life. Coming from nothing, he knew how to appreciate all the things he had missed out on growing up. He had a woman in his bed and the house of his dreams. It couldn’t get any better than this. Then his phone went off. He reached over the naked woman sleeping next to him to grab it from the nightstand. It was a text from his partner, Clark Davidson: I’m caught, hide evidence.
“Shit!” He climbed out of the bed and went to the closet. He was not going to go down with Davidson just because the man had gone overboard with his vendetta. It was a good thing he had insisted they have a backup plan in case things fell apart. He couldn’t do anything to help Davidson now, he had made his own bed, but Gerald could protect his own interests.
“Gerald, what’s going on?” the woman on the bed asked, sitting up.
He didn’t even glance at the woman. She wasn’t important, just some woman from one of his parties that had stayed longer than he planned. “Get dressed, I have something I need to take care of.”
Clark had come up with this crazy plan to get even with some GCFA assistant director, and now Gerald was going to be left holding the bag if he didn’t act quickly. No way was he going to pay for Clark’s spitefulness and greed. He liked the life he had built for himself and he wasn’t going to lose it. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything ruin his world.
Chapter 1
Twenty-two years earlier
Dom sat in the back of a shuttle as it moved down the street. He shivered, wishing he had something more to wear, but the guards that had grabbed him hadn’t given him any time to even grab a blanket. He asked where they were taking him, but they didn’t answer.
The shuttle stopped near a dark alley and one of the guards opened the door to the shuttle. “Get out.”
Dom was confused. Were they doing tests outside of the lab? He knew he wasn’t pleasing the scientists with his test results. Out of his age group of six to eight years of age, he was lowest on the physical scale, even though he was the oldest.
The guard became angry when he didn’t move immediately, so he grabbed Dom’s arm and threw him outside. Dom, now frightened as well as confused, tried to climb back in, but the guard kicked him away from the shuttle.
“Go, runt! Go find your own way. You’re not wanted.”
“I need help, how will I eat? Where will I live?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not my problem.” The shuttle took off down the street, leaving him standing there alone.
What had he done to make them abandon him? Was this another test? The scientists at the facility where he had been born often put him through endurance tests. He knew they weren’t happy with his size, since they often called him “runt.” And because he learned things at a little bit of a slower pace, the guards often called him “dumb.” The younger kids he shared sleeping space with thought they called him Dom, though, so that had become his name.
Strange noises in the dark caused him to turn around in fear. Who or what was that? Another loud sound had him darting to hide behind a large dumpster. Footsteps echoed and the sounds grew louder and louder. Then they just stopped.
Dom crawled over and peered around the edge of the dumpster. Suddenly he was being lifted in the air and dangled. He kicked and clawed, trying to get his captor to release him. “Let me go!”
“What have we here?”
A tall man with blue skin and a bald head stared at him. He had only ever seen the human scientists, human guards, and the other halfsie children like himself. He had never seen a member of a full alien species before. He stilled, partly in fear and partly out of curiosity.
“What are you?” Dom asked.
The man blinked and frowned. “Did you hit your head?”
“I’ve never been out of the facility before. The scientists always kept us secluded. Did they throw you out, too?”
The man lowered him to the ground. “Those human bastards! None of them can be trusted! Look, kid, I’m a full Plutian, while you’re a halfsie-Martian, which means you’re half human and half Martian.”
“Are we going to go back to the facility?”
The man growled. “Those humans are bad humans.”
Dom agreed. “I didn’t know I was part Martian. Do they have my parents?”
“If you didn’t see your parents at the facility, then they probably either paid for eggs and seed or forced a male and female to have sex just to create you. If they dumped you out here in the middle of nowhere, then they’re washing their hands of you and that’s actually a good thing. Fuck them!”
Dom could sense the man’s anger, but he didn’t think it was directed at him. This still didn’t take away Dom’s fear of him. The man started to walk away. Despite his fear, Dom ran after him. He had no one else.
“Wait! What do I do now? Where do I go? Who will take care of me?”
The man sighed, then motioned for him to come closer. “What’s your name?”
“Dom.”
“I’m Vet. Come with me, I’ll check us into a homeless shelter for the night and teach you a few things to help you survive. I can’t promise I’ll stay with you very long, though, so you need to be able to learn quickly. Listen, but don’t ask me a bunch of questions.”
Dom nodded his head and fell into step with Vet. “I may be small and kind of slow at learning stuff, but I’m smarter than the guards think I am.”
“You’ll need to be, if you plan to survive the streets.”
Vet had stayed with Dom, traveling to various homeless shelters throughout the city for about two weeks, teaching him how to find a safe place to sleep, how to find food and who to steer clear of.
One day, Dom went out looking for food in dumpsters behind restaurants and came back to the shelter only to discover that Vet was gone. He never came back. Dom had known this day would come; Vet had told him every day that his time with Dom was limited, after all, and to make sure he picked up on things quickly. Vet didn’t like to be held down to one place for very long, but he felt sorry for Dom and would do what he could to make sure that Dom could survive.
Even having known that Vet would one day leave still didn’t make it any less scary for Dom, though. It was the fi
rst time in his young life that he was completely alone. He had only himself to count on now.
Remember Vet’s number one rule: trust no one. Taking everything that Vet taught him, he used it to ensure that he found a place to live and food to eat. He alternated going to different shelters throughout the city and would get inside by telling the workers at the shelter that his mom was waiting for him inside. They gave him entrance without questioning him. It was easy, plus the shelters had volunteers that worked there for a short time before moving on so he didn’t have a hard time finding somewhere to sleep. Vet had told him if the shelter workers suspected he didn’t have any parents, they might call social services and he would be put into an orphanage. Dom didn’t want to have anyone else telling him where to go and what to do again.
Dom learned quickly that if he offered to help the shelter workers out by cleaning or taking out the trash, it allowed him to more access to food and sometimes they would even pay him a little for his help.
Every few days, he would go back to that alley and see if the facility sent anyone after him or to check if others had been dumped there like he had been. In the beginning, he thought it would be easier if the facility did come back for him, but each day taught him that he could take care of himself. After a while, he checked the alleys simply because he didn’t want anyone else who might be dumped there by the facility to not make it. He was lucky to have found someone like Vet. If it hadn’t been for Vet, he would most likely have died on the streets.
After about a month, though, when it became clear no one else was going to be dropped off anytime soon, he stopped going. He couldn’t risk the facility deciding they wanted him back, not now that he knew what freedom was. He was ten times better off living on the streets than he had been in that facility, being forced to undergo all those horrible tests. No one told him what to do, when to do it, or how to do it. He was making his own decisions and there was no turning back for him.
*****
Twelve years later, he was searching the alley for a different reason. He grabbed hold of a booted foot that was sticking out from behind a dumpster. “Vinny, where do you think you’re going?”
“Dom, man, I meant to give you the money, I swear.”
“You say that now, but hiding from me won’t help you.”
“Tell Deviant he’ll get his money, I’m just waiting on a couple of leads.”
Dom had found work as the muscle man for a loan shark once his Martian genetics kicked in he was no longer the runt at the facility or anywhere else.
“Look, I have money.” The man pulled out a handful from his pocket, dropping some of it in his desperation. “Take it to Deviant and tell him I’ll have the rest of what I owe by the end of the week.”
Dom released the man with a shove. “Don’t try to leave the planet. I’ll track your ass down and make you sorry.”
“I won’t skip, I swear!” the man yelled out as he scurried away.
Dom knelt down to pick up the money, shaking his head. “I’m getting soft.”
“I agree, I thought you would at least break a finger before you let him run off,” a deep voice said from the shadows.
Dom narrowed his eyes, triggering a red glow that helped him see in the dark. “Who the hell are you?”
“A friend.”
Dom snorted, standing up to his full height. “I don’t have any friends.”
The man stepped forward. He was a halfsie as well, from his scent a mixture of Sorian, Priman, and Human. He was a little shorter than Dom, around six feet five inches, and about the same age. He had black hair and his eyes looked black, too, though they could be dark blue, it was hard to see in the dimly lit alley. The guy was big, but all muscle. He would give a good fight, but Dom was confident he could take him.
“Well, today is your lucky day.”
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“My name is Nigel and I want to make you an offer.”
Dom looked the man up and down. “I don’t do males.”
Nigel chuckled. “That’s good to hear, because neither do I. I want you, but not for anything sexual.”
“You’ve got five minutes to explain what you do want.”
“I want to hire you.”
“For what? I already have a good paying job.”
“That job, muscle man for a loan shark, has no future for you, except one ten feet under the ground.”
There was a pause before Dom said, “I’m listening.”
“I am a trainer and recruiter for the Galactic Cage Fighter Association.”
“I thought they only had human fighters.”
“That’s about to change, big time. I’m currently putting together two new teams of fighters, one of full aliens and the other of halfsies, that will go on circuits fighting each other for the championship title.”
“What’s it pay?”
“Five times what you current employer pays you.”
“How do you know what I get paid?”
Nigel shrugged. “It’s my job to know these things. Look, I’m offering a real, legitimate job that has a future. I started out as a trainer, then went on to doing exhibition fights. That’s when the board of the GCFA realized there was a real market out there for this. We can work together to build one of the best sporting franchises out there and rise to the top with it. At the same time, we get an opportunity to help others like ourselves get a better life.”
“What if I don’t want to do it?”
“I’ll walk away and offer the job to someone else.”
“How did you even know who I was or where to find me?”
Nigel smiled. “A guy came in to tryouts a few days ago all beat the hell up and wanted a turn. He said he needed the money to pay off a loan shark. I told him we couldn’t take him, but I would give him some money to tell me how to find the guy who beat him up.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t want the guy who was beat up, I want the guy who did the beating.”
Dom and Nigel both laughed. Nigel moved forward and raised his hand slowly. “I’ll offer this only once, then I have to move on.”
Dom looked down at the other man’s hand and something inside him told him this was it, this was his way out. He gripped Nigel’s hand tight, almost afraid to let go. “I’ll do it.”
*****
Present day, on board the GCFA ship
“Did you hear what I said, Dom?”
He had gotten lost in thoughts of his past and hadn’t been paying attention. He looked over at his friend Nigel, who was watching him with curiosity. Nigel asked him to come to his office to discuss something. When he had mentioned Surgus, the planet that Dom had lived on for the first twenty years of his life, it had brought up memories of his childhood, or what little of it he remembered.
“Sorry, I have a lot of things on my mind right now.” More and more, he had been thinking about his past. The lessons he had learned about only trusting himself and only counting on himself really influenced how he now lived his life. Especially his personal relationships. But he was starting to wonder if that needed to change.
He had always kept people at a distance, except for a handful of trusted friends. If he spent time with a woman, he always made it clear up front that he had no plans to ever have anything serious or long-term. It had worked out perfectly for him until now.
Because now he had met a slip of a woman who was smarter than anyone he had ever known. Samantha Porter was the total opposite of him. He was assertive and used to bulling his way through problems, in keeping with his muscular build. Sam was quiet and used her mind. The only time she became aggressive was when it came to her computer programs. Why he was so attracted to her, he had no clue. And then he had screwed things up royally a few days ago, when he started to give in to his sexual attraction to her, but halted out of fear before it had gone too far. He now realized what a huge mistake he’d made and couldn’t help but want her. She showed up in his dreams at night
and he found himself daydreaming about her, too. He wasn’t sure what to do.
“Get your head on straight, we have a problem and I need your help to fix it.”
“Sorry. What is it?”
“Pheonix wants to quit. I can’t talk to him because—”
“He was after your woman, and since you got her and he didn’t, he wants to break his contract,” Dom finished for him.
“Exactly. He’s taking this personally. Amelia wants to talk to him, but she has her family on board visiting her right now. I don’t want to ruin her time with them.”
“How’s that going, by the way? Have they accepted you?”
Nigel sighed. “It’s taking longer than I thought. I’m glad I put them up in their own suite, because even as it is, they keep interrupting us at the worst possible times.”
Dom chuckled. “Cockblocking you, huh?”
Nigel shifted in his seat. “Big time.”
“Just hang in there, buddy, soon they’ll be gone and then you’ll have her all to yourself.”
“I can’t wait.”
“So you need me to talk to Phoenix, maybe offer him more money.”
“I tried that and he punched me in the face. He was furious that I would think that he cared more about money than he did about Amelia.”
“What do you want me to offer him then, fewer fights or more fights?”
“I don’t know. Amelia says that he needs a girlfriend of his own.”
“I’m a damn dating service, Nigel.”
“I know that, but you could talk to Lydia, see if she has any employees that would volunteer to spend time with Phoenix. We, the GCFA, would be happy to compensate.”
Dom ran a hand through his hair. Lydia was an old friend of his. She was Venetian, a race often referred to as “sex aliens,” because they had a higher sex drive than any other species and tended to pursue it single-mindedly, almost like they had to have sex or they would die out. The only time Venetians usually interacted with those from other worlds was when offering their sexual services in exchange for money. Not many Venetians did this, but the GCFA had been lucky to find Lydia’s group, who were willing to travel on board the GCFA ship with the fighters during circuits. It was extremely beneficial to everyone involved and completely legal.
