The perfume of love (rain-bi)

chapter 21

Left alone on the quayside, her thoughts and emotions in chaos, jenna knew that she needed much more than half an hour's respite before she faced jihoon again. she had to get back to the yacht and the privacy of her cabin.

desperate to avoid another encounter with him until she had pulled herself togother, she returned to the launch and, a short time later, was zipping towards Ocean Wanderer.

fortunately several of the deck crew were at work at that hour and one of them saw her come alongside and ran down the ladder to take the mooring line from her.

"would you find someone to go over and pick up Captain jung, please" she said. "i had to come back before him"

in her cabin, she flung herself down on her unmade bed and lay staring with dry-eyed misery at the deckhead, wondering how the moment of joyous certainty she had felt just before jihoon kissed her could have turned into a disaster which had put them right back to square one.

she was fairly sure he hadn't meant the contemptuous taunt of his parting shot. it had been the angry reaction of a man who had misunderstood her response to his kiss. she didn't completely understand it herself. she had wanted to be kissed, had enjoyed it... and then, all at once, had panicked when tenderness changed to passion.

but he wasn't to know how little experience she had. who would imagine that hana's sister, at twenty years old, had never been to bed with anyone?

another cause of his anger was frustration, she realised. inexperienced as she was, her intuition told her that it had been quite some time since jihoon had held a girl in his arms. as her sister had put it, he was 'as randy as hell' and even jenna knew that pent-up sexual desire made a man short-tempered.

but it wasn't as if she had made a deliberate effort to turn him on, and then backed off. at the beginning, their embrace had been spontaneous on both sides. as the ground had shuddered beneath them, they had each reacted in the manner which, in their culture, was conditioned from childhood. he had opened his arms to protect her and she had accepted their shelter, knowing that there was no shield from the forces of nature but nevertheless feeling safer close to his tall, powerful body.

remembering the scent of his skin, and its smooth-ness and warmth, she felt herself melting with longing to relive those wonderful moments before the termor had ended.

they had been, she recognised now, moments of perfect happiness in spite of the turmoil going on beneath the earth's crust. it was a long time since she had been completely happy. there had been degrees of happiness; lilac-scented summer mornings when she had felt glad to be alive; moments of wonder and delight at the magical beauty of a rain-jewelled spider's web, or the angelic voices of the choristers singing carols in king's college chapel.

but total, complete, perfect happiness she had only experienced in the company of someone she loved.

long ago, when she was little, before she could read well herself, hana had sometimes read stories to her, the two of them snuggled togother on the big shabby sofa in the playroom at the top of the house where they had grown up. that had been happiness.

later, in jenna's teens, after hana had left home and before her aunt's death, she and the old lady had sometimes driven along the coast to a beach which in winter always had plenty of driftwood. warmly wrapped against the bitter sea wind, they would gather enough to fill the boot of Miss kim's aged black Morris before returning to the cottage for tea and toast by the fire, and long talks about literature and life. that had been happiness.

since her Aunt's death, life had been mostly loneliness, houseworks and worries. even coming to this lovely place of blue skies, sunlight and flowers had been spoiled by the discovery that hana had become what their aunt would have called, in the idiom of her generation, 'a kept woman'.

then,last night at the lecture and afterwards, she had had such a comfortable feeling at being on good terms with jihoon. she hadn't asked herself why it was a relief no longer to be at loggerheads with him; she had been content that they had begun to be friends and had closed her mind to the possibility of where friendship with such an attractive man might lead her.

now, after making a hash of it and giving him the impression she hadn't liked it, she couldn't go to him and say, "look, please, would you kiss me again, because actually i enjoyed it very much."

even if she the nerve to say that to him, it wouldn't be a good idea. it might be... she had to face it... that what she had felt in his arms wasn't love but infatuation.

time was what she needed. time to be sure. but for that damned earth termor, time was what she would have had. in the ordinary course of events it might have been weeks before he kissed her. if ever.