Lover Uncloaked (Stealth Guardians #1) by Tina Folsom Page A

parts of town, giving her no chance to escape.
    As he now locked the door behind him, Leila perused the sparsely furnished room. Her eyes instantly fell on the bed: there was only one. Did he really think she’d share a bed with him? Instinctively, she crossed her arms over her chest. There was no way she’d stay here with him.
    “Are you cold?” his gruff voice came from behind her.
    Her shoulders tensed involuntarily. She ignored his question. “You were going to tell me what’s going on.”
    The worn carpet swallowed the sound of his footsteps as he walked around her. He opened the bathroom door and peered inside as if to assure himself that they were indeed alone. When he turned back to her, he ran his eyes up and down her body. Then he pointed toward the bed.
    “Sit.”
    “I’m not a dog,” she snapped.
    “Suit yourself.”
    What had she ever done to deserve this impolite behavior? “If I did what suits me, I’d be back home right now.”
    “Well, your home burned, so that’s not an option.”
    He was right about that. But that didn’t mean she had to admit it. “I’m still waiting for an explanation.”
    Aiden narrowed his eyes. “If you think you can handle it.” He paused for a moment and ran his hand through his dark hair.
    His eyes drifted to the window that was obstructed by the heavy curtains he’d drawn upon entering. “There’s evil out there. Things you can’t even imagine.”
    “Try me.” Leila steeled herself for his explanation.
    He let out a bitter laugh. “I’ve been sent to protect you from the Demons of Fear.”
    She nodded. “You said that earlier. But that doesn’t tell me anything.” He would have to be a little bit more specific about the alleged danger she was in.
    “They want to seduce you to their side, so you’ll do their bidding.”
    “Excuse me?” She wasn’t one to be seduced easily, and for sure was she never going to do some demon’s bidding. Besides, “What do those so-called demons do?”
    “What do they do? I’ll tell you what they do: they spread mayhem in this world. They incite wars, they create discontent.”
    Still not enough information for her. Did he really think he could serve her up a couple of lines, and she’d be happy with it? “What else is new? There are already plenty of wars.”
    “If you think what this world is going through right now is bad, if you think the atrocities that happened during World War II were bad, if you think what happened in the concentration camps in Germany was horror, or what Pol Pot did to his people in Cambodia was evil, you’ve seen nothing yet. The demons are capable of much more evil than that.”
    His words shocked her. “How? How do they do that?”
    There was clear hesitation in him, just the way he’d hesitated back at the Irish bar when she’d asked him what he did for a living. He’d not lied to her outright then, but he’d only told her a half-truth.
    “They approach the most talented and promising humans and entice them with things beyond their reach in exchange for their soul. Then they make sure whatever good those people were going to do is used for evil in their hands. And they’re coming after you now.”
    Uneasiness crept up her spine. “Somehow I don’t feel flattered by that.”
    “You shouldn’t be. But you will. They all are eventually. And in the end, many give in to them. That’s how the demons get stronger.”
    “By getting human souls? Sorry, but that’s a little too abstract a concept. You can’t separate the soul from the body. Scientifically that’s—”
    He took two swift steps to cross the distance between them, bringing himself entirely too close to her. “It’s got nothing to do with science, at least not the science you know. This is supernatural, something you wouldn’t understand.”
    Leila expelled an angry huff. He made her sound like an imbecile. “I’m not some stupid woman who doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together, something I can’t