Lover Uncloaked (Stealth Guardians #1) by Tina Folsom

shooting through the open door. A violent fire was raging there, and he knew enough about fires to realize that this one would spread quickly.
    Behind him the bedroom door opened.
    A startled scream nearly pierced his eardrum. He turned toward Leila, who stood in the door frame, nude.
    She stared right at him, eyes wide, her lips readying themselves to scream once more.
    She saw him! Shit! In his panic, he’d inadvertently uncloaked himself.
    “How did you get in here?” Her hands scrambled to cover her nudity, but it was to no avail; her small hands couldn’t cover her plentiful curves.
     “Leila, I can explain. Later. The fire, we have to get out of here.” He shot a worried look toward the kitchen, where the flames were engulfing the entire door and were working their way into the corridor, the smoke cloud underneath the ceiling growing larger.
    Only now her look seemed to drop to his pants where his erection created a visible bulge.
    Her eyes widened, and true fear shone through her irises. “Oh, my God, you came to rape me!” She shot back into the room and slammed the door. He heard the lock click shut.
    Fuck! He’d screwed up royally! But there wasn’t time for any explanations now. The fire was approaching quickly, consuming anything combustible in its way. Already now, the hallway was impassible and they’d have to find another way out.
    There was no time to plead with her to open the bedroom door, no time to waste on kicking it in. They would need that door as a barrier against the fire. Realizing he had to expose himself for what he was, he passed through the door.
    A shriek greeted him, her hand barely holding onto the receiver she was punching a number into. 9-1-1 from what he guessed. He snatched it from her hand and pressed the off button before tossing it into a corner.
    Her face blanched. “What are you?”

NINE
     
    Leila hit the back of her knees against the bed frame and automatically snatched her pillow to press it against her front.
    As if that were giving her any protection!
    But covering her nudity wasn’t her biggest concern. What she’d just seen couldn’t have happened. Aiden, if that was really his name, had passed through the locked bedroom door as if it were made of air and not of solid wood. A sideways glance to the door confirmed that it was still closed and locked.
    She shook her head. Was she having a nightmare? No! That was impossible. She knew she was fully awake. In fact, she’d never gone to sleep. Then it came to her in a flash.
    “You drugged me at the bar!” she cried out. That’s why she was hallucinating. “You followed me.”
    “No, Leila, that’s not true.”
    She didn’t believe him.
    “I’ll explain everything later.” He took a step toward her. “But we have no time now.”
    Of their own volition, her eyes drifted to his jeans. The bulge was now markedly smaller, but he still sported an erection.
    “Get away from me!”
    “You need to put some clothes on, now.” His eyes searched the room and fell on a pair of jeans and a sweater. He took them from the chair they lay on.
    As he approached her anew, she tried to back away from him, but with the bed at her back, she had nowhere to go.
    “Now, Leila,” he said in a voice that brooked no refusal.
    Coward that she was, she took the clothes he handed her. When she tried to put on the pants while shielding herself with the pillow, he pulled it from her hands and dropped it on the bed behind her. Heat suffused her cheeks.
    “Damn it, Leila, there’s no time for modesty. The fire… ” He pointed to the door, where smoke started creeping in from the top.
    She dressed more quickly than she ever had, fear giving her wings. This couldn’t be happening to her. Not only was he here to rape her, he’d also set her place on fire so he could abduct her. And she couldn’t even protest: it was either go with him or die of smoke inhalation. She had a medical degree; she knew how quickly that could