Once there is mutual curiosity, the next step is not action. It is the foundation. Everything you build later rests on the trust, consent, and agreements you put down now, and rushing this part is the most common way couples get hurt.
Turn talk into written agreements
Good intentions evaporate under intensity. Agreements protect your future selves from the heat of the moment. Sit down together, calmly, and work through the concrete questions: where on the spectrum you are choosing to be right now, what you are open to, what is off limits, what you need to tell each other and when, how you will check in, and your rules about safety and sexual health. Write the answers down. It feels excessive until the first time a memory conflict arises in a charged moment, at which point a written agreement is worth more than any number of good intentions. Treat it as living, and revise it as you learn.
Design rules for your least secure moment
Rules that look sensible on a confident night often fail on a harder one. Make them specific enough to be unambiguous, keep them present-tense, and write them imagining the overwhelmed version of yourself, not the excited one. Beware of rules that are really attempts to control a feeling rather than a behavior. You cannot legislate how someone feels, only what everyone does.
The one rule above all
Elevate one agreement above the rest: either partner can call a pause or a stop at any time, for any reason or none, and it will be honored immediately and without cost. No sulking, no interrogation, no making anyone pay for it later. This single rule is what lets both people relax enough to enjoy anything. It sounds like a limit, but it is the thing that makes freedom possible.
You can start your own version with the free boundaries and agreements starter on the tools page.