🌴 Tropical Permission 📖 Chapter Twelve: The Agreement
Permission Slip: The Terms of Desire
Happy Monday! This post is going out to everyone at the same time (paid and free) because I screwed up on the unlocking of the last few paid posts. Chapter 13 will be out by Wednesday and (initially) only available to paid subscribers. In any case, enjoy! - L.H.
The morning was unusually still.
No breeze teased the curtains. Just the low, steady murmur of waves, and the slow ticking of the ceiling fan above their bed.
Diane sat cross-legged on the balcony chaise, her robe loose at the shoulders, a mug of cooling coffee cradled in both hands. Her hair was still tangled from sleep. She hadn’t said much since waking from the dream. The one that turned her on… and then turned on her. That reminded her how thin the line could be between surrender and helplessness.
James stepped outside and sat on a chair across from her. Shirtless, still sleepy, his mug steaming. His face held a careful quiet.
“You okay?” he asked finally.
She nodded once. “I think so.”
They sat in silence for another long beat.
“I didn’t like losing you,” she said. “In the dream. It turned on me. At first I was… I mean, it was hot. But then I couldn’t find you. Couldn’t breathe. It stopped being mine.”
James didn’t respond right away. When he did, his voice was low and steady.
“I worry about that too.”
She looked up at him.
“Losing you in this. Getting swept up in the idea, the heat, and then finding out too late we crossed a line we can’t come back from.”
Diane set her mug down carefully.
“So what do we do? Maybe we just keep it in fantasy?”
“I didn’t say that,” James replied. “I just think we need to know what we’re doing. And why. And what we won’t do.”
His tone wasn’t defensive or pushing. It was… invitational. That, more than anything, calmed her.
She pulled her robe tighter around her, not out of modesty but focus.
“I don’t want this to be a game of chicken,” she said. “Something we keep escalating because we’re both afraid to back down.”
James nodded. “Agreed.”
She paused. “But I also don’t want to bury it again. It’s real. What we’ve unlocked. What we’re circling.”
James gulped hard. He leaned forward slightly. “So let’s try to name it. Together.”
Another silence. Then—
“Okay,” Diane said. “First boundary. Nothing without both of us present.”
James exhaled in relief. “Yes. No secrets. No solo encounters. We’re in it together or not at all.”
She sipped her coffee. “Second. If either one of us says stop—”
“We stop,” he finished. “Immediately. No questions.”
“Right.”
James hesitated, then said, “And maybe no penetration the first time. At least not vaginal. No actual fucking. Let’s see what it feels like just… exploring. Watching. Touching.”
Diane looked at him curiously. “That’s your line?”
“For now, yeah.” He shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It makes it feel less… irreversible.”
She nodded. “I think I’d feel safer knowing there were limits we weren’t just making up in the moment.”
“Exactly.”
They both sat with that, letting it settle.
Then Diane asked quietly, “What about kissing?”
James’s brow furrowed. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“It’s intimate.”
“So is sucking someone’s cock.”
She smirked despite herself. “Touché.”
“But I don’t know,” he added. “Kissing feels more emotional to me than sexual sometimes. I think I could be okay with it, but maybe that’s one of those things we decide case by case.”
“Fair.”
James looked out at the water. “So… no solo play. No intercourse. Full honesty. Immediate veto power.”
“And,” Diane said softly, “we don’t let it become an escape. If something’s not working between us, we fix us—not look for a third.”
James reached across and touched her knee. “Yes. That one might be the most important.”
They sat with that, their eyes locked, something solid forming in the space between them.
Diane exhaled slowly. “Do you really think we can do this? Like, actually do it and come out stronger?”
“I think we already are,” James said. “Just having this conversation. Just naming the edges of it. That’s more trust than most people ever get to.”
Her throat tightened at that.
He added, “And if we decide, later, that we don’t want to do it? That’s not failure. That’s just another choice we made together.”
Diane nodded, her voice quiet. “I just don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose us.”
“You won’t,” he said firmly. “We’re not playing with this because we’re broken. We’re playing with it because we’re strong. Curious. Alive.”
She smiled at that. A slow, blooming smile.
James leaned back, stretching his legs out under the table. “So what do we call it? An agreement? A contract?”
She tilted her head. “A permission slip.”
That made him laugh. “God, that’s perfect!”
She stood, moved to straddle his lap. He set his coffee down just in time to catch her by the hips.
“Then maybe,” she murmured against his ear, “we start small. Explore the edges. Let the fantasy flirt with reality.”
James’s hands slid beneath her robe. “You mean like flirting with strangers?”
She kissed the corner of his mouth. “Or letting them flirt with me. And letting you watch.”
He groaned softly.
“And maybe more,” she whispered. “When we’re ready.”
“When we’re ready,” he agreed.
And beneath the rising sun, in the still hush of the morning, they kissed like a couple who had just redrawn the map of their marriage—and were falling into new, unmapped territory, together.
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