🌴 Tropical Permission 📖 Chapter Ten: The Proposal

What Would It Mean—for Us? What If I Like It Too Much?

---

This post will be unlocked/free for everyone at 4 pm ET tomorrow, July 25th! Thank you for reading and subscribing! - L.H.

---

It smelled of sex and sea water, the salty aromas swirling through the otherwise still villa.

Diane lay on her side, body curled toward James, sweat drying on her skin, heartbeat steady now but not settled. The air was thick with what they’d just done. What it meant. What it awakened.

James was quiet beside her. She could feel his chest rising and falling slowly. His hand drifted along her arm, down her leg and back, in slow, grounding strokes. She felt raw, stripped down but held. There was something deliberate in the way he touched her.

She knew he wasn’t done. She knew they weren’t done.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said finally, voice rough and low.

A faint smile pulled at her lips. “So much thinking on a vacation where we’re supposedly doing ‘absolutely nothing’.”

He gave a soft laugh. But he didn’t tease back.

“We’ve been dancing around it,” he went on. “The stories, the games, the way you talk to me when you get like that…” He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “But I don’t know if I want to keep pretending.”

Her body stilled. Not recoiling. But alert.

Diane turned to face him, meeting his eyes, inches apart. There was no bravado in his voice. Just hunger. And something more startling: conviction.

“You’re serious,” she said softly.

“I am.”

Silence stretched between them. She shifted to face him, tucked one leg between his, grounding herself.

“I need to ask,” she said carefully, “have you thought this all the way through? What the reality could feel like versus the fantasy? What it might mean for our marriage?”

James nodded. “I have. I have complete confidence in our marriage, Di. Unequivocal.”

She knew this instinctively but it still warmed her to hear him say the words. Her eyes conveyed clearly conveyed to him how much hearing that meant.

“In terms of reality verse fantasy: I don’t know how I’ll feel until I feel it. That’s the reality. But I want it. I want what I saw in you. What you became when you told me. What it unlocked. You were… magnificent.”

She felt her stomach tighten—not in anxiety, but in something closer to awe. She wasn’t used to being called that. Not in bed. Not in marriage.

“James…”

“I want to see that version of you again,” he said. “But I want it to be real. Not just imagined. Not just filtered through a story you tell me after the fact. I want to be there.”

Diane swallowed.

“So you want to… what? Watch?”

He met her gaze. “Or participate. I don’t know yet. Whatever would make you the most comfortable. But I know I want it. And I want to be part of it. I want to see you touched by someone else. Wanted. Taken.”

Her breath hitched. There was no flinch in his eyes. No hesitation now. Just a fire she hadn’t realized had been smoldering for years - and that she’d been feeding since they arrived.

She pulled the sheet up reflexively, shielding herself—but from what? Him? The idea?

She looked down at the linen gathered in her fists. “James, I believe you when you say you have complete confidence in our marriage. I do. But what you’re proposing... I still don’t know what that would mean for us.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything we don’t choose,” he said. “We’d talk about it. Set rules. Boundaries. We’d do it together. Every step of the way.”

Her mind raced, but her body wasn’t retreating. Not from him. Not even from the idea. In fact, her body was tingling with a mixture of anxiety and arousal.

She thought of the way his eyes had darkened when she’d whispered details. The way his body had moved, urgent and unyielding, as if he needed her even more because he imagined sharing her. She thought of how open he had been. How open she had felt.

But also: What would it mean if I let him see me that way? As in, actually, see it with his own two eyes?

Would he still look at her with awe?

Or would he see something else? Something he couldn’t unsee?

She met his gaze. “I’ve thought about it too. But it scares me.”

He nodded. “It scares me too. But not as much as the idea of exploring it excites me.”

Diane lay back and stared at the ceiling, the fan spinning slowly overhead.

She tried to picture it. Not a memory. Not a fantasy. A real man. Real hands. Another body. Another cock. And James, watching. Wanting her through someone else’s desire.

A tremor passed through her. She wasn’t sure if it was fear or arousal. Maybe both.

“What if I like it too much?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

James didn’t flinch. He took her hand, kissed the inside of her wrist.

“Then I’ll get to see all of you. And still get to take you home.”

She exhaled shakily. Her chest was tight with something she couldn’t name.

“Would we ever come back from that?” she asked. “Would we ever be the same?”

He smiled, just a little. “Maybe not.”

She stared at him, stunned by how sure he sounded.

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“I want to be the man who gives you more,” he said. “Not less. I don’t want to tame you, Di. I want to help you take up more space. Be more of what you already are.”

Diane knew he was sincere, but that his sincerity and his own desires couldn’t be decoupled. She felt the ache behind her eyes, the burn in her chest, the pulse between her legs. She kissed him then—deep and slow—and felt the door swing wider.

“I need to think about it,” she whispered when their mouths parted.

James nodded. “That’s all I ask.”

They curled into each other, the silence no longer heavy but expansive.

And even though dawn wouldn’t cross the sea for hours, Diane felt a new heat rising in her.

A possibility.

Not closing the door.

But walking through it. Together.

---