Your Girlfriend Calls Me Daddy

Chapter 179: 180 | Yielding Has Never Been Part Of My Vocabulary

The gym was empty when I arrived at five fifty-eight.

Not surprising. Noel had demanded six o’clock, and being early was probably some kind of tactical test I was supposed to fail. Show up late and she’d lecture me about discipline. Show up on time and she’d already be warmed up, ready to demonstrate her superiority.

Show up early and catch her off guard.

I dropped my bag near the bench and started stretching. The facility was impressive by academy standards. Reinforced walls. Shock-absorbing floors. Training dummies that could withstand Essentia-enhanced strikes without exploding into expensive debris. Coastline didn’t skimp on equipment for their top-ranked students.

The door opened at exactly six.

Noel walked in wearing black athletic shorts that ended mid-thigh and a grey sports bra that did absolutely nothing to hide the curves underneath. Her violet hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her grey eyes found me immediately. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

"You’re early."

"You sound disappointed."

"I’m recalibrating my expectations." She dropped her own bag and began her stretching routine with the kind of mechanical precision that suggested years of practice. "I assumed you’d stumble in at six-fifteen with some excuse about traffic."

"Marco is very punctual."

"Your driver."

"My driver."

Noel’s lip curled. "Must be nice having staff."

"Says the Stark heiress."

"I don’t rely on them."

"Neither do I. Marco just makes my life easier." I finished my shoulder rotations and moved to leg stretches. "There’s a difference between relying on something and using available resources."

"Is that what you tell yourself about the women too?"

The question landed like a jab. I looked up to find Noel watching me with those sharp grey eyes, analyzing my reaction the way she analyzed enemy formations.

"That was low."

"Was it?"

"Coming from someone who scheduled a meeting just to get me alone yesterday."

Color crept up her neck. Barely visible against her pale skin, but I’d learned to read Noel’s tells over the past few days. The flush. The way her jaw tightened. The slight narrowing of her eyes that meant she was fighting to maintain composure.

"That was different."

"How?"

"We needed to discuss tactics."

"For two hours?"

"The tactical discussion portion was thorough."

"So was the other portion."

She threw a training pad at my head. I caught it without looking.

"We’re here to train," she said. "Not discuss yesterday."

"You brought it up."

"And now I’m ending it." She stalked to the center of the mat and assumed a fighting stance. "We have three weeks to prepare for Century East. Mei Chen alone would be a challenge. Combined with Jun Park’s enhancement and Lisa Tanaka’s barriers, we’re facing a coordinated team that’s trained together for years."

"I know. You explained all of this yesterday."

"Then you know we can’t afford distractions."

"Is that what I am?"

Noel’s stance shifted. Almost imperceptible. Her weight moved slightly forward. Her hands rose higher.

"You’re about to be my sparring partner. That’s all you are right now."

"Fair enough."

I moved to face her on the mat. No Essentia. No abilities. Just basic hand-to-hand combat to warm up and assess each other’s baseline capabilities.

Noel struck first.

Her fist came fast and clean, aimed at my solar plexus. I deflected it outward and stepped inside her guard. She pivoted, using my momentum against me, and drove her knee toward my ribs.

I twisted. Her knee grazed my side instead of connecting solidly. My elbow came down toward her shoulder. She blocked with her forearm and created distance with a quick backstep.

"Not bad," she admitted.

"High praise from the tactical genius."

"Don’t let it go to your head."

We circled each other. Testing. Probing. Looking for openings.

Noel fought like she planned everything. Each movement led to the next in a chain of possibilities. Attack here, force a specific defense, exploit the resulting opening. It was chess played in real-time with fists instead of pieces.

I fought like someone who’d learned the hard way that plans rarely survived first contact.

She came at me again with a combination that would have been devastating against someone slower. Left jab, right cross, spinning back kick. I read the pattern from her shoulder movement and stepped into the gap between the cross and the kick.

My hand found her hip. My leg swept behind hers. She went down.

But Noel wasn’t the top tactical student in our class for nothing. She grabbed my collar on the way down and pulled me with her, using gravity and leverage to reverse our positions. Suddenly I was on my back with her knees pinning my arms and her hands pressing my shoulders into the mat.

"Yield," she said.

"Not yet."

"Your options are limited."

"My options are always limited. I adapt."

I bucked my hips. Not to throw her off, that wasn’t possible from this position, but to create a moment of instability. In that moment I twisted my right arm free and grabbed her wrist.

What followed was a messy scramble of limbs and grunts and repositioning that would have looked chaotic to any observer. We rolled twice. She nearly got a choke. I nearly escaped completely. We ended up tangled together with my back to her chest and her legs wrapped around my waist in a body lock.

"Yield," she said again, breathing hard against my ear.

Her sports bra pressed against my spine. Her thighs squeezed my sides. I could feel the heat of her skin through the thin layers of fabric between us.

"Define yield."

"Admit you’ve lost this exchange."

"I don’t think I’ve lost anything."

Her arm tightened around my neck. Not choking, just pressure. A reminder of her position.

"You’re pinned."

"You’re wrapped around me like a blanket."

"That’s not the point."

"It’s kind of the point."

I felt rather than saw her flush. The skin of her arm grew warmer against my throat.

"You’re doing this on purpose."

"Doing what?"

"Making everything weird."

"You’re the one who locked your legs around me."

"It’s a standard grappling position."

"I didn’t say it wasn’t. I just said you did it."

"Because you forced me into this scenario."

"Did I?"

Her grip loosened slightly. I took the opportunity.

Rolling hard to my right, I used her momentary distraction to break the body lock. My hand found her thigh and pushed it away from my waist. I spun inside her guard and ended up face-to-face with her, my forearm across her collarbone and my knee between her legs.

"Yield," I said.

Her grey eyes blazed. "Never."

"Stubborn."

"Consistent."

She hooked her ankle behind my knee and pulled. I lost my base and fell forward. She caught me with her hands on my chest and our faces ended up inches apart.

Neither of us moved.