She’d only heard about La Adelita once, but once had been enough. One of the founders of the Resistance, La Adelita had disappeared long before Beretta had joined their ranks, and her name was rarely mentioned. Blade, one of the other founding members, had mentioned to Beretta right after her initiation that La Adelita would have liked her.
“You’ve got the same kind of ambition, the same ruthless dedication to the goal that she had. Too bad we lost her in one of our battles with the Patriarch about five years ago.”
“She was killed?”
Blade hummed. “That’s the general assumption, though we never found her body.”
Beretta hadn’t been with the Resistance long at that point, but Blade was her initiation mother, and she could hear what the other woman wasn’t saying. “But you don’t think she’s dead.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“Blade, don’t go filling her head with nonsense.” Venom pointed at her with the tip of the knife she was sharpening. “Beretta, we don’t work with fairytales around here. We just deal with the facts.”
“And the facts are that we never found solid evidence she died,” Blade argued.
Venom’s mouth had pulled into a tight line, and she’d slid the knife across the whetstone viciously. “If she wasn’t killed, she’s working for the Patriarch, and that makes her dead to me.”
La Adelita was a legend. A myth.
She wasn’t real.
And Beretta still couldn’t believe she’d found her.
“Are you just gonna follow me around like a lost puppy, kid?” La Adelita said now, leaning against her motorcycle, arms crossed over her chest, the leather of her jacket creaking. “Don’t you have anyplace to go?”
Beretta shrugged. “I’m branded, same as you. Don’t know how long I was in solitary before they pulled me out, but I bet my name’s on the casualty list.”
La Adelita smirked. “So you think ghosts ought to stick together? Is that why you tracked me down?”
“Seemed the thing to do.”
And because she’d never been alone after a job before, and it felt wrong to split off on her own now. Even if it took a couple of days to get back to headquarters, someone had always been waiting for her to help her wind down. Arsenic or Venom, Winchester, Avalanche–someone, at times several someones, were always there to welcome her back into the safety of home.
She was buzzing for it now, but La Adelita had been missing longer than Beretta had. Maybe she had gotten used to solitary, to not being touched. Maybe she wouldn’t want to because she didn’t know Beretta.
La Adelita sized her up before she finally sighed. “Yeah, all right. Two’s probably safer than one anyway.” She hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the no-tell motel behind her, the neon sign flickering, a couple of letters missing out of the name. “I guess you’ll be wanting to share a room. Probably didn’t think to grab any cash, did you?”
“I didn’t exactly have time,” Beretta scoffed. “I got signed out and branded about an hour before they threw me at you.”
La Adelita snorted derisively, like she thought Beretta should have managed it anyway, but she just pushed off her motorcycle and headed toward the office of the Des-rt R-se Motel. Beretta hesitated but decided it would be less suspicious if only one scraped up, bruised-to-hell woman was in the office asking for a room.
It took about fifteen minutes before Beretta spotted her up on the second-floor balcony, an old-fashioned brass key dangling in her hand. Beretta sprinted over to the stairwell and took the rough concrete steps two at a time, her hand never touching the rusted metal banister.
La Adelita didn’t even look at her as she unlocked the door and stepped through. Beretta followed–and found herself immediately pinned to the wall, La Adelita’s forearm across her throat, cutting off her breath. Beretta scrabbled at the leather of her jacket but couldn’t get a good enough grip to find any leverage.
The door slammed next to her head, rattling the wall and her teeth.
“I don’t know you from Lilith,” La Adelita hissed at her ear. “I appreciate you helping me bring down the Patriach, but for all I know you could be planning to shank me in the middle of the night and run off with my bike.”
Beretta gritted her teeth, struggling for her voice. “My initiation mother was Blade,” she rasped, and La Adelita lifted the pressure just a bit, making it easier for her to talk . “She still thinks you’re alive.” What other members would La Adelita have known? Which of them had been there that long? “Winchester has a chunk of bone missing out of her shoulder from where her husband shot her before she killed him. Seraphim and Savage are twins but they have different birth marks. Seraphim’s is on her right breast. Savage’s is on the inside of her left thigh.”
La Adelita smirked. “So you’re one of those,” she said. Her arm was braced across Beretta’s chest now, but there was almost no pressure behind it. Beretta could have gotten loose if she wanted to.
She didn’t want to.
“One of what?”
“There’s two types of fighters. The ones who like to be alone after a fight, and the ones who…don’t.”
Blade had been the first type. “Which one are you?”
In answer, La Adelita caught the lapels of her duster and slammed her into the wall again. Beretta felt the plaster behind her shoulders crack, and the cheaply framed picture on the wall rattled dangerously.
La Adelita’s hand closed over Beretta’s jaw, tilting her head back, and she licked a broad stripe up her neck, biting at the soft skin on the underside of Beretta’s chin. “What do you fuckin’ think?”
Well. Blade had said they would have liked each other.
Beretta wasn’t sure who moved first, but she pushed La Adelita’s jacket back off her shoulders at the same time La Adelita shoved her knee between Beretta’s thighs. One of La Adelita’s hands went for Beretta’s button fly while the other one started pulling guns out and switching them to safety before she dropped them on warped particle board of the dresser.
The hiss of a metal blade being drawn from its sheath sent a shiver through Beretta, and La Adelita laughed darkly against her neck. “Oh, you’re a knife girl?” she murmured. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Beretta didn’t bother telling her that she wasn’t a knife girl so much as she was a danger girl–and La Adelita radiated danger in a way that made Beretta weak in the knees. She didn’t have to, apparently. La Adelita’s sharp teeth and clever hands had her blood singing, and she groaned when La Adelita pressed upward with her knee, demanding Beretta ride her thigh.
Beretta rocked her hips down forcefully, fingers scraping greedily over La Adelita’s body, finding the closures of her clothes and opening them, pushing fabric away, vaguely noting the criss-cross of rough scars when she found them.
La Adelita yanked her away from the wall, sending her off balance for a moment, and pushed her pants down roughly. “We’re gonna stay right here,” La Adelita muttered against her neck before she bit her again, sucking the skin up between her teeth. That was gonna be a bruise, Beretta thought, and the promise of it thrilled her. It would be a better bruise than the others she wore. “Cause my naked skin is not touching that bed.”
Beretta barked out a surprised laugh, but it faded into a moan when callused fingertips pulled her panties aside and rubbed along her vulva, pinching the wet lips, pressing her clit between them. Beretta gasped, biting at her lower lip as her head slammed back into the wall.
La Adelita’s free hand snaked up behind her neck and wound into her hair, grabbing by the fistful and pulling sharply. Beretta hissed her approval, and La Adelita slipped two fingers into her without warning as she bit down on the exposed cord of Beretta’s neck.
Beretta’s hips jerked up involuntarily, shoving La Adelita’s fingers deeper, and she felt the laughter against her throat more than she heard it.
She liked that La Adelita wasn’t taking her time; the fight had been enough foreplay. Her adrenaline was pumping and she liked that she wasn’t being forced to wait. But then La Adelita’s fingers and the pressure of her body were gone.
If it had been one of the other members of the Resistance, Beretta would have taken the cue to lunge forward, take the lead. But it wasn’t, so she stood still, chest heaving, throat stinging from La Adelita’s teeth. She didn’t know La Adelita that well, but she got the impression that the woman was accustomed to being in charge.
Her instincts were confirmed when La Adelita yanked her forward by the hand still in her hair.
“Take your panties off.” She kept tension on Beretta’s hair, just enough to let her know who was in charge, but Beretta obediently slid the black fabric down her legs and stepped out of them. “Pick them up and hand them to me.”
La Adelita let go of her hair long enough to let her obey, and then nodded toward the cheap dresser.
“Bend over.”
The motel was too low-brow to even have a television set, but that meant Beretta had plenty of room to bend over the surface. Apparently she wasn’t going fast enough because La Adelita put a hand in the middle of her shoulders and pushed. Beretta caught herself on her hands, but then her hands were pulled out from under her and behind her back.
Two seconds later, soft warm fabric was twisted and tied around her wrists, and heat exploded through her when she realized La Adelita had used her own panties to tie her up.
“I expect you to tell me if you don’t want to do this,” La Adelita said flatly, and before Beretta had a chance to do more than nod, those two blunt fingers were back in her, rubbing, thrusting, driving her wild. With her free hand, La Adelita caught another fistful of Beretta’s hair and used it to pull her back onto her fingers. There were streaks in the dust on the chipped, cracked top of the dresser from Beretta’s breasts, and she was glad she still had her bra on.
Beretta’s arousal ratcheted higher with every new pull, every matching thrust, and soon she could hear the wet smack of La Adelita’s hand against her pussy every time she moved.
“Fuck, you’re dirty,” La Adelita growled at her ear, shaking her by her hair. “You’re fucking delicious.”
“Ha,” Beretta huffed, grinning, panting. “Blade said — said you would like me.”
La Adelita snorted, but she sounded amused, and just when Beretta thought she might peak, that wonderful hand was gone.
“What–”
“Shhh, hold still.”
Something cool and smooth and slightly round pressed against her, something larger than fingers, like a knob, or the head of a dick, or–
“Is that your knife hilt?”
La Adelita laughed, a dark, rich sound. “I told you I’d remember.”
Beretta groaned loudly as La Adelita pushed the hilt into her slowly, carefully, but she obediently didn’t move. An unsheathed blade was a risk not worth taking. The hilt was wider than she’d thought at first, and Beretta dropped her head to the dresser with a whimper as La Adelita took her time, fucking her with it slowly.
She pushed the hilt all the way in until Beretta could feel the cool press of the crossguard against her heated, swollen lips.
“Hold that in there,” La Adelita commanded, and Beretta tightened her inner muscles around it, panting when it made the pommel shift against a sensitive place inside.
“Now.” Beretta’s trench coat landed on the dresser, and then La Adelita climbed gracefully on top of it, her legs on either side of Beretta’s head.
“That’s my coat,” Beretta said, frowning, and La Adelita laughed.
“You didn’t think I was going to ruin mine.” She braced her heels on the edge of the furniture, leaning back so that she was open, exposed. She reached down and flicked her clit with her middle finger, using her two other fingers to massage her lips open. “Feel like having a taste?”
Beretta grinned, letting herself slide forward slowly until her mouth was brushing La Adelita’s fingers. It was a tricky business, balancing on her shoulders and her breasts while trying not to make any sudden moves, but she was a highly trained rebel fighter. She could do this.
She didn’t start with a warm-up; La Adelita hadn’t given her any. Instead she just pressed her mouth to La Adelita’s slick flesh and stroked her forcefully with the flat of her tongue, up along the opening, working the tip inside her. She sucked and nipped, pleased when she heard La Adelita gasp above her at the sharp edge of teeth. These things could go both ways.
Beretta usually preferred having her hands free to help her mouth out, but the ache in her arms was sweet, and the tension against her wrists heightened the pleasure from the knife hilt jammed inside of her and the taste of La Adelita on her tongue. She sucked hard on La Adelita’s clit, making up for the lack of fingers by rolling her tongue across it repeatedly, pressing down carefully with her teeth.
“Oh fuck, fuck,” La Adelita panted, her clean hand fisting in Beretta’s hair again, rubbing herself against Beretta’s mouth, her excitement slicking Beretta’s face. Her back arched, her hips jerking hard enough that Beretta felt a bruise bloom on her cheekbone, and a guttural noise rumbled through La Adelita’s body as she shook.
When she’d stopped trembling, she let go of Beretta’s hair with a soft laugh, stroking fingers along her scalp soothingly.
“Oh, you’re good,” she murmured, and Beretta glowed with the praise.
La Adelita was much less graceful climbing off the dresser than she had been climbing on, her legs trembling, and Beretta couldn’t help a smug grin.
“You deserve a reward,” La Adelita said from behind her as she began to work the knife hilt out slowly, gently. It popped free with a quiet sucking sound. “Mmm.”
And without warning, Beretta found herself braced on her shoulders again, crying out as La Adelita’s tongue slithered in where her knife had just been, two fingers beside it, thrusting and rubbing, the bony joint of her thumb digging into Beretta’s clit.
She came hard and fast, a hoarse shout ripping free from her throat, collapsing onto the dresser as her knees gave out. La Adelita kept thrusting, kept licking, until Beretta whimpered a broken, “Stop.”
The sudden removal of all sensation was almost as overwhelming as the touch had been, but then the panties were being unwound from her wrists and La Adelita began slowly massaging feeling back into her hands and arms.
“Can you stand up?” she asked, and Beretta was surprised by the care in her tone.
“Mmph.”
“Tell me yes or no, dumbass, so I know whether to catch you before you hit the floor.”
Ah, there. A little laugh bubbled out of her, and she tried to stand up, only to wince when her back popped.
“Might need a little help,” she admitted. “Getting cleaned up.”
La Adelita chuckled and smacked her ass fondly. “Yeah, yeah, all right.”
It was later, after they’d both fully dressed so as not to come in contact with the bedclothes, that La Adelita took her hand and turned it palm-up, pushing Beretta’s sleeve up until she could see the brand, the tracker that lived inside it. They couldn’t go back to the Resistance until they figured out how to neutralize the neural compound that made them trackable to El Rey and the Patriarch. They couldn’t risk leading their enemies there.
“Well,” La Adelita said quietly. “What are a couple of ghosts supposed to do now?”
Beretta hesitated, tongue darting out over her lower lip. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a lot of people left to haunt.”
An evil smile curled up the corners of La Adelita’s mouth, and she let go of Beretta’s arm. “I think that’s a good idea, kid.”
Notes:
La Adelita was chosen in reference to las adelitas (female soldiers) of the Mexican Revolution, who were themselves named in reference to a folk hero figure, La Adelita.
