He plucked out a piece of melon and held it up. I leaned forward and opened my mouth. He brushed the juice on my bottom lip before letting it touch my tongue. “Orchestras cost a lot of money,” he said. “They must believe in you.”

I took the cantaloupe gently into my mouth and closed my lips around it, catching his fingers, sucking them on the way out.

“We’ll see.”

“Is this what you brought for dinner?”

“I ate stuff at home,” I lied. If he knew my fridge was empty and I didn’t want to spend Debbie’s money getting takeout, he’d worry. Or he’d lose his shit all over the hospital room. He’d already had a code blue over his mother trying to shut me out.

“You’re supposed to have dinner with me,” he said, feeding me melon. He wasn’t mad or scolding. He missed me during the day when his family was here and I hung around in the shadows. That was the deal. I didn’t have to be front and center with his sisters and mother, but I came to him at night, alone.

“What did the doctors say? Will you be out for Christmas?” I changed the subject, deflecting away from dinner, which would lead to talk of my financial distress. “I have no idea what to get you, by the way.”

He paused, picking through the fruit, eyes cast down.

“Well?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he answered, holding up cantaloupe. I took it, but I sensed he was hiding something. I chewed slowly. As if sensing my recalcitrance, he said, “I’m strong enough, but the arrhythmia’s still there.”

“It was gone yesterday!”

He shrugged. “Eat. I want that body ready for me when I get the hell out of here.”

That was Jonathan. Focused on getting the hell out of what he perceived as a prison.

“This body’s always ready for you,” I said, parting my lips for his fingers. He pulled the fruit back an inch, and I followed, then he let it touch my tongue, then pulled it back. We played the cat and mouse game with the melon until he popped it in his mouth and grabbed me by the back of the head, kissing me. Our tongues tasted of cold fruit. I kissed him as if I’d almost lost him, pushing myself into him as if he was a delicate creature, living only by the grace of God and modern medicine. His tongue wove around mine as if he was as healthy as ever. As if an elevated heart rate wouldn’t kill him, or at the very least, send nurses running in with paddles and carts of beige machines. He could deny what was happening all he wanted. He was getting stronger, but if his doctors were to be believed, every day without that graft brought him closer to another heart failure.

“Goddess,” he whispered. “I have to have you.”

“No fucking way.” We’d tried two nights previous, and the word disaster would be used if we were underplaying the results. I’d gotten an earful from Nurse Irene on the matter, and had cried for hours from the stress and the scolding.

He pushed his finger under my waistband. I could feel the tubes from the IV on my skin. “Undo these,” he said.

“No.”

“Open your jeans and pull them down.” He spoke as if I hadn’t just refused him, and the command send waves of lust below my waist. “I swear to God I won’t get my heart rate up.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I’m not. Come on. Trust me.”

His face was inches from mine, his hand on my cheek, stroking my lower lip. Every night I curled up next to him and slept for a few hours before I was asked to get in my chair. Every night I wanted him, and every night I worried. He’d gone from distraught, to annoyed, to depressed, to this. A feeling that he’d lost control. He was using me to feel like he had it for a minute. I just didn’t know if I could trust him to take care of himself.

I unbuttoned my pants. He sighed and put the container on the table, his eyes still locked on mine as I straightened my hips, put a knee on the bed and pulled my pants down.

“Straddle me,” he said. I was restricted by the waistband, but got a leg out and wiggled around the instruments and tubes to get myself on either side of him. I made no move to shift the sheets away or touch him. I only did what I was told.

“The door’s ajar,” I said.

“The curtain’s closed.” He whispered, feeling my ass. “You’re wearing this cotton shit again,” he said, his left hand, the one without the IV, stroking my lower back and finding its way under my panties.

“It feels silly to waste to good stuff when you won’t see it.”

“You miss the point.” He pulled me forward. “Put your hands behind me.” I placed them on the wall behind him. With his left hand, he reached between my legs, caressing me over the fabric of my underpants. “The idea is that during the day, I’m present where no one can see. You dress for the world, but under that, you dress for me. I own your softest places, and what touches them, is mine.”

“How can I think about that when you’re sick?”

“I need you to. It’s the only thing that gets me through the day. Knowing I own you even from here. Can you do something for me tomorrow?”

“Anything.”

“At three o’clock, when you’re in the studio. Exactly three. Put your fingers on your lips and think of me.”

“Yes. I can do that.”

He brushed his thumbnail over the crotch of my panties. My clit throbbed at his touch, and I gasped.

“Remember the office?” he whispered. “On the desk?”

“How could I forget? You were cruel.”

He stroked the nails of four fingers over the cotton he so hated. It was damp already.

“I wanted you so badly,” he whispered.

“You could have had me.”

“Anyone else, I would have just fucked. Not you.” He brushed one finger under my panties, stroking my opening. “You were so wet. So responsive. A quickie on a desk would have been such a waste.”

His finger ran circles around my wettest part, and again, his thumb touched my clit gently. When I thrust forward, he pulled it back.

“You were a bastard.” I spoke through gasps as his fingers teased me. “You could have let me come and fucked me later.”

He pushed two fingers in me. I closed my eyes and groaned.

“Look at me,” he said. I put my nose to his and tried to keep my eyes open. “I wanted you before my trip. I needed you motivated. I had to have you.”

“Have me,” I gasped as he put only the lightest pressure on his thumb while rotating his fingers in my hole.

“You were fantastic that first night. Unforgettable.”

Pulling his fingers out, he slipped them up my cleft, stroking my clit slowly, barely moving, every millimeter of movement a shot of sensation from my cunt out to my knees and waist.

“Oh, God.”

His right hand went to the back of my head. I knew he had his IV in that hand, but I wasn’t going to think about that. I only thought about the excruciatingly unhurried motion of his fingers. “Do you want to come, Monica?”

“Please let me come. I want to.”

He grabbed my hair. “I don’t believe you.”

“Please. Jonathan, please. Don’t let me walk away like this. Let me come for you.” My begging could not have been more sincere. The pleasure and tension between my legs was so intense, so heavy, it was almost painful.

“No.” He slowly dragged his fingers over my clit, then lodged them back in me and pulled them out, rolling around the outside, then pushed them back in again, all the while keeping my head still by holding a handful of my hair in his fist.

“Please,” I whispered.

“Why should I?”

“You love me.”

“I do.” But he didn’t say anything more.

“And I love you.”

“So?”

“I miss your body. I want to come for you. Please.”

He pulled the tips of his fingers over my clit. It was just enough to take me to the next level, where I couldn’t speak as the pleasure soaked my body, yet it wasn’t a full release.

“When you sing tomorrow, you wear something that reminds you of me.”

“Yes.” I would have promised him the World Series, but this, I meant. Under my clothes, he owned me. “Please.”

Rubbing my clit in earnest, he held my face close to his. “Who do you belong to?” Like a glass of water on a hot day, my cunt drank him, getting what it had craved, every inch of wet skin receiving the touch it wanted like the answer to a prayer.

“You. I am yours. Oh. I’m—”

“Come, darling.”

I bit back a cry as the orgasm ripped through me like a fire hose had been turned on, thrusting my hips forward, sending bullets of pleasure through my nervous system, squeezing the air from my lungs, shutting out every sense, but the sensation of his fingers between my legs, his breath on my face, his eyes on mine.

He slowed, but kept his hand on my stroking me down until I felt like I could think again.

“Again, goddess. And quietly.”

He pushed in me, gathering juices, then put his fingers to my clit again. The waters rose like a flash flood.

“Fuck,” I groaned, clenching, thrusting, a grunt stopped in my throat as I came for him again. My eyes closed involuntarily as I released, the fireworks between my legs taking up every sensory input.

A machine beeped. We froze. It double-beeped once, twice, then stopped. He patted my ass, and I knew what that meant.

I scurried off him and pulled my pants up, getting them buttoned just as Irene Kzowlicz, RN opened the door.

“Mister Drazen,” she said in her thick Hungarian accent. “You are okay?”

“We’re fine.”

“I didn’t know if I should be getting the crash cart again.” She joked, shuffling in on her clunky padded shoes, hands like risen dough pulling Jonathan to a sitting position so she could mess with his pillows. Her grey hair was cut short, and her lower lip seemed to extend a good seven inches from her face.