All Chapters of Married To My Gay Bestfriend : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Eve’s POV I pulled on my pajamas. They were silk and expensive and completely wasted on a fake wedding night, but I had packed them anyway out of some vague sense of optimism I couldn't quite justify even to myself. Maybe I had wanted to feel beautiful, even if no one was supposed to see me. Maybe I needed the armor of something luxurious against the raw vulnerability of what we were doing. Whatever the reason, the cool fabric slid over my skin like a promise I wasn't ready to hear, soft and slippery and entirely too delicate for the mess of emotions churning in my stomach. When I emerged from the bathroom, the suite was dim and quiet. Devin had turned down the lights, leaving only the soft glow of a single lamp on the nightstand, and the city sparkled beyond the window like a scatter of fallen stars. He was wearing drawstring pants slung low on his hips and a plain gray t-shirt that clung to his chest in ways that were deeply unhelpful to my current mental state. I had see

Eve's POV I woke up the morning after the wedding with my fingers still tangled in Devin's. Sometime during the night, the careful distance between us had collapsed. My hand had found his and held on, and now the morning light was streaming through the windows and I could feel the warmth of his palm against mine. He was still asleep. His face was relaxed in a way it never was when he was awake. Without the careful control and the watchful eyes, he looked younger and softer like the boy I had met in the school library when we were sixteen years old. I pulled my hand away slowly, careful not to wake him. My heart was beating too fast. My mind was still spinning with everything that had happened the day before. The kiss, the hug and the unmistakable evidence that Devin Cresswell was not as immune to me as I had believed. I needed answers but not from him. I slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind me. Then I sat on the edge of the massive

Eve's POV I was going to drive Devin Cresswell insane. The plan had crystallized during the flight to Italy. I wasn't going to confront him directly. That would be too easy, and it would give him the chance to explain everything away with some perfectly reasonable excuse. No, I needed proof. I needed to see for myself whether Marguerite was right. So I was going to test him, push his boundaries and see how far I could go before that careful control of his cracked. The swimming was step one. The white bikini had been a daring choice, bought specifically for this trip, and I had seen the way his jaw tightened when I pulled off my dress. He had looked at me for exactly two seconds before his eyes skittered away and he made some excuse about checking something inside. Interesting. That night we went to a small restaurant in the villa

Eve’s POVThe seduction campaign continued for three more days.I had become shameless. Every morning I paraded around the villa in increasingly skimpy outfits. Tiny shorts and cropped tops. Bikinis that were more string than fabric. A silk robe that kept slipping off one shoulder no matter how many times I adjusted it. Devin's eyes followed me everywhere, and he thought I didn't notice, but I did. I noticed everything.I noticed the way his hands tightened on his coffee cup when I walked into the kitchen in nothing but a towel, the ceramic nearly cracking under his grip. I noticed the way his jaw clenched when I leaned over him to point at something in a guidebook, giving him an unobstructed view down my top, and how he held himself so rigidly still that he barely seemed to breathe. I noticed the way he excused himself to take showers at odd hours. Late at night, when he thought I was asleep. Early in the morning, before the sun had fully risen. And once

Devin's POV I woke before dawn on Eve's birthday with a plan I had been refining for weeks. She wasn't big on birthdays. She had told me once, years ago, that her father forgot her sixteenth birthday entirely and Delphine had used the occasion to announce her own engagement to a minor European aristocrat. After that, Eve stopped expecting anything from anyone on the day she was born. She treated it like a regular Tuesday, ordered takeout, and refused to let me make a fuss. But this year was different. This year she was my wife, even if she didn't know how much I wished that word were real. And I was going to make this birthday one she would remember. I slipped out of bed while she was still sleeping, her dark hair spread across the pillow, her face relaxed in a way it never was when she was awake. The villa was quiet. The sea was a sheet of hammered silver in the early light. I made coffee and reviewed my checklist one more time. The flowers were arranged. I had spent an hour the