Page 99 of Leather & Lark

“Yeah. Makes sense,” Lachlan says as he holds the plastic bag open so I can drop the severed thumb inside. Once sealed, he places it in the interior pocket of his jacket. “Regardless, I’m proud of you, yeah?”

“You’re my husband, sweetie. You’re kind of supposed to say that.”

An adorable blush creeps into Lachlan’s cheeks before he clears his throat and gruffly asks Conor for a time check.

“Three minutes.”

“Shite.” Lachlan takes out the next set of tools and lays them on Stan’s chest. There’s a syringe filled with some kind of solution and a plastic jar of formalin. A scalpel. A pair of scissors. A set of dainty tongs. And something that looks disturbingly like a little ice cream scoop. “You ready?”

Bile churns in my stomach. “Probably not.”

“Me neither.”

We move closer to Stan’s face and Lachlan passes me the tongs. “Conor, are you one hundred percent sure his security system has the iris scanner?”

“One hundred andtenpercent sure. Enjoy.”

“Fucksakes.” Lachlan looks about as green as I feel when he pinches Stan’s lashes between two fingers and pulls his top eyelid upward. “Hold this with the tongs.”

I do as he asks and slide the instrument into place to hold the eyelid back from the prize beneath. Lachlan saturates the surface of Stan’s eye with the liquid in the syringe before he takes up the scalpel with a deep, unsteady breath.

“I take back what I said earlier about leaving Sloane out of this,” I say. “We should have gotten her to do it. This is fucking disgusting.”

“You’re not the one who has to dig it out of his face,” Lachlan says as he leans over Stan’s head with the scalpel. He starts slicing along the upper ridge of bone to cut the thin muscle that adheres to the eyeball. Just one glance at his progress and I have to turn away to gag. “Feckin’ hell, don’t you start.”

“I can’t help it.”

“You’re going to make me sick.”

“Please go faster.”

“Yes, go faster,” Conor says, “because someone’s just jumped on the delay and called dispatch for the fire department.”

“Shit,” I hiss into my sleeve.

Lachlan taps me on the wrist. “Switch lids.”

As soon as I grab the bottom eyelid a surge of blood pools across the gelatinous white surface and I wretch. With a shaking hand, I manage to pinch the skin with my tongs before my stomach flips and I gag.

“Keep it together, Lark,” Lachlan barks, his voice as much a plea as it is a command.

“How?”

“Think about Keanu.”

“No, don’t you dare ruin him for me with the power of eyeballs.”

“Feckin’ hell, okay.Shite.” A little wretch comes from Lachlan, and I bury my sweaty forehead into the crook of my elbow. “How the fuck does Sloane do this?”

“Just imagine it’s a marble,” Conor chimes. “Or one of those Trolli Glotzer marshmallow gummy eyeball candies. Have you seen those? Gabs loves those things. They’re filled with red sour liquid shit.”

I gag again as Lachlan releases a string of expletives, some of which might be in Irish, though I can barely make out his words over the blaring alarm and the heartbeats roaring in my ears. “Don’t bring upfood, ya feckin’ gobshite. Bloody hell.”

“Yeah, fuck off, Conor. Leave my man alone.”

“The spoon thingy, Lark. Pass me the spoon.”

I heave. Lachlan gags. Conor cackles.