Don't Judge A Book Part 3 Chapter 1 free porn video

Tuesday 14th May 2019

I’d done a lot of thinking these last two days. A helluva lot of thinking. I’d been presented with Hobson’s choice, a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. And here I was, still not totally sure which way I’d go. Parked down the street, watching the happy smile of a woman I loved as she enjoyed the sights and sounds of offspring playing. I’d chosen to park a little way away as I really still wasn’t sure what I was going to tell this woman.

In some ways, I should have been more ready for this moment. After all, the last eighteen months had been enough of a rollercoaster to prepare me for today. But still, I didn’t feel ready. Still, I didn’t feel sure which way I wanted to turn. Which of the two choices I’d been given I’d finally take.

Looking back, part of me wondered if this day was in some way may be inevitable. After all, if you roll the dice often enough, one day your luck will surely crap out. And ever since Jill and I had picked up the dice after more than twenty years of a conventional marriage, we seemed to have developed the unerring knack of rolling more often and more violently with every passing month. I guess that’s the way things often go for gamblers. Each passing day they avoid the bust convincing themselves they’re indestructible and always able to beat the house’s odds.

But to understand how I ended up here, I’ll have to share with you the events I’ve been re-reading in my diaries over the last eleven days. Painful to re-read and painful to put down on paper, but maybe also a strange form of cathartic therapy.

***********************************

Sunday 22nd July 2018, Late evening

Tonight I really feel like a ship without a compass.

Maybe this is how Christopher Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan felt. Not sure if they were going to find the promised land – a land full of Aztec gold – or whether their fate was to be dashed on the rocks of Cape Horn or some other nautical graveyard.

It was just over a month since Jill and I had returned from the wonderful celebration that was John and Becky’s wedding. Dale and Pamela, Jill and I, we’d been the proudest and happiest people on the planet. Celebrating the joining together in love and new life of a pair of smart, loving and in love young people. The whole weekend had been wonderful, just the tonic after the shit that Chris tried to pull the previous Thursday night.

And even when we’d returned to Miami, things had still been good. Especially when Chris made his unsuccessful third run at trying to steal Jill away from me. An attempt that was trampled into the dust by Malcolm’s no holds barred intervention. An intervention that left me happy and thinking that we’d seen the last of Chris and his threat to my marriage.

Before she’d started her new job, I’d shared with Jill my concerns about how the hours involved in her new job might harm our own relationship, and we’d agreed to see how things panned out in the first two weeks and then review, discuss and plan from there.

Well, during those two weeks at the end of June and start of July things panned out pretty much as I expected. During the weekdays I left for work after an always solitary breakfast as I planted a kiss on my sleeping wife’s forehead, seeing her for at best a couple of hours in the evening if I managed the previously rare feet of being home by six. My only other interaction with her maybe being a snatched ‘goodnight’ call with her before I headed to bed, knowing I’d be sound asleep by the time she arrived home sometime around two in the morning.

Weekends were better, but only just. Dragging my still sleepy but happy to see me wife out for brunch at one of our favorite old haunts, followed by an afternoon and early evening of together time. Sometimes a romantic walk and talk in the park. Sometimes returning home to make love and cuddle. Either was wonderful and just the medicine I needed. But whichever one of the two it was, it always seemed to end way too soon as I kissed Jill goodbye a little after seven as she headed off to one of the three strip clubs under her supervision. Luther having chosen to give Jill the three strip clubs to manage, with Dee looking after the other seven more mainstream and upmarket night clubs.

After the first couple of weeks, Jill and I sat down, just as we’d planned, and talked through how we’d found the first fortnight since she’d started her new job and new routine.

The discussion was a real mixed bag for me. Part of me happy that Jill was loving her new job. How she felt alive, needed, and in control – so different from how things had ended up back in the corporate world working as Chris’s PA. But on the other hand, part of me felt depressed by how wrapped up she was with her new job, how much the job had gotten its hooks deep into Jill even after just two weeks.

But when Jill told me that the only downside for her was how she missed the time we’d previously spent together I did feel a whole lot better. As we talked about this joint frustration all we could think up between us was for Jill to talk to Luther about taking the Mondays and Tuesdays off (now that she was a little more settled in) and for me to arrange my schedule to maximize the time I spent at home on these two days each week.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That discussion had been all of two weeks ago. And the extra time we managed to spend together on Mondays and Tuesdays had helped improve things some, but after five weeks in this new job and lifestyle, I was a concerned man as I sat nursing my Sunday morning coffee. Enjoying the warmth through my fingers and the aroma of the Arabica beans, thinking back over the last weeks and wondering when Jill would rise from her slumber and how I’d answer the question she’d sprung on me the day before. A question that had been gnawing away at me like some rancid rat, ever since she’d dropped it on me before she’d headed out to work on Saturday evening.

And answering Jill’s question was made all the more difficult as in truth I had little real idea of how things had developed between her and Malcolm during the last four weeks since she’d started working for Luther full time. I knew that his duties covered all ten of Luther’s venues, so even with the latitude, Luther gave him he’d surely not be so dumb as to spend every evening at whichever of the three strip clubs Jill was at that night. But then again, Jill was the new girl learning the ropes so I guess it would make sense that he’d be in the same club as her more often than not to give guidance and smooth her learning curve.

What really gnawed away at me was that I simply didn’t know. It was pretty much conjecture and speculation from me. On Jill’s first night, Luther had arranged for me to have a feed from the security cameras at Jill’s club. But after that first night, he’d toyed with me. Only allowing me a similar feed once a week. I’d actually met him for lunch, his invite, not mine, and he’d joked and laughed about it when I’d raised the question. As friendly as your favorite uncle, he’d raised a glass and toasted me. Explaining how he knew me better than I knew myself and that if he gave me access more often it would spoil my fun. Joking that the mix of knowing and not knowing would be the perfect psychological ‘edging’ for ‘a man like me’, a man who was ‘the textbook definition of a voyeur’ and who got off on sharing his wife with other guys.

What really pissed me off was that Luther was spot on. The knowing and not knowing was driving me crazy. I hated it just as much as it excited and aroused me. What I did know about the state of things between Jill and Malcolm was at best vague and incomplete. I could hardly come out with it and ask Jill for an inventory of where and when and how often she’d got together with Malcolm.

Sure, I hear you say, I could have asked. But imagine how that would have left me feeling and how I’d have looked in Jill’s eyes. So instead I had to wheedle as much information as I could from Jill with a series of questions that I posed with as much pretended casualness as I could muster.

“How’s Malcolm?”

“Did you get waylaid by a security check last night?”

“Did you manage to get back not too late last night? Manage a good night’s sleep ok?”

All questions I asked, these and other similar questions infinitely preferable to ‘tell me, hun, did you get fucked by Malcolm last night. If so, how many times and where.’

So, all told, I was pretty much in the dark. From what Jill had told me she’d certainly seen quite a lot of Malcolm in the four weeks they’d been co-workers. But apart from that, the details were pretty hazy.

The fact that Jill was scheduled to come home around two each morning when I was well and truly in the middle of deep sleep was another reason I was unsure of her movements and just how often she’d been seeing Malcolm. I knew that Jill was there each morning when I woke up around six, but aside from that, I didn’t honestly know what time she got in. For all I knew, she could have spent two or three hours each night fucking Malcolm, just making sure to be home and asleep maybe an hour or so before my waking time. Hell, as far as I knew they could have been getting it on downstairs in my own home, although the level of noise Malcolm normally managed to generate from Jill’s responses probably precluded that as a practical question.

All of which brought me right back to the question Jill had asked me the previous evening and which I knew I’d need to answer when she finally roused herself from sleep. Because the only thing I knew with any certainty about the last four weeks was that Jill was on our marital bed when I woke up every morning. And that was the question she’d raised with me the previous evening.

The upcoming week was the week of the second report back to the Oasis board on fixing the negligent work done by my underlings earlier in the year. And not only that, after Oasis’ initial highly informal approach about them poaching me to go and work for them, we’d planned that after the formal report back I’d spend the next day with various of their senior managers discussing more formally the details of how I might jump ship and join them. An important topic for me and my family, given their proximity to John and Becky’s new home and the sixty-percent package uplift they’d hinted at.

The combination of the report back and the job discussions meant that I’d be away from home from Tuesday night until Saturday evening. Away from my own bed for four nights. Nights which Jill had asked about. Asked if I’d have any objections if she spent these four nights with Malcolm.

She’d asked it in a very matter of fact fashion. But I knew this was just her front, her way of covering how nervous she was to ask. And as I still warmed my hands with my coffee, part of my brain tried to downplay it. Reminding myself that Jill had already spent the night with Malcolm on at least four occasions that I knew about. Friday and Saturday when I was with Veronica. The Monday night before we headed off to L.A. and also the Tuesday night after the wedding when we’d ‘played’ as a foursome.

But somehow I knew in my gut that this was different. Jill and Malcolm were now work colleagues. Working together at least five nights a week. It felt like if I agreed to this that I was opening the door to Jill spending nights with Malcolm much more often. If I was traveling, why wouldn’t Jill ask the same question? Or as I was always asleep when she got home, and she was asleep when I left, why wouldn’t she negotiate to have some of these nights at Malcolm’s place? After all, we’d not lose any time when we were both awake and able to talk or be together?

But as much as the impact of saying ‘yes’ to Jill’s request troubled and frightened me, the thought of it also excited me. Since Jill had started working for Luther, I had little doubt that Malcolm and Jill had fucked on several occasions, but given our respective work schedules, I’d not managed to witness any of their couplings. And a dry addict isn’t a happy addict, so even though all kinds of alarm bells were ringing I was a man in two minds, torn in two directions, weighing up fear against lust.

And just as I had nearly made a decision in favor of abstinence and doing the right thing, my phone rang with an incoming FaceTime call from Luther.

“Hey, Dave, good to see you, man.”

“Hey, Luther, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks, all the better now I’ve got that beautiful wife of yours on my payroll.” The way he said it making me wonder if he’d also been giving Jill some black cock during or shortly after working hours.

“Well, she’s always been a Grade A employee, so I’m not surprised to hear that. Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure, Luther? I know you’re a busy guy, so how can I help you?” I was really on edge about Jill’s request and I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

“Straight shooter! That’s why I’ve always liked you, Dave. Kinda guy we always valued in the military.” Still more waffle as I waited silently for him to actually say why he’d called.

“Ya see, Dave, it’s about staff morale. A little bird tells me you’re gonna be out of town for a few days next week, and that Jill’s asked if you’d be okay if she stayed over at Malcolm’s place, as you’re not home and his place is closer to the clubs.”

From my silence, Luther must have sensed my hostility to his overbearing and arrogant intrusion into a personal matter between Jill and I, but he pressed on anyway.

“And I’m guessing you might have mixed feelings, so I was calling to see if I can sweeten the deal for you, buddy. Of course, it’s your call, Dave, but I certainly know that anything you can offer would certainly make two of my most valuable employees very happy. So, what I was thinking, Dave, was that knowing how you love to watch, I could maybe do something to help you. You see, the house where Malcolm lives is a company house, complete with a company security system that I have the master codes for. So, for instance, if you were to say yes, and remember it’s your call, not mine, then your big black Fairy Godmother here could grant your number one wish with a ringside seat to see what really goes on between Jill and Malcolm, when you’re not around, when they think they’re not being watched.”

Bastard! He was reeling me in all over again. He knew damn well how I was hooked on watching Jill, all the more so if I could do it from the shadows without her knowing I was watching. And just as I was having these distinctly uncharitable thoughts about my wife’s employer, he doubled-down on the level of temptation he was baiting me with.

“And, you know, Dave, I was just thinking how that dancer of mine, what’s her name, Veronica or something like that, well I think she’s got two or three days leave coming to her. And, you know, she was griping to me the other day that she doesn’t get to see her boyfriend often enough. So I was just thinking, that if you could see your way clear to giving Jill a little more latitude than a husband normally gives his wife, as her employer I’d be mighty grateful and would make sure that young Veronica gets that time that’s due her, so she can see that strange old boyfriend of hers. Apparently, he still owes her little girl a trip to the Aquarium, or something like that.”

Game, set, and match. I knew that I might gripe and get angry. But I also knew that the double offer of stroking my voyeur gland and appealing both to my guilt about the Aquarium trip and desire to see Veronica was a knock-out blow.

***********************************

Saturday 28th July 2018, Taxi from Miami airport, mid-evening

The last four days had been a real curate’s egg of experiences, both professionally and personally.

The professional side of things had been uniformly good. The review meeting with Oasis had gone well. We still had stuff to do, but we’d successfully navigated two of the three month recovery periods and only had the last third to go, and then we’d be home free. And the ‘personal day’ I’d taken on Friday to discuss in more detail their interest in hiring me had been even better. The role they had in mind sounded interesting, and the substantial increase in package now had more detail to it and looked very enticing. At fifty-one years of age, this might well be my last major job move and if it all worked out this would give me a major boost to help my retirement pot. I’ve never between particularly greedy when it comes to money, but with only ten to fifteen working years in front of me I had to be a little more mercenary than normal.

And in some ways, I was amazed at how well these my meetings had gone, given the stream of distractions from back home – distractions that were doing their level best to try and derail my concentration.

When I’d said my goodbyes to Jill around six on Tuesday evening, she tried her best to hide her excitement at the freedom I’d given her to play with Malcolm. But much as I love her, she’s not an accomplished enough actress to even half hide her excitement. The same lack of guile also meant that I knew from what she said and how she acted that she had no idea that Luther had set Malcolm and her up – making his two employees the unwitting subjects for some demented reality TV show for which I was the only paying viewer.

I’d timed my Miami - L.A. flight to get me into my hotel just around 11 PM local time, which just happened to be the time that both Jill and Malcolm finished work. I ordered my late-night room service meal and went to the portal provided by Luther, feeling more like a peeping Tom than I’d ever done before as the pictures lit up my screen.

Before my sense of excitement and anticipation overwhelmed my conscience, I had a moment of ugly self-examination when I thought through the hard reality of the deal I’d done with the devil. Even after everything that had happened before with Chris, I was so hooked I’d basically sold my wife to another man for the next six nights. All for the price of a secret key to spy on them, with the added kicker that I got two days with Veronica when I returned from California. Just for a moment, I felt a deep sense of self-revulsion at the kind of guy I’d become these last few months. A stand-up father and husband, now reduced to some kind of pervert-addict, selling his wife’s company for a pay-per-view freebie.

But the moment passed as I took my first mouthful of room service pizza and watched multiple camera screens light up as I heard Malcolm’s deep voice boom out, followed by the sight of Jill wheeling a large suitcase into Malcolm’s master bedroom.

My cuck hormones had been largely turned off these last few weeks, denied any red meat since I’d watched Malcolm bed Jill as she lay next to me while Veronica dildoed my ass. But now my cuck hormones came back to life with a vengeance as Jill tried to start unpacking her suitcase, only to be interrupted by Malcolm who was doing a passable impression of a romantic teenager. Reaching around to grab her boobs or kiss her on the neck, Jill’s only reaction being a chorus of giggles, playfully swatted away hands and very unconvincing ‘stop it’ requests.

Watching them together felt like a double sword being thrust hard and fast into my body. One thrust down from the top, the psychological pain of watching Jill unpacking her things for a prolonged stay as the partner of a man other than me. Such a strong reminder of the last time we’d done anything like this, our week-long stay in England that was arguably the catalyst for all the problems with Chris. One thrust up from the bottom, the romantic playfulness between the two of them. So different from the raw sexual chemistry I’d normally witnessed between them. In many ways even more frightening and threatening. Indicating as it did how their relationship had deepened in the last few weeks. Moving on from raw sex and physical attraction, to something that also now included an added layer of closeness, romance, and intimate friendship.

My gut was twisting, my heart was pounding and my throat was dry as I watched, unable to tear my eyes from the screen. My addiction only interrupted by the buzz of my phone registering an incoming text.

‘Having fun, cucky? Only six more nights to go. Wonder if she’ll want to come home after that? Think Veronica and Haley would love your place in Coral Gables. Enjoy, your Fairy Cuck Master, Luther.’

The bastard had at least been upfront with me. Right back at the beginning, he’d warned me that sexual experimentation, playing with other people’s lives, was his thing, and that’s why he was so keen to befriend Jill and me.

Jill’s loud squeal of happy surprise drew my eyes away from Luther’s message just in time to see my wife landing on the part of the bed where Malcolm had just thrown her. Luckily he was accurate in his aim as he threw himself down next to her, ripping her blouse open with no care for the damage or the buttons.

Suddenly face-to-face with Jill’s beautiful heaving bosoms, seemingly fuller and more alluring hidden as they were inside the white of her bra cups. I was overwhelmed with a wave of jealousy. I should have been the one in bed with my wife, ripping her blouse off and establishing my right to the fruits and treasures underneath.

But instead, my out-of-control kink had driven me to sell my birthright, just as Esau had sold his to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Three-thousand miles away from the woman I loved, I wondered if I would soon be as cursed as the brothers in that story of human weakness and betrayal.

I could see just how excited Jill was by Malcolm’s display of virile machismo, as she pushed back her shoulders and thrust her chest upwards, inviting or maybe daring Malcolm to take the next step. He was more than equal to the challenge, Jill’s brassiere went the same way as her blouse and less than a minute later Jill’s mouth was covered by Malcolm’s thick lips as they both moaned lustfully as Malcolm sank all thick nine inches of his majestic black cock into the woman who was to be his live-in lover and pretend wife for the next week.

Watching the next three hours was a master class in human torment and arousal. Four times they made love, each time my heart and soul were torn in two. Experiencing heaven and hell, unable to distinguish between pleasure and pain as I watched the way Jill’s body and pussy responded physically to the pleasure of being stretched wide and penetrated so deeply and thoroughly. As I watched the way my wife would wrap her arms and legs around her giant black lover, giving herself totally to the new man in her life, enjoying the deep and stretching penetration she’d grown used to from the men I’d allowed into her life. Feeling my cock harden each time as I saw the way they kissed, the way they looked at each other. The heightened closeness that had developed the last few weeks unmissable however much I might try and fool myself it was a figment of my imagination. Watching them together and seeing this closeness reminded me so strongly of the best and the worst of the times we’d experienced with Chris.

I’m not sure which were the hardest and the best parts to watch. The intense climaxes when Jill would cry out, every muscle in her body tensed from the strength of her cum, her toes curled up and her chest flushed as Luther and his big cock took Jill’s body and soul to places I could never hope to follow. Or the tender and emotional moments that came afterward, as they kissed and cuddled, Malcolm either waiting for Jill to recover so he could start up again, or Malcolm and Jill basking in their togetherness as their juices mingled together deep in her body.

Not having seen together as lovers in so many weeks, I was amazed at the energy and freshness between them. Together at work so often, they must have been making love most days, yet it still hooked as they had that first few days passion and hunger for each other. As the hours passed on that Tuesday night, they sometimes took a brief rest, but other than that they couldn’t seem to get enough of each other. Making love in nearly every position I’d ever seen, and a few I’d never seen before. Both of them loving the different things offered by different ways to please each other. Loving the raw and animal pleasures of Malcolm positioned behind my wife’s shapely ass, his glistening black pipe pistoning in and out of her engorged pussy, her big tits swinging back and forth in time with his thrusts. The majestic spectacle of Jill sitting proudly atop her man, like a girl with a new pony, riding him as long as her energy lasted, able to get the perfect position of his meat inside her so she seemed to enjoy a near-continuous wave of mini-climaxes. The position that grandstanded Malcolm’s huge size and great strength as he strode around the room, holding Jill in his arms as her legs wrapped around him and he bounced her up and down like small corn dolly, creating a spectacle that all three of us seemed to love.

The only constant in all the myriad positions they used was that Malcolm always made sure he was kissing my beautiful wife as they shared each special moment when he shot his seed deep into her body. The second constant being the way that my wife’s womanhood looked engorged, distended, and battered after each bout – Malcolm’s thick and copious seed somehow managing to bubble up in as an obscene reminder, no matter how deep in Jill he deposited it. Somehow the sight of his thick and sticky white seed reminding me of the biological purpose of what they’d just shared – not just sex for pleasure, sex as the means for millions or his virile black sperm to seek out Jill's genetic code locked at the core of her eggs. Thankfully absent due to the miracle of the modern contraceptive pill.

Finally, an hour or so before the sun was to rise back home, Malcolm couldn’t fill my wife's swollen and distended pussy with any more seed, and the lovers satisfied themselves with the not insubstantial second prize of drifting off to sleep together in each other’s arms.

The sight of Jill so happy and contented, falling asleep in the massive and all-encompassing arms of her newest lover nearly broke my heart in two. Her brown fringed pussy leaking four loads of Malcolm's fertile baby seed, the scene took me right back to our trip to England and the pain and highs I’d experienced there. I really loved it and I really hated it. I thought back to how Jill’s new lover had bested Chris in their recent encounter, and I couldn’t help but think that in some way Malcolm’s next six nights with my wife were in some way a warrior laying claim to the spoils of his victory. While the maiden’s husband, who’d not been there to defend her, was absent and helpless on the other side of the country.

As I looked at them, I had to constantly remind myself of Jill’s promise to never leave me for another man. A promise I reminded myself she made good on, three times rejecting Chris and his seductive charms and offers to go and live with him.

The pain and excitement I felt watching them consummate their love that Tuesday night was magnified over and over as I watched similar scenes between the two near inexhaustible lovers on the next three nights. And as if this wasn’t enough, my ever-inventive tormentor-in-chief even arranged for me to be able to playback the times of day when Jill and Malcolm were together but I was at work.

Each day there were around ten hours from when they woke up just before lunch until they had to head off to work just before nine at night. (It didn’t escape my hurt and jealous mind that when Jill was at home with me, she’d arrive at work around eight. Whereas when she was at home with Malcolm, she’d somehow only manage to drag herself into work a whole hour later. No doubt the charms of the extra time at home with Malcolm more appealing than the extra time with me.) The two of them managing to fill these ten hours with a mix of activities – each one varied and different, each one thrusting a different type of blade through my cuckold heart. By now, both with Malcolm and the guys who’d come before him, I’d grown pretty inured to the pain of watching another guy sexing Jill better than I could. So it was the time they spent together as a couple, just doing the simple ‘couple stuff’ that was both the most painful and the most bittersweet to watch. The time they spent preparing meals together, or playing in the pool. Or snuggled on the sofa, enjoying that cliched new couple activity of picking apart whatever low-quality daytime TV show was available to be the butt of their jokes.

********************

And here I was now, Saturday early evening, back from L.A. in a taxi leaving Miami International Airport. But having endured (and enjoyed) four days of separation from my beloved Jill, where was I heading on my return? Back home to catch Jill before she headed off to work? Back home to demand that Jill take the night off to spend time with me? Nope, sad addict that I was, I’d extended my sentence of exclusion by another couple of days – but at least this time the price included two days with a real woman, rather than just the sad thrills of a man addicted to wife-watching.

The two days I spent with Veronica were truly wonderful. It was like after you have a total binge on all your favorite ‘bad foods’. Imagine a four-day diet of nothing but chocolate, ice cream, and cheap booze. After four days your longing for nothing more than a simple, wholesome, home-cooked meal of steak, new potatoes, and veg, maybe washed down with a single glass of a good-for-the-heart French red.

Veronica and Haley were my healthy meal. The pleasures of being with them wholesome and healthy, an antidote to all the extreme and unsustainable highs and lows I’d somehow fitted in between my busy work commitments in California. I loved the quiet Saturday evening I spent with them, snuggled up on the sofa with Veronica as Haley squirmed and wriggled and cuddled between us as we watched a suitable Disney family movie. I loved the love-making that followed when Haley was both safely in bed and safely asleep, whether it was tender and sweet or whether it was raw and noisy. I loved the time the three of us finally spent together the next day, finally making good on my promise to take the happy six-year-old on a day trip around the aquarium. Marveling at her happiness and the intelligent questions she asked, loving the way she made me feel needed and the way she looked so happy as she skipped along holding our hands. I wasn’t her father, but I loved the way I could make her happy, even if it was just for the day that she had a make-believe ‘daddy’ in her life.

If the Aquarium, and the reward Haley’s grateful mother gave me in bed later that night, was the high-point of our time together, then maybe the low point was the conversation Veronica and I had on the Monday afternoon, when Haley was safely out of the way at school.

Something in Veronica’s mood and face forewarned me that this was coming. Her first words being the words guys the world over dread hearing.

“Dave, baby, I’ve loved every single moment of this weekend. But to be fair to me, to be fair to Haley, I think we need to have a talk about where this thing is going. Where we’re going. Dave and Veronica.”

(As ever, thanks to cbears52 for his continuing kind help in editing and correcting. Thanks, RR.)