🌴 Tropical Permission 📖 Chapter Thirteen: The Silence
He kneels. She opens. The sun rises.
The balcony was still. Quiet.
The sun had only begun to stretch across the tile, lighting the hem of Diane’s robe in amber. Her breath was warm against James’s neck. Her thighs straddled his lap, the mug of coffee now forgotten, cooling on the floor beside them.
They had just redrawn the map of their marriage. Not in ink, but in breath. In touch. In trust.
James looked at her, his expression unreadable for a moment—and then he lifted his hands to the knot at her waist.
She stilled, watching him.
The belt loosened with a gentle tug. The robe fell open, slowly, softly, as if obeying some private gravity. Beneath it, her skin was flushed by the sun and what they’d just said aloud. She didn’t move to stop him. She let it happen.
James shifted from underneath her, placing her alone on the chair. Then he took the cushion from the other chair, and placed it before her on the warm stone floor, kneeling between her thighs.
Her breath caught.
The morning light washed over her, soft and angled, like the first spotlight on a stage. Her robe hung open, the folds framing her bare center like drapes. She didn’t close it. She didn’t need to.
James leaned forward and kissed her inner thigh. Then again, higher.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
He used his mouth as the devout use silence. With reverence. With worship. As if he were speaking a secret tongue, the only language he knew.
Diane let her head fall back against the chair, the rising sun warm against her closed eyelids. His hands were firm on her hips. His mouth was slow, then faster, then slow again. He was patient. Thorough. Attentive to each subtle gasp and moan. Familiar in the way that only long love can be, but hungry like a man tasting something newly sacred.
When she came, she did so with a low cry, half-caught in her throat, her hips rocking up into his mouth. The sea stretched endlessly behind her. The sun crowned her. And her husband — her tether, her co-conspirator — held her steady with his mouth.
James rose slowly, face wet with her. He lifted her easily, her legs wrapped around him, her robe still open, clinging to her back like wings.
He carried her to the bed.
Laid her down gently.
Climbed over her.
The sheet twisted beneath them. The room still smelled faintly of coffee and perspiration. Diane reached up and traced the lines of his wet jaw, then pulled him down into a kiss that tasted like her own pleasure.
They said nothing.
He moved inside her like he already knew the rhythm of her thoughts. Like they knew each other’s thoughts and deepest desires.
She was open for him — no longer needing to perform, no longer needing to imagine. The fantasy had moved too close. It shimmered just beneath the surface of their skin, not demanding to be spoken aloud, but crackling through their every breath and movement.
Her robe framed her breasts, clung to her waist, bunched at her sides as he thrust deep and slow. Her knees rose to cradle his hips. Her hands curled into his hair.
He kissed her neck. Her collarbone. Her mouth.
No dirty talk. No script.
Just breath.
The inhale and exhale of the weight of what they’d agreed to, anchoring them to the moment.
She came again, near silently, in a long, searching gasp, her nails digging into his shoulders. He followed, moments after, spilling into her with a low, broken sound that came from somewhere ancient.
For a long time, they lay in stillness. Entwined. Wordless.
The robe clung to her like a flag of surrender. Or a banner of conquest. She didn’t know which. Maybe both.
Outside, the sun climbed higher. A new day beginning.