Natural Law

Chapter 6

This time he bit down on his tongue before he asked her to repeat the question. He had heard her clearly enough, but shock made him want her to rewind, play it once more.
"I'm waiting."
"Mistress. I can't."
"Did I or did I not just give you a direct command?" Her tone sharpened.
"But I'll hurt you. Forget it. I won't hurt you." He felt his loins tighten along with his heart as she turned her body several degrees, showing him the curve of one bare breast. The silver ring of the nipple chain glittered in the light. A small tassel of sapphires and silver beads hung from it, beneath the stiff peak.
"Then I'll show mercy, and reduce the count. You will strike me once, and put all your strength behind it, or this will be the last time you'll ever see me. You'll leave this club and never come back to it. Do it."
She turned away from him again, folding her arms at her waist in front of her.
Mac closed his hand on the handle of the cat o'nine. Nine lash ends, all tied in knots with a fringe of tiny pewter tassels, a variation of the metal-tipped cat some favored here at The Zone. He'd been lashed before by Mistresses, but had never done it himself.
"Put your back into it," she said quietly. "Like an overhand throw."
"Mistress - "
"Mackenzie. Do as I tell you." Soft words, but steel underneath.
She would leave and he would never see her again. Did she get off on being whipped? He'd not heard of a Dominant who did, though many did it as training for themselves to learn how it felt, how to do it without hurting their subs in irreparable ways.
"Just do it, and it will be over. Three seconds. Now," she snapped.
Mac jerked forward, and put his strength behind the strike, though everything in him told him not to do it.
He had misjudged her height. The lashings struck her shoulder in a sparkling fan and then curled over, the metal tips slapping her front sharply, so that he felt the tug of her flesh as he reflexively jerked back.
He knew the signs of pain, heard it in the cry she bit off, the indrawn breath through her teeth, the tightening of her shoulders and buttocks beneath the dress.
He dropped the flail and lunged forward, catching her by the shoulders and turning her around. "Ah, Jesus."
The metal tips had bitten into the soft upper curve of her right breast, leaving tiny tracks of welts, nearly half of which were welling up blood. But the ones that horrified him most had struck and drawn blood on the areola of that beautiful mauve nipple.
"Violet, what the hell were you thinking? Fucking Christ, I've never flogged anyone in my life. I didn't know - "
She reached up, put her hands around his neck, and brought his mouth down to her lips.
He was quivering with fury at her, and she played havoc with his senses, bringing softness and sex into the equation. His hands slid to her bare waist, brought her closer, groaning as her thighs pressed against his still-harnessed cock. Due to the circumstances, it had lost some of its power, but her moist lips drove it back to painful rigidity almost instantly. She was in his arms, her body all his, and she was as small and delicate and precious as she looked. But even though she trembled with the pain he had caused, he felt the core of strength she possessed beneath it all.
He gladly would have stood forever with her there, his tongue stroking hers, his hands holding her waist, itching to go lower, grip that round beautiful ass and squeeze her, hold her tight against his cock, make her feel his need, his desire to possess and be possessed all at once.
She pushed him back a little and he sucked in a breath. "I could break your stubborn little neck," he growled.
"I could say the same for your big thick one." She touched it with her fingertips.
"The way you feel at this moment? That's how you make me feel when you let me hurt you. I can take care of you, cherish you, and not consider you weak." Her gaze was hard, at odds to the softness of the mouth and body he had just sampled. "I know you're a strong man, Mackenzie. Everything about you fairly screams it. But you're vulnerable to me, no matter how hard you play a game to try and pretend you're not.
You won't play games here. This place isn't about games. It's about getting past the games."
She reached down, unbuckled the harness. Mac stifled a groan of relief and winced as she gently peeled back the straps. He was torn between lust and pain as she traced the deep red marks ringing him.
"You're tearing me into pieces, sugar."
"And I'll know how to put them together," she returned. "But now I hurt, and I want you to make it better."
She rebuckled the harness, restricting his cock again, though one notch looser than before. Before he could orient himself to the surprise of that move, she put pressure on his shoulder, and he understood what she wanted next. Mac dropped to one knee, putting his face level with the damage he had inflicted and that pretty areola, marked with a purple welt and swelling for all the wrong reasons. He placed his lips over it gently, with no sucking pressure, and simply laved her, like a wolf giving succor to his mate's wounds, offering soft caresses with his tongue. His hands at her waist gripped flesh, the softness of her dress, his thumbs sliding across the hip bones he knew were bare of panties beneath the skirt.
Violet closed her eyes and he felt her relax in his grip, let him take over, take care of her. Emotion swelled in him, surpassing even his physical reaction. He moved from one welt to another, tenderly offering his mouth to soothe her needs, and her quivering lessened. It told him that the marks had to hurt like a son of a bitch, even now.
"You should get those tended," he said at last, staying on his knees before her.
"With something topical."
Violet ran her fingers through his hair, brushed it from his temple, slowly, meditatively, as if she were calming him as much as herself. "I think it's time to give you some attention," she said.
"I don't deserve it. You should let me take care of your needs." It felt uncomfortable to be at the center of her focus, particularly after she'd so ruthlessly and efficiently stripped away a couple of his outer layers. He had more, but that wasn't the point. On the first night, he had told himself that she was not the type of Mistress he typically sought. His body didn't give a rat's ass. His surly subconscious was fast losing control of the situation.
"I was cruel to you, to make you sit here so long waiting for me," she said.
"You were punishing me, as I deserved."
"Yes. Yes I was." There was a smile in her voice. "But I also know how to be kind." She moved away from him to a cabinet. Mac watched the movements of her hands as they withdrew a bottle. She had a light dusting of freckles on her bare shoulders, like a person who spent time in the sun on a job, not a tanning bed. What did his slim pixie do when she wasn't here?
Whoa, boy. He almost winced at the horse reference. It was dangerous to start thinking about what a Mistress did outside club walls. Here is where their relationship belonged, especially since he was here for another reason.
* * * * *
Violet turned. He was quick, but she could tell he'd been watching her, studying her in a way she could feel in her bones, deeper than the surface, seeking what she was, who she was. That was what she'd said she wanted, wasn't it? A man who was not a one-nighter, but could go further with her. When the need to sexually dominate a man figured prominently in one's search for a lover, the relationship pretty much had to start within a club like this. Otherwise, she could find herself neck deep in a relationship with a man who had no interest in that, and then how would she handle it?
Yes, he might be everything outside the bedroom she wanted, but he would be missing the one key ingredient, the one it had taken her several failed relationships and a couple of therapists to find out she had to have.
Of course, that hadn't been the therapist's diagnosis. According to him, her need to serve as a Mistress was a product of a past she must overcome to enjoy a normal, healthy sexual relationship. He'd also been free with the prescription pad, pushing a list of mood drugs on her to "moderate" her behavior. She wished she could have strapped him to a rack and modified his behavior, with a very different mind-altering experience.
Sometimes, you just were what you were. Unfortunately, this was one of those things that only those who felt it would understand. Tyler had helped her see that, understand and embrace it, integrate it safely into her life. She knew that it would be difficult and tremendously dangerous to translate a relationship outside these walls. If it always had to stay here, she had thought she could live with that. Until now.
She wasn't quite prepared to say that Mac was Mr. Forever, of course, but she could say that she had experienced a stronger reaction to him in twenty-four hours than any man she'd ever met, in or out of these walls. It hadn't been anything he'd said or done, exactly, but something emanating off of him that had hit her hard the moment she looked at him, something that interacted with her own energy and compelled them to this moment. Thrilling and terrifying at once.
She pointed to an upholstered bench of heavy wood, about three feet in length, that was equipped with a variety of restraining straps. "I want you on your stomach on this." At his wary look, she raised the bottle. "I want to rub this into your back." The bench was long enough that when he complied, it accommodated the length of his torso from the top of his head to his pelvis. He moved carefully, and she noted the relaxing of his features when he took the pressure off his legs and back. It told her the effort it had taken him to maintain the position she ordered. It also told her he hadn't cheated, which did wondrous things to her stomach and all the tingling parts of her.
"Be still," she ordered, and buckled a strap around his waist. She also utilized the ones provided on the front legs of the bench to hold his wrists, effectively binding him to the bench and in his prone position. His knees were on the ground, and she had him lift slightly so she could slide a folded fleece blanket beneath them, ensuring his comfort, and strapped his ankles down to the floor bolts provided for that purpose.
Being restrained had tensed up that powerful back, but she pretended not to notice and ignored the question in his expression. Instead, she poured some of the liquid from the bottle into her hands and worked it in her palms, lubricating them and her fingers.
"This is going to go on warm," she said, "And then it gets warmer. Not painful. It's a liniment that should ease muscle strain."
"Mistress does not need to see to my comfort," he protested again. "I am here for her pleasure."
"Taking care of you gives me great pleasure," she assured him, laying her hands on the broad rack of his shoulders. Oh, yes. Great pleasure. She curved her fingers over them, rubbed, circling her thumbs.
He forgot to suppress a grunt and she smiled. "Tell me something about yourself, Mackenzie."
"I like pasta." He cleared his throat. "Alfredo sauces in particular." Violet shook her head. "You just can't put a sock in that smartass streak, can you?
But you'd taste good, flavored with a cream sauce." She spread the liniment lower, working behind the shoulder blades. God, he was built like a linebacker, only leaner and tougher. "How'd you acquire this body of yours? It's not just from a gym. You do something else."
"Yes, Mistress." His arms relaxed further, and she kneaded some more, loving the fact she was giving him pleasure, easing his pain. "I do cross country, survival course competitions. Military camps, things like that." She watched the ridges of his torso take on a gleam, kept a peripheral sensor on how much he was relaxing beneath her touch. Picking up the bottle, she worked more oill in her hands, then poured a thin stream of the viscous fluid down the valley of his spine. It headed toward the seam of his muscular buttocks, where she knew it would seep in and lubricate him. She saw a tremor go through him, sensed that he knew where her mind was headed.
"It doesn't surprise me to hear that. You like to test yourself. That's what you've used your Mistresses for. They're just an extension of your workout, testing your skills to resist weakness." She kept her tone neutral, but he stiffened up under her touch.
"No. It's not like that."
"This is like going to the gym for you, Mac," she continued, ignoring the protest.
"Go to the gym, do twenty reps, go to the D/s hangout, get jerked off by some accommodating Mistress. You're not invested. You're high power, so high power you've never been topped. Because nobody sees those shields you maintain in such a charming way, nobody has tried to go beyond using that beautiful body of yours and reveal what's underneath. I'm going to make you beg."
"I don't beg. I serve."
"Well, it serves me to have you beg. You won't use me or survive me, Mackenzie." She rose so she stood at his shoulder, where his face was turned toward her, his mouth inches from her thighs. Shrugging out of the dress, she let it fall all the way to her ankles, leaving her in just the hose, heels and nipple chain. Violet stayed there a moment, watching his silver eyes course from her ankles to her face and back again, and appreciating that he looked at all of her, not just her breasts or the pussy so close to his face. She leaned forward, whispered in his ear, staying out of range of his mouth.
"When I'm done with you, you'll belong to me. Heart, cock and soul." She straddled his hips in an economical move, slid her oily hands down to massage his sides, feel the expansive rib cage, the stretched muscle over them, and back up to those shoulders that suggested he was descended from Atlas. As she ran her hands down him again, she leaned forward and pressed her body up against his naked back, spreading the oill with her breasts, their hardened tips and the slender nipple chain dragging across his slick skin. His cheeks clenched beneath her spread legs, and she bent her knees, running her pussy down along the crease of his ass, kept sliding down so she took the oill from his bare back to his buttocks, moving in slow circular movements to grease those powerful haunches, her now oily thighs rubbing his hips from her astride position.
She came back up, but didn't put her full weight on him, just enough to get the job done and let him feel a hint of her, the press of her thighs around his hips, the slide of her pussy over his spine, the soft give of her breasts caressing his shoulder blades.
"The nice thing about this is that the oill of my cunt is being rubbed into your skin with the liniment," she murmured, enjoying being astride her steed, feeling his power bunched and coiled between her legs, knowing his cock had to be stiff against his belly, and pressing against the restraints of the harness again. She ran her touch down behind her, one hand sliding down the channel of his buttocks, fingering the strap that ran behind his scrotum, holding the contraption in place. The muscles rippled beneath her and she heard him exhale as she fingered the soft skin, probably the only soft place on him. She cupped his sac, spreading the heated oil, and he groaned as the heat and stroke of her fingers took effect.
"You like that, hmm?" She slipped off his back and took her hands down his thighs, down the muscles she had abused by purposefully keeping him waiting. She followed one column with both hands, stroking the long length to the knee and back up again, finding a crevice between testicles and leg, and working oill in there before dropping her touch to cozen him again, kneading the thigh muscles, earning another sound of appreciation and desire.
"Do you make good pasta, Mackenzie?" She switched to the other leg, appreciating the gleam of his body, the polish effect of the lubricant. She lifted one hand from her task and drew a nail down his lower back, between his cheeks, playing lightly around the opening there. His buttocks tightened, capturing her motion.
"Please don't make me come that way, Mistress."
"You said please. That's progress. Why not? Tell me why."
"Because..." She almost heard his teeth grind as she probed, tested the tight ring of the opening. "...I'd rather bring you pleasure."
"We already discussed this, Mackenzie. Your pleasure is my pleasure. And you'd rather not make yourself vulnerable. That's the issue. What will you do, now that I have you tied on this bench? You can fight me, make it tougher on you." Her other hand reached up between his legs, circled his restrained cock. "Of course, I'm not sure that's possible."
He made a noise of futile protest as she eased her fingers into him, deep inside, the lubricant making it easy to slide into that heat. She was soaked instantly by his clenched reaction on her fingers, the power of lust and fear quivering through him. "But why don't you try honesty for once? Or you can spend the rest of the night scrubbing this room after I make you get yourself off with no condom."
"It makes me feel like some pre-pubescent geek fucking a wet dream."
"But aren't I a wet dream, Mackenzie?" She made her voice a silky purr.
Violet stood, straddled him again, keeping her fingers in him, her arm stretched behind her, testing that bundle of nerve endings that in a man was almost as sensitive as a woman's clit. She leaned forward, rubbing her breasts against his slick back again.
Whispered in his ear, caught the lobe in her teeth. "Aren't I?"
"Sugar, you are the wet dream of all wet dreams," he growled, turning his head to rub against her. When she pressed her lips to his cheek bone, he lowered his head like a proud stallion in truth so she could touch his brow with her kiss.
"So what's wrong with that, Mackenzie?" she said, turning backwards on him, her bare buttocks and pussy at the base of his neck, her thighs along the lengths of his arms.
She worked her fingers deeper into his ass, wriggled. "Ah, there we are."
"No." His breath bellowed out, fighting her, fighting the inevitable.
"No, what, Mac? My God, you are sexy." She sank her teeth into his ass, tightened her legs on his body as he jerked, bucked. Held close by the wrist and ankle manacles, he could not dislodge her.
"No. Just no." Panic was real in his voice now, but she heard the hoarseness of lust as well. "I don't want to lose control. Mistress, please..."
"You say 'no' and 'please', but still you're not thirsty."
"Goddamn you," he hissed. With a quick movement of her spiked heel, she slid a nearby pail under the bench. She tilted the edge of the container to get it under his long, erect cock, enclosing it on all sides where it was suspended in its cage of straps just at the end of the bench.
"You finally gave me a truthful answer, Mac," she said softly, watching his buttocks clench and push, pull against her now as she fucked him with her fingers ruthlessly, brought her other hand around to feel the tightening of his balls. She loosed the harness at the base of his cock a notch, enough to let him go where she wanted him to go. "But you're going to lose control with me. As often as I wish it. Let go now, spill your seed into that pail, or I swear I will find the biggest strap-on on that wall and fuck you blind with it before you get a single taste of my pussy again." He didn't growl or snarl this time. What came out was more of an enraged and frustrated roar. His knees lifted as much as they could, slammed back into the floor as his body heaved and rocked and gave up the fight, shooting jets of semen into the bucket even with the restriction of the harness, which she knew would prolong it, make it even more excruciatingly pleasurable.
"That's it, baby," she crooned. "Show me how much you want to fuck me." She couldn't tell where the wetness of her pussy ended and the oill of his back began, but she didn't care. She rubbed both over him, marking him, working her body with the delightful plunging rhythm of his.
He fought against the inevitable so hard that the strain of the powerful muscles was art in motion. She enjoyed it, every convulsion and tightening, every grunt and moan.
When his head dropped forward on the bench at last, resting on his arm, she slowly withdrew her fingers, teasing him as she went so he shuddered even more. She freed his arms, but bade him keep still with a hand to his back as she picked up a towel and lifted herself off him.
Violet took a moment or two to clean herself, conscious of his eyes upon her. She kept her expression cool and indifferent, the picture of control, until she squatted and lifted his head with her hand.
His much larger hand seized her wrist, dragged her forward and his mouth fastened over hers. Not gentle, not practiced, just raw, brutal strength and desire. She felt his teeth as much as his tongue, felt his frustration, fury and lust all there, felt her bones melt under his strength.
She could have yanked away, punished him for his roughness and breach of etiquette, but she knew that was what he wanted. He wanted her to act like an enraged Mistress. Punish him, not because that got him off, but because it would establish emotional distance, the familiar territory where he was comfortable.
So instead, she raised her other hand, stroked the side of his face, balancing his brutality with gentleness. She stroked his hair around to the back of his neck, gentle, tender loving touches that were an equal answer to his violence, until his kiss eased into a groan of need that pulled her heart into her throat.
She put a finger between their mouths, separating them, then brought her lips back to his still ones with a feather soft touch, tasting him. A cinnamon flavor, wrapped in the surrounding smell of his aftershave cologne, the scent of sex and sweat underneath that. She loved the way a well-groomed man smelled after sex, a mixture of the civilized and the primal, both offerings of respect to her. One scent indicating his desire to groom himself for her pleasure, the other indicating that he had exercised his desire for her.
Trailing her lips down his cheek, she brushed his shoulder, then she lowered her hand, unbuckled his cock harness, rubbed her thumb over the deep red impression where the point of the buckle had dug into him earlier. "Idiot," she murmured, stroking him there.
He was soft, spent in her hand, but she could feel the little twitches, see the flare of his nostrils as she fondled him, all indications of how quickly he could be roused again. He had a fast recovery time. Good. He would need it. Because she wasn't done with the lesson.
She rebuckled his wrists to keep him still as she rubbed the towel over him, cleaning him up. He said nothing, and she did not draw him out. She could tell a thousand thoughts were chasing themselves through his head, and the foremost might be that he'd had enough, that this was more than he wanted to give. Well, he was here now, she had him for tonight. She cleaned him with wet towelettes left in every room for the patron's hygiene needs. She wiped him down; head, shaft, scrotum. He roused under her touch, but still he said nothing, and her nerves were starting to vibrate with anxiety, even as her fingers itched to continue slowly stroking that cock, which was rising to life again.
She had her head bent close to his, drying the oill from his back with the towel, when she felt his lips brush her cheekbone. Suppressing the urge to turn her face to him and devour him in joy at the simple victory, she kept quietly to her task, let him nuzzle her, nibble her neck.
"Mistress, let me go, let me make you come," he whispered against her ear.
She closed her eyes as his nibble on the lobe dropped, became an open mouthed strong pull on her throat.
"No. You can't trust a new pet off the leash until you're sure he'll obey your commands. You're a new pet, Mackenzie. My new pet. So you'll be on that short leash until I'm sure that stubborn head and big cock of yours both understand who their Mistress is. It's too soon." She pulled back from him, stood to establish distance, and for the added psychological benefit of standing over him, which she knew would piss him off. "I'm going to go home," she met his gaze squarely, her eyes impassive, though there was a spring of tension in her lower belly, just looking at him laying there naked before her. "I'm going to put a vibrator in my pussy and imagine it's your cock." His jaw tightened, but he kept his voice controlled, at odds with the flash in his eyes. "Take me home. Let me do it for you instead." She shook her head. A grim smile touched her lips. "I suspect I'll have to come a dozen times before I'll be calm enough to sleep."
"Then don't do it. I'll be worth the wait."
"Nice try. I should give your ass a good beating, trying to give orders to a Mistress." She gave his face a light swat with her nails, was not surprised a bit when his eyes shot fire at her.
"No, Mackenzie," she said, her lips thinning into a straight line. "You don't want to fuck me for the right reasons. You just want to erode my control, make me lose my senses so I'll go easier on you next time. But I'm keeping the reins. I'm not giving up a bit of it, and I'm going to keep pushing you until I have all of you, not just the cock you're so free with. It's time you start realizing that having a Mistress means everything is hers, as I said before. Your heart, your mind, your soul and your body. Cock, ass, whatever I want of you is what you give me, and if you can't get that through your thick skull, it's going to get way rougher before it gets easier."
"You're the one making this harder," he said, with a look in his eyes she was beginning to anticipate. "You're a cock tease." Violet tossed the towel to the side.
"You know, you get mean when you get scared, Mackenzie, but you're not going to drive me off. You want some punishment? You got it. I can be the bitch of your dreams, sugar, but I can also be so much more. If you'll stop being such a chicken-hearted bastard, you'll find that out."
She went to her bag of personal belongings and withdrew something she hadn't anticipated using tonight. Something that made his eyes go dark with apprehension.
"You're not putting that in me."
"Really? Of course not. Not if you say the words. And you know the words, Mac.
Are you ready to use them?" At his fury-laden silence, she nodded, went behind him.
She placed a hand on his backside, fingered him despite his futile attempts to jerk his ass away from her touch. "Still well-lubricated. Well, then." He bucked up and she neatly reached under him, caught his balls and twisted, just enough to freeze him in place as he realized to move further would cause him excruciating pain. She slid the plug all the way in, to the flared wide tip. He had a tighter ass than she expected, which suggested his tension and that he did not do anal play often. She stood, took the remote and programmed it, then set it down on her chair, putting it just out of his reach.
"Now I've programmed that for three twenty-minute sessions," she said, meeting his enraged glance as she turned it on. The twitch that went through his body, the jump in his cock, told her she had seated the plug right where she should. "It will build, get stronger and stronger, then go back to a low speed, then build again. I suspect it will make you come each time." She nudged the pail under his stiffening cock again. "As regular as milking a bull for sperm. I'll ask the staff to come release you at the end of an hour."
His head snapped up. "You're not staying to watch?"
"No, I'm not. They will." She hit the ceiling switch and the darkening feature reversed. It would be a full house. Even with the soundproofing, she sensed all eyes would be riveted on the handsome male specimen below, left bound and being jerked off for their entertainment.
"Violet, don't do this." His face was wild, desperate, and she saw his legs trembling, already starting to feel the effects of the vibrating plug. Sweat was shining on his brow, those magnificent muscles glowing.
She continued as if he had not spoken. "At the half-hour point, I'll send Mariah down to give you water. She'll force feed it to you if necessary. I won't have you dehydrated. At the one hour mark, she'll come and release you, and you can clean up after yourself and go home. If you've never held a plug this long, be sure and wash yourself out with this." She put a bottle of salve next to the remote. "It will soothe the tissues, so you'll be ready for Friday."
"Friday," he said, staring at her.
She hadn't intended to extend the invitation, or at least that's what she'd told herself, but now she knew she'd planned to take him from the very beginning. She was nuts. She could barely control him. If he were free now, he'd have her slammed down on her back in an instant. The thought made her thighs tremble.
"Friday," she repeated firmly. "There's a group of Female Doms from The Zone who are bringing their current slaves to a weekend place on the Gulf that belongs to a friend of mine. I want to bring you. You don't have to go," she added. "If it's too soon for you to go off site, I'll understand, and we can keep playing here." She softened her tone, stepped forward, and dared to get close enough to twist his hair in her fingers. He licked her wrist, bit down on her palm, the jerky movements of a man being pushed to climax and fighting to hold back.
She hesitated, then plunged forward, ignoring all sense, caution. She focused only on those beautiful eyes, so angry and needy, all at once. "If you've still got the guts, meet me out in front of The Zone, at 4pm."
"It's too soon for you," he said, surprising her. "You don't know me well enough.
You should be more cautious about going off alone with strange men." She squatted, met his burning gaze, and felt his fingers strain against his bindings, whisper at her ankles to caress her. "I can handle you, Mackenzie. Now, you think about tonight and what you did to deserve this punishment, and maybe you won't have to go through it again in front of four Doms this weekend, but I suspect you will. You're just that goddamned stubborn. Bring that plug with you Friday. If you're a good boy, I'll just put it back in my bag."
Her lips twisted at the expression on his face, one step away from murder. "I'll be thinking of you when I'm in bed tonight," she murmured, "making myself come with the fingers touching you right now." She pressed her lips to his, the briefest of contacts, before she drew back, taking her ankles out of his reach, and stepped toward the door.
"Mistress...Violet...son of a--- don't do this."
"Good night, Mackenzie." She glanced up. "Looks like a large crowd tonight. I think they're going to enjoy the show."