This Is the Wonder

by Tracey Ward

  I look at Jax questioningly.

  He shrugs. “He’s a funny guy.”

  I’ll believe it when I hear it.

  A couple beers later and Jax and I call it a night. We say goodbye to the boys and head out into the cold winter air, bundled up tight and walking arm in arm toward Jax’s dorm. I saw it earlier before we went out to the bar and it’s a small space. Just a bed, a microwave, his TV, and a wardrobe full of uniforms and a meager amount of everyday street clothes. Pretty sparse, but that’s the way soldiers live: ready to leave everything behind at any moment.

  He has a bag in the wardrobe that’s packed with essentials that he says is for emergencies, meaning last-minute deployments. If the world suddenly goes to war, Jax and every man and woman on this base is ready to jump on a plane and head toward the fight. He has a day job here on base as a mechanic, but the real job, the one he’s here in Germany for, is to be always on call—to be a body in this hub to the East, ready and able to jump to it if shit goes down.

  I can’t imagine what that’s like—having to always be ready. Jax says it’s no big deal, that it’s a million to one that he’ll get The Call and he doesn’t really think about it, but it still amazes me. It’s not something I’d willingly sign up to do and I respect the hell out of him for doing it, a fact that embarrasses the hell out of him.

  “It’s weird,” he explains, opening his door and ushering me inside the small room. “People tell you things like ‘thank you for your service’ and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that. ‘You’re welcome’?”

  “Yes,” I laugh. “That’s a good start.”

  He shakes his head, shrugging out of his coat and taking mine from me to toss on the back of a chair. “It sounds conceited. I didn’t join the military to get praised for it.”

  “I know, but it’s still brave of you.”

  “I’m not brave, Wren. I’m just doing my job.”

  “Well then that’s what you should say to people.”

  “What?”

  “Instead of ‘thank you’ tell them you’re just doing your job.”

  He nods faintly, kicking off his shoes and placing them neatly in line at the end of his bed. “I might. I like it better than sounding like an asshole.”

  “You could never sound like an asshole.”

  He grins. “You haven’t seen me in a bad mood yet. I can be an asshole.”

  I kneel on his bed, looking up at him where he stands at the end of it. “Show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  “You being a jerk. I want to see it.”

  He watches me, his eyes searching my face as I stare up at him. Finally he shakes his head. “I can’t. Not to you,” he says softly.

  “You’re not even trying,” I joke with a faint grin.

  His hand comes up to the side of my face, his fingers sliding back into my hair, and my breath hiccups in my throat. I feel warm and frozen at the same time. His eyes change, their brilliant color turning dark. I sit up higher on my knees and his mouth slowly descends on mine. His lips are cold from being outside and he tastes faintly of beer.

  I drag my tongue across his lower lip, warming it with my heat, and he opens his mouth to meet me. I raise my hands to rest on his chest, on the soft cotton of his shirt covering his beating heart that thrums against my fingertips, and his hand takes firm hold of the back of my neck, pulling me closer. His other hand takes hold of my hip and suddenly my body is flush with his and I’m dizzy and disoriented. He pushes back, or maybe I pull him—I’m not sure anymore. We’re moving together as we fall back on the bed, him on top of me and pressing his long, lean body over mine until I’m forced down by the weight of him. By the gravity of us.

  I’m feeling loose in my limbs and my mind is all over the place, a sure sign I’ve been drinking, and I know he feels it too. We’re both bolder than we were in London. Our hands are more adventurous, pulling at the edges of clothing, our bodies rising and falling to meet each other, pressing together in the places that make us both moan in the backs of our throats and send our kisses into a deep frenzy full of rough breathing and aggressive tongues and teeth.

  We’re heading toward something and it’s so tempting, so fucking enticing that I contemplate running straight for it, but I’m not ready and I’m not sober. His body is hard against mine and I know mine is hot and soft under his, everything in us both begging for the go-ahead, but I pull back. I pull my hands from where they’ve driven inside the sleeve and collar of his shirt, searching for the rolling feel of the muscles of his back under his hot skin, and I press my palms to his face.

  His reaction is instantaneous. He understands immediately and he pushes himself up on his elbows, removing his torso from mine and leaving me cold. When he opens his eyes and lifts his mouth from mine, he drops his forehead against my own and nods. His breathing is as erratic as mine and we both lie motionless there together, willing our bodies to catch up with the situation.

  “Sorry,” he whispers roughly.

  “Don’t be,” I whisper back, moving my thumbs in slow circles over his cheeks. “I was in it too, Jax. I feel it too.”

  “We’ve been drinking.”

  “And it’s too soon.”

  “Yeah.” He takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, and lets it burst out in one hot rush that I feel against the skin on my neck. I shiver at how cold I feel when it’s gone. He kisses me gently before lifting himself off the bed and running his hand through his short hair. “I, um… I’m going to go to the bathroom. I’ll stay in there a while to give you time to change.”

  I sit up, putting my feet on the cold floor, feeling both relieved and disappointed. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Jax is gone for a long time. I’m in my pajamas and under the covers of his small bed by the time he comes out in just his jeans, his shirt thrown over his shoulder. He moves through the dark room without trouble, knowing every inch by heart, and quickly drops his jeans to the ground and pulls on a pair of gym shorts. He’s so quick I barely catch a glimpse of his dark boxers before he’s covered up again, but I blush when I see that he’s still affected by our kiss. I feel bad about that—the fact that I see it and that I did that to him—but he hides it quickly, and when he climbs in bed next to me, he makes sure I don’t feel it.

  My booze-filled brain slips into sleep quickly and I’m out before Jax has finished getting situated with his arm over my hip. The last thing I feel is his hand threading lazily through my long hair.

  ***

  “Ohhhhh!”

  My eyes snap open and search the dark, looking for the source of the sound that woke me.

  “God, yes. Fuck yes!”

  Where the hell am I? I sit up and look around, trying to get my bearings. Jax is breathing softly next to me in the bed, and it takes me a minute to figure out that we’re in his dorm, not mine. I remember I’m on base with him, I’m safe, and I slowly lie back down and nestle into his side.

  “Yeah, like that,” a guy says gruffly. “Wider. Put your leg up. Fuck!”

  I stare up at the ceiling, shaking my head.

  Jax’s chest rises and falls sharply under my hand. “Is my neighbor having sex?” he asks groggily.

  “I think so,” I whisper. “The walls are thin here.”

  “He and I share a bathroom. They’re in the shower.”

  “Oh wow, so they’re really close by.”

  “Practically in the room,” he agrees. It sounds like he’s already falling asleep again.

  I envy him. I’m awake for the entire show.

  “Do it. Do it. Ah, do it!”

  “I’m gonna do it. You ready?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m gonna do it. You want it? ’Cause here it comes.”

  I growl in annoyance. “Dude, just do it already.”

  I can feel Jax’s silent laughter shaking his body next to me.

  Finally the girl screams out a shrill cry, the guy groans, someone pounds some part of their body against the
wall in a rough rhythm, and a couple of minutes later the water turns off. I watch the light under the door go dark and I assume they’re done for the night. I settle in comfortably again and close my eyes, praying I get to sleep again easily.

  “At least someone got laid tonight,” Jax mumbles.

  I slap his chest hard as it starts vibrating with laughter again.

  Chapter Ten

  “You know what I just realized?” I ask Jax, staring out the window and watching the countryside roll by.

  “That Paris is really fucking far away from Ramstein?”

  I turn to face him, smiling. “Did you just swear around me?”

  He grins. “Maybe.”

  “Wow. That’s exciting.”

  “You said I should start doing it once we slept together.”

  “That’s not the kind of sleeping together I meant.”

  “Close enough.”

  I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Is it?”

  He looks at me with wicked smile. “For now.”

  I feel a glow in my cheeks and a warmth to my blood, forcing me to turn back to the window and the scenery. Fields. Wheat. Fences. It’s my baseball and cold showers.

  “What did you just realize?” he asks.

  “Oh, right!” I point out the window. “Those cows are French.”

  He laughs, shaking his head. “What?”

  “We’re in France now. Those cows are French.” I shrug. “I don’t know. It just occurred to me that they’re French cows.”

  “Do you think their milk tastes different?”

  “Do you want to pull over and ask them?”

  “I don’t speak French.”

  “Neither do they, Jax. They’re cows.”

  He gives me a sideways glance, which I choose to ignore.

  Jax is right: Paris is really fucking far away from Ramstein. It’s a four-hour drive one way and I wonder why we didn’t take the train, but Jax explains that with his work schedule, the train times just didn’t line up for us. I offer to help drive but he says that because I don’t have an international driver’s license, I legally can’t. So he’s on his own, but I do my best to entertain him and make the drive suck a little less.

  When we finally get there he has his GPS find a parking garage for us just on the outskirts of town.

  “I’ve heard driving in Paris is insane,” he explains. “And parking is a hassle. We’ll park in a garage out here in the suburbs and take the bus into the city.”

  We find one attached to a grocery store and park his car at the top, then head down to the street. We don’t have to wait long for a bus to show, and it takes forever with all of the stops but it gets us into the city. When I see the traffic I’m glad Jax didn’t drive us all the way in. People are insane! Taxis darting in and out of every lane, busses doing as they please and leaving it to everyone else to get out of the way, pedestrians in the street nowhere near crosswalks, some just standing on the white dividing lines waiting for a chance to dart across.

  I would have been making peace with my God the entire time if he’d driven here.

  We get off the bus and start walking, heading for the pickup point for the tour bus company we bought tickets for, and I have to admit that Paris is really kind of beautiful. The buildings are incredible and every bit what you see in pictures and in the movies. I’m still not sold on it being the city of love, though. Mostly what I see is panhandling, tourists, and dead-eyed locals pretending not to notice us or the sights we’ve come to see. They have this above-it-all air to them and I imagine it comes with the territory of living in a famous city.

  But Robin told me to give romance a chance, so I do. I hold Jax’s hand as we walk and I feel a flutter in my stomach at being with him. It’s Jax that’s doing it to me, not the city, but I think it still counts. I’m still trying.

  We ride the bus to the Eiffel Tower and the location is really beautiful. It’s in this oasis in the center of the crowded city, standing tall and striking, surrounded by park and expensive-looking buildings. I can’t imagine what it costs to live in an apartment next door to the Eiffel Tower. Probably enough to make me sick, so I try not to think about it.

  “Should we go to the top?” Jax asks, craning his neck to look up into the sky toward the peak.

  I look at him doubtfully. “Aren’t you afraid of heights?”

  “Are you going to push me off?”

  “What?” I laugh, shocked. “No.”

  He smiles at me sideways. “Then I’m not worried.”

  Turns out it’s not just expensive to have a view of the Eiffel Tower, you have to pay to see the view from it as well. Tickets that only go halfway up are cheaper than ones to the top, and the wait to ride the elevators to the top is way longer. Considering how little time we have, Jax and I settle for half the view. I watch his shoulders slip back and down when we make the decision and I think he’s more a little relieved we’re not going to the top. He can act brave all he wants, pretend that my promise not to murder him cast aside all his fears, but he didn’t a hundred percent want to go up there and I’m glad we won’t.

  I wish I could tell him that he doesn’t have to put on a brave face for me, but I let it go because that’s what I’d want him to do if our roles were reversed.

  We lean against the railings and look out over the city, feeling the breeze rise up and rush over us. It’s beautiful and relaxing.

  “How are you liking Paris so far?” Jax asks me.

  I smile. “I’m loving it. How about you?”

  He wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close. “It’s a good day.”

  We get on the bus and head across the river to the Champs-Elysées, putting the Eiffel Tower behind us and heading for the Arc de Triomphe. It’s a beautiful roman arch at the opposite end of the famous shopping street and it’s this that I’m dying to see—more so than the Eiffel Tower. It’s not nearly as tall but the view is just as brilliant. We walk the entire top, taking in every view before heading back down to the street and stopping for lunch at a café on the Champs-Elysées. We eat outside despite the cold, and the food is delicious. Not cheat-on-brot kind of amazing, but it’s getting there.

  “I’m going to be ruined for American cuisine,” I tell Jax after devouring a plate full of pasta with the richest, creamiest sauce I’ve ever tasted.

  “Burger and fries won’t do it for you anymore?”

  “Not like this. This was heaven on a plate.”

  “Give me one afternoon with a barbecue and a steak and I’ll win you back to the USA.”

  I smile. “I’ll take you up on that.”

  We ride the tour bus for a long time after that, not getting off anywhere but just enjoying the views. Eventually we reach the Louvre and we decide to make a quick tour of it before going back to the car. It’s already getting late in the day, the hours slipping away faster than we can run to catch up, and we have to get on the road soon so Jax can get some sleep before work in the morning.

  The Louvre is huge and I’ll have to apologize to Robin because there’s no way I can think of to fit it in my purse to bring it home to her. I settle for a book full of photos of the art that I find in the gift shop. She’ll have to make due.

  Because we’re short on time we head straight for the main attraction—the Mona Lisa. There’s a perpetual crowd around it and we have to wait forever just to make it far enough forward in the mass of people to even see it, and when we get there I’m a little surprised.

  I cock my head to the side, examining the painting. “It’s small.”

  “Yeah,” Jax agrees thoughtfully. “Way smaller than I thought it would be.”

  “I still like it. I guess.”

  He chuckles. “You guess?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of feel obligated to like it because it’s the Mona Lisa.”

  “The way you feel obligated to like Paris because it’s Paris?”

  “Exactly!” I agree excitedly, so relieved that he gets it. “It’s like
the entire world says the Mona Lisa is gorgeous and Paris is romantic so I feel this pressure to agree but… well, Paris is dirty, the people are uppity, and the Mona Lisa is small and sort of ugly.”

  A woman standing ahead of us turns around to glare at me. She whispers something in French to the man beside her and he glares at me too.

  “Beautiful city,” Jax tells them with a charming smile. “We’re really enjoying our stay here, thank you.”

  The couple turns away, unimpressed.

  “Did you know some people think that Mona Lisa isn’t actually a woman?” I ask him, my voice appropriately hushed. “They say da Vinci painted himself as a woman.”

  “He makes an ugly woman.”

  “You don’t think she’s pretty?”

  “You mean he?”

  “He/she. Oh!” I cry. “It would make Mona Lisa a tranny! You love trannies.”

  The woman looks back at us again, glaring.

  Jax takes my hand and pulls gently. “We should go,” he mumbles.

  After that we meander. We see what we come across and make a point to hit most of the highlights, but we know we can’t see everything so we don’t bother trying. We take our time and we enjoy the day. We enjoy each other, and I laugh more in that evening with Jax than I have the entire time I’ve been in Germany so far. He’s just so easy to be with and he gets me, his sense of humor hitting home with me every time. He’s swearing more now, getting comfortable with me, and even though I don’t do well with public displays of affection, I find myself hugging his arm and leaning into him as I laugh, craving the feel of him close. And every time I do it his lips brush the top of my head and his hot breath sends chills through my veins. It’s the best feeling and I realize that he’s become something singular to me. Something unique.