by KD Jones
Phoenix
Galactic Cage Fighter Series Book 12
KD Jones
© 2017 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:
Chapter 20:
Chapter 21:
Chapter 22:
Chapter 23:
Chapter 24:
Chapter 25:
About the Author
BLURB
Two strong spirits, two vulnerable hearts.
Everything he had cared for went up in smoke, but Phoenix rose from the ashes to reclaim his life.
Olivia was determined to not let her DNA dictate how she lived her life and sought justice for those who were defenseless.
They both have denied parts of themselves.
Will they be able to fill in the missing pieces with one another?
Chapter 1
Phoenix’s heart beat fast but he never let his emotions show as he ran across the rocky battlefield. He rolled over and popped up shooting his small laser cannon. Two down…four down, he lost count of how many of the enemy he took out. He had left behind his fellow human soldiers because they could not keep up with him.
As a halfsie—half human and half unknown alien species—the military that had contracted his conception was never given his full file from the scientists who created him. None of the known alien species matched completely with his DNA. The closest the military doctors could come up with was that he had some Voltan in him, because his body often ran on the hot side. Also, they suspected he had some Martian in him because of his strength and because, when under pressure, his skin tone turned a redder hue. They basically named him a mongrel, not sure how to classify him. ‘Mongrel halfsie’ was the species listed on his military record.
It wasn’t like he cared what they thought of him. For the most part he could pass as a human. Many halfsies dreaded being used by the military but not Phoenix. He adjusted well to having strict rules and guidelines to follow. He excelled with fighting and weapons and no one could beat him hand to hand. He rose up in the ranks quickly and was sent out on special missions that were deemed too dangerous for humans. Even after halfsies were given the same rights and freedoms as other species, he chose to stay in the military.
He was treated well by the military. They gave him a home on base. He even had a human fiancée, Leslie, whom he loved. She was beautiful with blond hair and blue eyes and had long shapely legs just the way he liked his women. He was paid well for his special missions so he had saved up to get her a huge diamond ring that she talked about for months. This was his last mission before the wedding. They had planned to go to a tropical planet for their honeymoon.
A blast up ahead returned his attention to the battle in front of him. Some of his human comrades were cornered. They wouldn’t last another blast. He had to get to the enemy before they shot their laser cannon. He dropped his weapons and left the cover of the rocks. Running and taking a huge leap, he took the weapon down with his impact but it fired at the same time, causing a blinding explosion. He was burning all over and felt like his skin was melting. If he could talk, he would beg someone to kill him. That’s how badly he hurt. His last thought was of his fiancée as his lungs filled with dust and he felt his body pulling apart molecule by molecule…
*****
Phoenix woke in the middle of the night, overheated and sweating. He kicked off the sheet and ran his hand over his smooth bald head. Lately, he found that he liked to keep it shaved to give him a different look from what he used to have. He wished he could erase his memory of who he used to be, erase his past and start over truly fresh with a clean slate. Unfortunately, no matter how much he ignored his thoughts while awake, he couldn’t escape his memories in his sleep. The nightmares wouldn’t let him.
He got up and walked naked to the bathroom. After reaching in the shower stall and turning on the water, he entered the stall and welcomed the cool spray washing the sweat away. He closed his eyes as it hit his face.
If only he could forget that horrible day where he found out what his mixed DNA really could do. When the explosion happened he thought he was dying, but that would have been a blessing. No, he experienced the burning of his body and suffered as his ashes reformed and built him back into bone, blood, and flesh. It was long and excruciating. He would rather have stayed dead, but air was forced into his lungs. He thought he would die then, but opening his eyes and seeing his excited captors strapping him down on the table in their lab made him realize that his suffering was just beginning.
For two years he was a prisoner and went through torture, all in the name of science. The enemy wanted to duplicate his ability to heal himself but they couldn’t, no matter what they did, because they couldn’t pinpoint his genetics. One day, they made the mistake of leaving off one of the straps when performing another test. While the doctors were distracted, he managed to break free. He couldn’t remember how many he killed. All he knew was that he kept fighting until he was out of the facility and walking the rocky terrain. One of his allies spotted him and returned him to his military base. Unfortunately, no one could return the two years that he’d lost.
While waiting to be released from the military hospital, he got a call from his fiancée—ex-fiancée. The military had declared him dead months after his disappearance and Leslie had moved on with her life after mourning him. She was married and expecting her first child. She wanted to come by the hospital and see him but he told her he was relocating and wished her well. Seeing her would have hurt too much and his heart had already been revived multiple times. He also didn’t want to see her pity him. He never wanted that.
The military wanted to find out how he had survived but he made sure that they never knew the full story. Phoenix was given the option to leave the military or stay, but he knew if he stayed his secret would eventually be revealed. Those he called friends would eventually look at him like a freak. The doctors and scientists in the military would want to test his abilities, and he’d had enough of being someone else’s experiment. So he left it all behind.
It took three years of trying to find work that would fit him but all he knew had been taught to him by the military. He eventually took a part-time job fighting for the Galactic Cage Fighter Association, a combat sport promotion company that arranged fighting events throughout the galaxies. He proved himself enough to eventually get offered a full-time position.
He reached for the soap and began scrubbing his skin, hating that even if he cut himself he would heal quickly. Most halfsies had a faster healing rate but nothing like what Phoenix could do. To keep others from finding out how different he was, he would go to a healer for a brief treatment but insist on resting in his room. He never let anyone know exactly how bad his injuries were. There would
be too many questions that he wasn’t ready to answer.
After getting out of the shower, he quickly dried himself off and reached for jogging pants and a T-shirt. He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep so he planned to go down to the gym and work out. Maybe if he ran on the treadmill or punched the weight bag enough times his body would be so tired he would be able to fall asleep again.
Phoenix put on a pair of shoes and left his suite. The hallway was pretty much empty since most would be sleeping at two in the morning. He passed one of the ship’s security personnel as he got on the elevator. The male didn’t look surprised to see him up. Phoenix often had late night or early morning workouts because he didn’t sleep well. He hadn’t had a full night’s sleep since the explosion. He preferred not to sleep at all if he could. The dreams and the nightmares always came and he hated to relive any of it over and over. Once, he was so desperate he tried to not sleep for days. When his body finally crashed from exhaustion, he had relived the worst of his torture. After that he decided he would rather deal with the occasional bad dream. Some of the healers suggested he work with a psychologist to help him with his issues. Instead, he’d found exercise or a good round of sex to help him deal with the ghosts from his past. Most times he preferred the exercise, it allowed him to keep his emotional distance.
It only took a few minutes for the elevator to reach the level the gym was on. He passed a few more security people and, of course, there were security cameras everywhere. The lights were set on low but upon entering the training facility they lit up fully. He continued on to the weights room where free weights and other exercise equipment were located, and headed for the treadmill first.
Once on, he set a steady pace and slowly increased his speed. Twenty minutes later he slowed down. Next he moved on to the punching bags. Sweat was starting to soak his shirt and it was sticking to him, so he stopped to pull his T-shirt off and tossed it to the side. His body strained with every punch and kick. His heart rate picked up and he pushed himself to hit the bag harder. He thought about the military and how they had plagued him ever since he left. He thought about his ex-fiancée who easily found another not even a year after his supposed death. He thought about the tattoos that covered his body that had not been there before the explosion but suddenly turned up and could not be removed. The largest one covered his back and featured a large predatory bird. It was this that gave him the name he now used, Phoenix.
The GCFA council and the fans loved his tattoos and said it made him have a dangerous look. His friend Amelia said it made him look sexy, too. Of course, Amelia’s male, Nigel, wasn’t too happy with that assessment. Phoenix didn’t really care whether females found him sexy or not. He hadn’t allowed more contact with females other than quick sexual encounters that did not involve any kind of emotions. Amelia was the first female who’d had him questioning that decision. She was smart, funny, full of fire, and curvy. He liked curvy. However, she chose to mate with another, and whatever feelings he thought he might have had for her had proved to be inconsequential. Their friendship remained and he appreciated that above everything else. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t flirt with Amelia just to get on her mate’s nerves. He enjoyed ruffling Nigel’s feathers.
Done punching and kicking, he saw he had worked out for over an hour. He reached for a towel and dried off his sweat before putting on his shirt. He would shower again once he got back to his suite.
He took the back hallway to avoid anyone else who might be up early. This took him by the public swimming area. There were large glass walls separating the pool from the hallway and he glanced inside. Someone was swimming laps. When the person lifted their head to take a breath, he immediately recognized them.
Phoenix stopped walking and stood there at the glass wall to watch Olivia Mann swim. Olivia was a Venetian halfsie and the half sister of the lead Venetian intimacy therapist—otherwise known as a sex therapist. Other than their similar exotic looks, they had nothing in common.
Lydia was easygoing, open, extremely sexual. Not that he had ever sampled her services. The GCFA allowed the Venetians to run their business to keep fans and clients happy. Phoenix never sought them out for anything. He preferred finding females on stations they visited that he could leave behind when he was ready to go. The Venetian therapists traveled on board the ship and he did not want to grow any kind of attachment to anyone on board.
Olivia went by a different last name than her sister, Lydia Waters. Olivia Mann was full of surprises. She had long black hair, which she usually kept up in a tight bun, and wore very conservative clothing that wasn’t meant to draw attention to her. No matter how hard she tried to look plain, she failed. Her conservative clothes made her look innocent but those green eyes, her pale skin, and the natural way her body moved screamed sex.
When she finished her last lap, she pulled herself up the ladder and water cascaded down her smooth, silky skin. Her hair was slicked down past a very nicely shaped ass. She reached for a towel, and he got a side view of her body and her breasts were a handful barely contained inside the bikini she wore. She had a flat stomach and those long legs of hers seemed to go on forever.
He was instantly aroused and wanted nothing more than to caress that silkiness and lick every drop of water off her beautiful body. It was made for sex and he wanted to explore that with her. It was the first time he’d felt so strongly about a female and he wasn’t sure if he liked it.
Moving away from the windows, he headed toward the elevator and planned to take a cold shower to get his body to settle down. There was no way he would involve himself with Olivia, no matter how hot her body was.
Chapter 2
Olivia dried off her body. She swam every day, and it was the only exercise she actually enjoyed. It was more than that—it was therapeutic, too. It helped her forget for a short time the weight she carried and the constant struggle she had against her Venetian genetics.
She was a Venetian halfsie—half human and half Venetian. Her mother was human and had fallen in love with her father, a full Venetian. It lasted longer than most Venetian relationships. Her parents had stayed together until her mother got sick and passed away. Her father’s people were extremely sexual. They considered it a health factor to have consensual sex with as many people as possible. Most Venetians didn’t even believe in marriage, though they encouraged breeding. Their home world was a sensual resort location where many traveled to enjoy the offerings of her people.
Olivia was considered an anomaly. She dressed and acted completely different, more reserved. She left her home world to become a lawyer and eventually an advocate for those suppressed or enslaved.
Her biggest difference was that she had never had sex. She didn’t even want sex, except for one time when she was a teenager with roaring hormones and had a crush on a teenage boy. That boy had come close to unleashing her inner Venetian, but she pulled herself away at the last minute. She had never let herself be placed in a situation like that again, where she might be tempted to have sex. Olivia was determined to be more than her genetics.
She wasn’t there on the Galactic Cage Fighter tour ship to find someone to hook up with. She had been invited to come and visit her sister, whom she hadn’t seen much of for the last two years and missed dearly, and she wanted to talk to the head of security about a case that they might have information on.
In the locker room, she changed out of her bikini and put on her yoga pants and T-shirt. She slipped her feet into flip-flops and pulled her hair into a wet ponytail. She had no makeup on—not exactly the look of a sex symbol. Good. That was her goal.
Olivia didn’t need any distractions. She had to focus on her clients, the Donats and several others. She had gotten a call from the Donats about their twin fourteen-year-old daughters who had been shipped off from Venetia for a camp to help them prepare for when they went through their puberty phase. Venetians weren’t considered mature enough for sex until they were twenty-one. Puberty hit them in their twenti
es, but teaching of their culture and sexual natures began around fourteen and fifteen to help the children understand better. It was illegal for anyone under the age of twenty-one to be approached for sex. Their laws were very strict on this.
The Donats were not a wealthy family so when they were approached and offered to have both their daughters sent to a puberty orientation camp for free, they couldn’t pass it up. They signed a waiver giving the camp approval to take in the girls.
The mother and father were not living together and it took several months before either realized that neither one had heard from their daughters at all. They tried to call the camp, which looked like it had the Venetian government’s approval, but they were told that their girls were not registered.
They then tried to contact the Venetian government officials in their district but were given the runaround. Someone showed up at the mother’s home and threatened to have her relocated from the planet if she didn’t back off. That’s when the father called Olivia’s law office. Her employers did pro bono work, and since she was a Venetian halfsie, the case was given to her.
She had gone home to Venetia to meet with the parents. Their story seemed genuine. After asking around, she had a couple of other parents approach her with similar stories. Their daughters were supposed to go to this camp but were not allowed to talk to their parents once they were taken. All the families were from lower incomes and did not have contacts with anyone in the Venetian government. As she was building up her witnesses, she suspected a link to someone in the Venetian council since all the claims were refuted and blocked from being brought up before them.
The next thing she knew, her law office called and told her they were dropping the case and that she needed to return immediately or she would be fired. Olivia was already invested in the case and the families. She told them she would take a two-week voluntary leave without pay. They accepted. She couldn’t let this go, but now she didn’t have her law firm’s resources.