Page 67 of About the Green

Though thrilling and equally as shocking.

It's simply him plunging his fingers into my pussy.

I'm dripping wet, dripping down my thighs, and the cool air has done nothing to help me come down from my arousal. It just keeps getting higher.

Barely registering the tears on my face, the heat from my ass is a far more present sensation. As soon as I begin to talk, I can taste the salt from my tears pooling into my mouth at the corners. I have to start somewhere with this and I think I can safely say this is a good place. “F-find them online,” I manage through my ragged breaths. “Sometimes from comments women have left that want revenge. Sometimes it's from girls who are too scared to tell anyone in their personal lives but can admit what happened to them online. Sometimes the men are dum enough to brag about what they’ve done. Other times they find me.”

My throat is dry by the time I finish, countless faces that seem to flash over and over again through my memory, threatening to pull me up.

“Then what?” He asks, as if our positions are normal in general or normal for us.

“I make sure they can’t do it again.” I haven’t specified what the it is, but I think he can put the pieces together. Maybe he can’t but that is an issue for a different me, future me.

I feel like I've been lured into a false sense of security when the questions stop being about the men and start being about me again.

I thought we had moved past this, but we hadn't, because I dropped so deep that I couldn't keep a hold of what was being discussed.

My mind feels warm and fuzzy and light and impossibly cared for, because my body doesn't really understand that my mind is trying to keep this information under wraps.

These tears I felt, the others I didn't, as I began to tell him exactly what happened to me.

Vert’s hand soothes over my warm cheeks, the warmth from his hand doing wonders over the warmth from my stinging ass. I’ve even caught my breath as he rubs me with one hand and his fingers still nestled between my folds.

There’s a beat where he says nothing and starts to curl his fingers inside me. The switch from pain to pleasure is doing wild things in my mind.

He knows exactly how it's affecting me. His hand in on my back now, holding me in place as my thighs squeeze against his hand. It does nothing to stop the expertly placed stroking of fingers against my inner walls.

"It was after him, Chris," I can hear myself saying. "I was so desperate to be picked, to be chosen, that I'd fallen right into a trap. A man who had been preying on young girls who had felt lost and abandoned, as I have my whole life. In Georgia, there’s no many places that the law can’t touch for many reasons. I was as good as gone. Destin Rodgers, he’d taken me. I didn't know if I would ever escape him, and he made me feel that there would be no one who could help me. It was only going to be he and me. I couldn't go back to the people who loved me. I couldn't go back to the life that I had started to become comfortable with. My life with Liezel and the Chrome Flame.

It all comes out monotone and dry as I bear the weight of my heart and my mind to this man who had no idea what he was walking into when he asked this question. I've forgotten how long I've been here. Molten heat rushing from my floating head to my core, is a wave of pleasure.

I can't help when I come over his digits, and he swats my ass again. “Never gave you permission to come. That's earned you another two."

So, without moving his fingers, he adds a third and smacks me twice more. I cry out, overwhelmed and overstimulated.

I shouldn't enjoy this, but somehow it's made it easier for me to share the pain from deep inside. Something shaking loose the hinges of the metal box containing all of the hurt I'd felt in the past.

I feel safe and comfortable to give him this part of me. As he guides me back to his bed, I expect something but I don’t expect him to hold me by the wrists as he opened the package I brought I with the other hand.

He produces a jumble of what look like leather that I can’t discern from where I lie on the bed.

“Gonna give you these three fingers again, doll” he declares. Handing me one of the bundles of straps he says, “Put these on your wrists while you tell me what happened with Destin,” he sneers. It’s not that he’s unaffected by my words. I can tell that he’s listening and doing what he can to distract me from the reality that I’m recalling. In a way, I think he’s finding comfort in keeping me preoccupied while I talk.

"I was there thinking that my only way out was a decision. Nearly eight months of being help against my will and doing things I never wanted to do. I was desperate for something. A choice. A decision I couldn't take back. The only thing I had to keep me safe was a razor blade, one I had found in the bathroom and kept for safety. But it wasn't big enough to hurt him, and I had no plan to leave. I wasn’t strong enough. If I could just disappear, if I could just not be here, that would be preferable to what I endured with him.”

By the time I finished what I’ve said, the leather is around my wrists. The velcro pieces easy to put on for myself. It’s soft against my skin but the little lobster-claw clips dangle from them waiting to be attached to something. I don’t have enough focus to decide what exactly they could be attached to.

Vert doesn’t give me more time to figure that out on my own. He hurriedly attaches the clips to each other, lifting my wrists over my head again.

“How could you disappear?” He questions, eyes on mine though I’m unable to truly focus on his face with how blurry my eyes are with tears. He wipes under my eyes and I can only imagine what I look like now having cried off most of the makeup I spent so much time applying before I got here. He’s not concerned with the state of my makeup, it’s not a blip on his radar. “Tell me about the razor.”

“I kept it small, something easily hidden under the jelly bracelets I was a fan of at the time. He never questioned why I didn't take them off, or why sometimes they'd stick together a little more than they used to, but I was lucky, and Liezel and Raquel and Lidia were all looking for me, and they found me before things got too bad.”

He growls and it’s the worst of all the sounds he’s made. I’ve talked so much more than him. I’ve gotten so much off my chest. More than I’ve told anyone ever. I don’t think I’ve gotten such an obvious response from him so far. Bent over the bed like this with my wrists cuffed and my red ass on display, I couldn't be more vulnerable. I couldn't be in more disbelief that I'm even in this position to begin with, because how could I when I haven't in so long?

I'd use my pain to help the women in my life get ahead, to keep me ahead, to keep me safe. I'd never gone into the role or position for anything other than revenge—revenge against the pain that wouldn't go away, and even still now it doesn't.

But under Vert's care I feel safe. I feel protected. I don't feel the vulnerability that is so present right now. Somehow I know he wouldn't do anything malicious.