A Beginner's Guide to Gold Digging: Chapter 21

Author's Note: Hello, lovelies! Just a heads up: Beginner's Guide to Catfishing comes out in paperback and ebook format next week! July 14 is the official release date! Hope you enjoy!!!

A Beginner's Guide to Industrial Sabotage

Lily

The day started off so beautifully before it all went to hell. 

I woke up with all my nerve endings bursting with life as Cris’ morning wood plunged into my hole, thrusting pleasure up through my body as he fucked the previous night’s sleep out of me. He had me pinned down, taking me from behind and staking his claim like the man he was, and the first words out of my mouth that morning, before I even opened my eyes, were, “Oh fuck, Cris, harder, please, harder!” 

“Happy to oblige, angel,” he said, biting my shoulder as he picked up speed and applied greater force. 

Pain and pleasure warred for space inside me, pleasure winning out as I felt myself around Cris’ length and reveled in the sensation of his skin sliding over my back. He filled me up and pulled back and filled me again, and I extended my hand back and raked it through his hair and scratched at him with my lengthening nails as he went. The more and more he plowed into me, the more I felt myself changing. That thing I’d felt before, the water of my soul altering, never seemed stronger. 

“Oh, Cris,” I groaned, pushing back against his length while he bit my earlobe, my neck, my other shoulder. 

“Lily,” he groaned back. “I have a question.”

“What?”

“I’m not wearing a condom. I might come inside you. Is that-”

That sentence, that idea, rewired the synapses in my brain. “Oh fuck yes. Please do.”

“You sure? We’re gonna have to wash the sheets.”

“Cris, I’m begging you to come inside me. Please.”

His thrusting, my pushing, synced up with each other, perfectly in time, pleasure vibrating up my ass and into the rest of me, was just… Everything I’d never known I wanted. “So do you want to get filled up with me?” he whispered into my ear, a wicked edge to his tone. 

“God, yes.”

“You want to be leaking with me?”

“Yes!”

“You want all of me?”

“Yes yes yes!!!”

“Good girl,” he said, his voice even lower than normal. 

And just like that, I came. A balloon popped inside me and all the pleasure was released all at once. He came in time with me, shooting into my cavern. The hot, sticky fluid came in a massive stream while his groans were comparable to throat-singing. He slid out of me, slick with himself, and I felt the cum leaking out of my entrance and leaving a sticky mess on my bed. 

Cris flipped me over onto my back, letting the mess get even worse and shoving his tongue down my throat. We played tonsil-hockey for a few minutes while his boner calmed down, and he loomed over me. Bathed in morning light leaking in through my blinds, there was an almost blue tint to his black hair, and his green eyes were sparkling. And the way he was looking at me… I never felt as utterly adored as when he looked at me like that. It was how he’d looked at me when we’d first met, and I’d… I’d been too scared to let myself enjoy it. All those times I’d gotten mad at him, told me not to look at me, it was because I was terrified of how much I like it, how much I wanted him to look at me like that. To keep looking at me like that, every day until the sun exploded. And now, at this point, a supernova was the only thing that could conceivably keep me away from him. 

“Do we have to go to work?” I smiled coyly. 

“Money doesn’t grow on trees, angel,” he smiled back. 

“This is rich coming from you.”

“Hey, I’ve embraced the simpler things in life.”

“But you’re keeping the beach house,” I said. 

“My dad doesn’t have to know about that part,” he laughed, then kissed me one more time, stubble scratching me and musk filling me up. My legs wrapped around his back, and I found another moan escaping my lips…

We were interrupted by a harsh wrapping on my door. “Keep! The noise! Down!” Rob said from the other side. 

Cris rolled off of me and onto his back, laughing his ass off. I found myself in the midst of a giggle-fit instantly.

“I ain’t playing. Keep the noise down,” Rob said in a pained tone. 

“We spared you last night, you can spare us,” Heather said. 

“Babe,” Rob sighed. “Why?”

“It’s funny.” 

I clinged to Cris’ arm and buried my face in the crook of his neck, trying to starve out my laughter with mixed results. 

***

To save time, Cris and I showered together after we stripped the sheets off my bed. They would need a wash once we got home (Dear God, I hoped those stains came out). He soaped up my tits while I washed his dick, he bent down to shave my legs while I shampooed his hair, that kind of thing. It was really nice: just the two of us, under a stream of hot water, cleaning each other up, taking care of one another. I knew it wouldn’t always be like this: realistically, the honeymoon phase would end eventually, but… Damn, for right now, this was perfect.

Rob had lox on bagels with all the fixins’ ready for us when we came down, Cris in his suit and me in skinny-jeans and a low-cut yellow blouse and a pair of doc martens. A bit of makeup as well, lipstick and mascara and eyeshadow; I kind of hated not being able to glam it up all the time, because it just made me feel so damn girly and cute and myself, but… There was a time and place, and I’d gotten to indulge in princess-mode four days in a row. The only way I’d get to look like that every day is if I became a rich housewife, and that just didn’t seem like me. I could walk the walk, take part in Cris’ world when the situation called for it, and hell I even enjoyed it (quite it a bit, honestly), but I still had a job that I liked and that I cared about and which required me to get my hands literally and metaphorically dirty from time to time. A job that meant beauty would sometimes need to be sacrificed for the sake of practicality. 

Still, it wouldn’t stop me from putting on a cute dress as soon as I got home. 

Heather kissed Rob good-bye and waved to us as we ate. Cris and I sat next to each other at the table, chairs pressed together, free hands on each other’s thighs. Rob stared at us with exasperation, but didn’t say anything.
“So, uh,” I said, attempting to break the silence. “Do you guys want me to drive? I’m wearing my driving boots.”

“Sure,” Cris said. “They’re nice boots.”

“I’ll show you some nice-”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Rob sighed. 

“Okay, okay, we’ll dial it back,” Cris laughed. 

“Aww, do we have to?”

“Yes,” Rob said. 

“Ugh, fine!” I rolled my eyes. 

“Don’t be a brat, Lily,” Cris chuckled, even as his hand gripped my knee. 

“I thought I was a bimbo, not a brat?” I grinned. 

“Oh my God- I’m gonna wait in the car,” Rob said. 

He closed the door loudly but not angrily behind him as he left. 

Cris and I waited a beat, looking at each other wordlessly and without blinking, before we both burst out laughing. 

I tucked a lock of hair behind my ears as I gathered my composure. “Okay, okay, we’re being obnoxious, aren’t we?”

“Probably, yeah,” Cris said, rubbing his eyes. 

“Well, it’s your fault, you know.”

“Because I force-femmed you?”

“And converted me, yes.”

Cris winced. 

I tilted my head to the side. “Uh, you okay?”

“I… Uh… It’s just… You see-”

The car horn honked from outside, Rob evidently getting impatient. 

I caressed my man’s cheek. “Hey. Whatever it is, it’s okay. I promise. And we don’t have to talk about it right now. We have to get to work anyway, so we should probably switch out of ‘horny overgrown teenagers’ mode and into ‘working professional adults’ mode.”

He took my hand off his cheek and kissed my knuckles. “Sounds good.”

We stood together, hand in hand. My purse was slung over my shoulder and my free hand held a glass of iced coffee, and off to work we went. 

It was a good thing I was driving, since it prevented Cris and I from feeling each other up in the backseat. Rob did have to suffer through us singing along to a few Sonic Youth songs, but in fairness, that was his favorite band so he didn’t mind too much.

The sun was shining in the sky, the summer heat had yet to start getting truly horrendous thanks to the early hour, traffic was light, and all was good. 

Until we pulled up to the site, where we found Kyle arguing with a bunch of suits, multiple squad cars parked in front, and the whole place sectioned off with caution tape. And… And a damn emu being led away on a leash!

“What in the everloving fuck?” Rob said, unbuckling his seatbelt while I parked. 

Cris and I followed him in short order as we made our way over to Kyle and the trio of starchy old white guys Kyle was yelling at. 

“Excuse me?” I said, taking point as we caught up. “What exactly is going on here?”

“Who are you?” one of the suits, a shriveled up, craggy-faced bloodhound of a man sneered. 

“I’m Lily DiGiacomo.”

“What’s your point? This is no place for a girl-”

“I’m Chief Executive Officer of DiGiacomo Construction,” I glared. “Also, I’m twenty-five, so that’s ‘woman’ thank you very much. Now explain what’s going on here.”

“We’re from the zoning committee,” another suit, this one slightly less melted-looking but incredibly sweaty and tired-looking. “We received a report about some safety violations-”

“That’s absurd,” Cris said. 

“And you are?”

“Corporate point-man. Everything is up to code-”

“Agree to disagree,” the third suit, an impossibly tall and impossibly skinny and impossibly bearded man, said. “We found several violations in your building. Not to mention an emu on-site.”

“What does that have to do with-”

“The police have been investigating an illegal emu trafficking ring for some time now.”

“... You’re shitting me,” I said.

“No. We are not shitting you.”

“Are you charging us with anything? Are we under arrest?”

“Not at this time, no,” a female detective in blue jeans and a white t-shirt said as she walked over to us. “But you are under investigation, and we’re going to have to have you pause construction on this gym during said investigation.”

“This is bullshit!” I said, fisting gathering. “Who did you get the report from, anyway?”

“It was anonymous,” the detective said. 

***

“Bullshit, it was anonymous!” I said, pacing back and forth across Violetta’s office at Van Der Ahe Consolidated. It was my first time meeting Rose’s boss, and she was, and I don’t say this lightly, DEVASTATINGLY HOT. Mature and bespoke, a hot pink dress draped over her lean frame and impressive bust, with a gray-threaded mane of black hair framing her beautiful brown face. Her makeup was so good I wanted to get lessons from her personally, and her jewelry… Fuck, I needed to get my ears pierced. She was really pretty, okay! That weird competition between attraction and gender-envy was so distracting it nearly drowned out my anger, but it didn’t make it all the way there. Because fuck, I was mad!

Cris, Rose, and Kyle sat in chairs before Violetta’s desk, while Adam stood in a corner with a furrowed brow. I, meanwhile, was doing my best to dig a canal in the floor with only my feet. Thank God I wasn’t wearing heels or I’d be stabbing the floor over and over again. 

“Ms. DiGiacomo,” Violetta said, “Or, may I call you Lily?”

“Yes, you may,” I said without pausing my pacing. 

“I understand your frustration.”

“Thank you!”

“But you’ve also been pacing and cursing for the past five minutes straight, and we really ought to start making a plan now.”

I halted mid-stride, then turned to face everyone. I sat down next to Cris, who put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s bullshit,” I said. 

“I got that,” Violetta replied. “But how do you figure?”

“Do you not believe me?”

“I never said that. But I need something to go on here, kid.”

“We’ve been completely up to code for two months, and now, all of the sudden, we’re not? And we’re trafficking emus? That’s absurd!”

“Once again, I agree,” Violetta nodded. “Look, Lily, I don’t know you, but Rose vouches for you. And for you, Crispin. That’s worth a lot to me. But if this isn’t on either of you… Who’s to blame?”

“Well, I have two theories,” I said, shaking my leg furiously as I leaned over in my seat. Cris put his hand on my knee and steadied me, and I sat up straight and stilled myself. “Early on, my ex-girlfriend, Olivia Chesterton, came to the site on behalf of the zoning committee. She spent nearly an entire morning attempting to slow our work by harassing me, and by that I mean stopping us from doing our jobs was a pretext for her to harass me. She’s… A hideously toxic, incredibly possessive, endlessly spiteful person who, yes, would absolutely sabotage our work to punish me. So I’m guessing she’s the one who messed with our build.”

“I see,” Violetta said, steepling her fingers together. God, her nails were amazing: long and sharp and painted pink. Did I want a manicure? Could I maintain a manicure? That would require me to stop biting my nails all the time- no, no focus! “And what about the emu? You have to admit, it doesn’t look great when you just had a bunch of emu removed from your property yesterday.”

“That… That I don’t have an explanation for,” I said, slouching again. 

Cris rubbed my back, then spoke up, “I might. It has to do with the second theory.”

Violetta raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, brushed a strand of her straight hair out of her eyes. God that was pretty. Should I straighten my hair? Heh, straighten… No, no, focus up, DiGiacomo. “Go on.”

Cris asked me, “Can I tell them?”

I nodded. 

“This past Thursday night, at my house, a former… Frat brother of mine, Chuck, tried to assault Lily. In response, I beat him bloody.”

“As you should,” Kyle nodded. 

“Agreed,” Adam added. 

“Fucking Chuck,” Rose growled. 

“Chuck… Okay, look. I don’t have any actual proof of this, it’s my word against his,” Cris continued. “But there was one time in college, where Chuck invited me to come on a hunting trip with him and his dad. I asked him what we were hunting, and Chuck said that it was a surprise, that his dad was having some stuff shipped in.”

“Puto,” Violetta hissed. 

“My thoughts exactly,” Cris said. “But again: no evidence. And if I try to bring this up… Well then he might change his mind about not pressing charges for me rearranging his face.”

I heaved a heavy sigh. This was a damn mess. “So what do we do?”

Violetta massaged her temples. “I really wish I could say we can move forward. But right now, we can’t. We’re going to have to pause construction on your gym. Kyle, I am so sorry about this-”

“It’s… It’s okay,” Kyle said, very visibly and audibly not okay. 

“And what about my crew?” I said. “If we can’t work, nobody else is gonna hire us in the interim if we’re under investigation.”

Violetta said, “I can probably get the board to sign off on continuing to pay you and your crew for at least a few weeks. Beyond that, though… It’s going to be a tough sell. Especially when it was an uphill battle to get them to sign off on this in the first place. They did it as a favor for me, and they knew it was me doing a favor for Rose-”

“After I did them a massive favor back in May, I’d like to point out,” Rose said.

“And that’s worth something. But then you also pushed through to get us to fund a project for your fiance, and hired your childhood friend as the point-man for said project. If the cops can in any way make this our fault, it’s gonna reflect badly on both of us.”

“Shit,” Rose said, bunching her hands into the hem of her blue dress.

“Then let me take the fall if that happens,” Cris said, leaning “I’m the new guy. Anything that went wrong, that should be on me, not Rose. And not you either, ma’am.”

“Cris,” I said, “You shouldn’t-”

“Yeah, I should,” Cris said. Fucking dammit, stop being honorable! “And if you can give me a number… I might be able to keep everyone’s paychecks going once the corporate money runs out. My trust fund-”

“Cris, that’s your money.”

“And that means it’s mine to do with as I see fit,” he said, looking me square in the eyes. “Lily. Please. It’s my job to keep things running smoothly for this project. As far as I’m concerned, this all means I haven’t been doing my job correctly.”

Violetta looked back and forth between us, until finally, her gaze found Rose and Kyle. “This is your project. You get final say.”

“Cris, are you sure about this?” Rose said. “You did tell me that you’re not getting any more money from your family. Paying out everyone’s salary for what could go on for months… That’s gonna take out a lot of your trust fund.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said. 

It was. It was… It was noble. Honorable. Generous. Giving. All the things I loved about him. It was him. And who was I to deny him who he truly was? 

“Okay then,” I said. 

Rose nodded as well. “We’ll have to assign you to other projects here, you realize?”

“Of course,” he said. 

“I think we can find stuff for him to do,” Violetta said with a knowing smile. Then it shifted to a frown. “There is one other problem, though.”

“What?” I asked. 

“Lily, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re due to fly to Thailand in six weeks for your operation, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, apprehension bubbling up inside me. 

“If you’re under investigation, then… I really don’t recommend leaving the country,” Violetta said. “Hell, I don’t recommend leaving the state.”

My soul snapped in half. “What?!”

“There’s a chance this will all be resolved by then, but… I have to admit, the odds aren’t high. This is the kind of thing that could take months for them to solve, and that’s assuming they don’t decide we’re guilty of cutting corners,” Violetta said. 

The halves broke into quarters with another brutal snap. 

“This… You can’t… They can’t…”

“It will look like you’re fleeing,” Violetta said gently. “And in the current political climate… Trust me, you don’t want them to come after you.”

The quarters shattered into a million tiny pieces. “I know, I just… I just…”

The tears came out of my eyes, slow at first, before loosing into a steady stream until finally becoming a full-on flood. Devastation bludgeoned me as the reality set in. Olivia, or Chuck, or probably both of them… They were going to take everything from me. 

And I didn’t know if I could do a damn thing to stop them. 

Cris held me, pulling me close as I sobbed into his chest.

“Crispin,” Violetta said. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Get her home, take care of her. We can discuss moving you to a different project tomorrow.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I heard him say through my pained sobs. 

***

I laid flat on my bed, staring at my ceiling and trying to come to terms with the despair throbbing inside my chest and core. I held Void in my arms, stroking his fur to stop myself from dissociating. The lure of unreality was strong, and I didn’t know how much longer I could resist it. I wanted to slip away and go back to not feeling anything, ever again…

Cris stood in my doorway, knocking on the door while looking at me with a gentle smile. 

“It’s your room too, now,” I answered. “You don’t have to knock.”

“I dunno, I think it’s all a part of my training, you know? Learning boundaries and all that shit,” he said, walking over and sitting on the mattress. 

Void leaped into his lap and nuzzled his hand. “He loves you,” I said with a weak smile. 

“Well hopefully I can live up to that,” he said. 

I pursed my lips. “You’re not talking about the rabbit, are you?”

“It can be about more than one thing.”

“Everything always is,” I said glumly. 

“Yeah,” he said, fingering my hair with his free hand. “How you holding up?”

“I feel like I got hit by a train, emotionally speaking.”

“Oof. Anything I can do to help?”

“Uh, well, if you can salvage my company’s reputation and get me a vagina, that would certainly be helpful,” I deadpanned. 

“Interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“Very interesting,” he said. “Because I might be able to help with that second one.”

I sat up. “Beg pardon?”

“I know someone, a urologist who’s done a few vaginoplasties,” he said. “She runs a private practice in Provincetown. And she owes me a favor.”

“What for?”

“Best sex she’s ever had,” Cris said, that douchey smirk I hadn’t seen in a while flickering on his face.

“A-are you serious?”

“I am,” he said. “It would… We would be paying out of pocket-”

“I can’t afford that. I already reached out to the clinic in Bangkok- the deposit I put down isn’t refundable.”

“You can’t,” Cris said. “I can.”

“Cris, no, you’re already-”

“I did the math, crunched the numbers. It would wipe out my savings, but I can cover it and still use my trust fund to keep the lights on while the investigation happens,” Cris said.

“I-”

“Just… Just please let me do this,” Cris said, pleading, eyes watering. “Please. Lily, I… I… I know how much you value your independence. I know how proud you are, and I know how much it means to you that you’re becoming the woman you want to be on your own terms. And I know you already feel guilty because you think you messed up my life-”

“I did, though!” I said. “You were living the cushiest life imaginable until you met me. You had a perfect existence-”

“No, I didn’t. Because you weren’t in it,” he said, palming my cheek. “I chose you. The same way you chose me, chose to change for me, chose to accept yourself and be with me, I chose to do everything in my power to make you happy. And I always will.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, putting my arm around his waist. “What if we don’t make it? What if we break up and you spent all your money trying to make your stupid ex happy?”

“What if we do make it?” he said back. “Just… Just let yourself live in that reality for a second. The one where we make it. The one where thirty, forty, fifty years from now, we’re still together and we’re happy. Where I do this for you because I love you.”

I… Let myself picture it. The two of us, old and gray and still clinging to each other, still each other’s worlds, still doing everything we can for one another. I saw it. A wedding. A honeymoon. A life together. A… A family. I didn’t know what that would look like, exactly, for us. I wasn’t sure if I wanted kids, but… When I pictured us, I saw us with them. Kids, grandkids, everything. I was beautiful and loved and so damn happy and I… I wanted it. I wanted it all. We would have to figure it out, but we could take it one step at a time. And the first step…

“You’re sure?” I asked one more time. “Because you’re gonna have to get real used to living like a poor person if you do this.”

“I thought you said you weren’t marrying me for my money,” he said, smirking again. God, I hated that I loved that smirk… Actually, no I didn’t. I just loved it. I just loved him. 

“Douchebag,” I laughed as my eyes welled up again. “When would this operation be?”

“Depends. You’re all done with electrolysis, right? Surgical area is cleared?”

“How do you know-”

“Doctor Keeley asked about it on the phone.”

“Ah. Yes, I’m all clear.”

“Then how does next week sound?”

Holy shit. “Are you- are you serious?”

“Still completely serious, angel. She’s got two openings- one for next week, one for next year. And I figure… Well, if anything else happens with the site, you’ll have an alibi. You know, the whole two months of bedrest thing?”

“That’s… Yeah, that’s a good point,” I said, my heartbeat accelerating again, this time with excitement. “You’re prepared to take care of me while I convalesce, right?”

“When I’m not working, absolutely,” he said. 

“Then… Then let’s do it!” I said, gulping down an overflow of ecstasy. “Next week. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“We call this you paying my dowry.”

He laughed, and I felt it vibrate through his chest. “We can do that, yeah.”

“You realize this also means we’ll have to slow down the fuck-a-thon for a while, right?” I pointed out. “Not entirely, but-”

“What’s another two months?” he shrugged.

“I’ll still be able to go down on you, just to be clear.”

“Lily, I already agreed. You don’t need to sweeten the pot.”

“Sorry, I just… Holy shit. This is really happening. I’m finally gonna be a woman!”

“You’ve always been a woman, babe,” he said, lips brushing against my temple. “It’s just been about getting you to be the kind of woman you wanna be.”

I sighed with delight and euphoria, fisting Cris’ shirt and kissing him with tongue while Void scampered away to let his parents get familiar. “Thank you,” I said into his mouth. “That said, if I’m not gonna be able to bang again until September, I wanna scratch the itch real good beforehand.

His smirk turned downright sinful. “Anything for my angel.”