As she lay there, head on his chest, she heard the soft whirl of his artificial heart.  She could hear the mechanical sound of blood being pushed from one chamber to another via the automated valves.

As she listened, she realized how much she missed the sound his heart used to make.  The swoosh of a muscle slightly out of rhythm and the click it made at the end of a beat as it struggled to move the blood from one side to the other.  The sound that indicated a defect that nearly took his life.

She was grateful for his new heart and his continued health.  Yet there was something about prosthetic which made her feel uneasy.  Beyond anything else, she concluded that it must be the way it functioned.  It was smooth and calculated.  It was an even system unmatched by even the healthiest of hearts.

This new organ kept secrets  She missed the way her touch used to cause his heart to race and then listening to it pound and eventually calm after they had been intimate.  She used to be able to read him by listening to that heart.  Now, she could only guess at what he was feeling.

He placed a hand under her chin and lifted her face to his.  At first, she avoided eye contact, feeling guilty for her thoughts and irrationally worried that he’d somehow developed an ability to read her mind.

She couldn’t look away forever, and the longer she tried, the worse she felt.  She met his gaze and peered deep.  As she met his eyes, she instantly knew that he had no inkling of her longing.

The longer she looked, the more she realized she didn’t need his heart to tell her what he felt.  She had his eyes.  Were those to ever be in question, she had his touch.  She had the soft breath from his mouth on her cheek.  She had a sensation that she couldn’t quite name.  A warmth that projected from him to her.  A sense of calm and love that could only be felt with the deepest parts of her.

He leaned and kissed her mouth sweetly.  She let the emotion overwhelm her until her heart was racing enough for the both of them.