MCotP update (Patreon)

Scott wasn’t able to resist joining Emma for long. He jerked himself off as she masturbated, torturing her with the sight of his cock growing and dripping precum right in front of her, but soon he needed to be inside her. She knew it too, opening her legs wide, smiling wildly as he threw himself on top of her.

She was delighted to find that just because he’d punished, didn’t mean their wildly inventive sex games were now locked into him being the dom, her the submissive. With the power of the Phoenix, it was almost impossible for that to be the case. While their physical bodies made comparatively clumsy joinings, their joined minds were an entirely different story.

As a boy, Scott had been able to play half a dozen Chess game simultaneously. Fucking Emma was much the same. While he felt her cunt clenched around him, almost as background noise, a soothing massage, in their minds they were fucking in several different Kama Sutra positions. In one reality, Scott was allowing Emma to take a turn dominating him—in another, he was punishing her even more roughly. Still another was a fantasy: Emma was the White Queen still and Cyclops, having bested the Hellfire Club in combat, was now assaulting her right in front of them. Emma took particular joy in having quite a few ‘unwilling’ orgasms right in front of her former colleagues and (usually) lovers. It was possible, with their increase to Omega power levels, that she was actually transmitting this scenario into the mind of the actual Sebastian Shaw.

Still, Emma kept one eye on the real world, crawling along at a seismic pace to her enhanced mind. There was an old-fashioned, meat and potatoes dirtiness to physical sex that she couldn’t deny or replicate. She let the sensations massage her frenzied mind, caress her fantasies, heat up her climaxes.

She held back from the so-called real thing. She didn’t want to come yet—let even her god-like intellect be overwhelmed by the physical and be blanked out from her psychic bond with Scott for an eternal moment. She wanted to make their sex last and last and last until she couldn’t stand it anymore. Then, she wouldn’t stand it anymore: it would be the most intense orgasm in the world. Possibly the galaxy. She would have to share some memories with the Shi’ar, next time they visited.

With surgical skill and masterful deftness that even her omnipotent lover wasn’t capable of, she arranged for all her many wet dream to climax at the same time, in concert with the actual sensation of Scott Summers coming inside her. Even he couldn’t strategize that well. Coming into unlimited cosmic power already possessing telepathic experience was quite the thing. She was surprised Jean hadn’t managed it so well.

It happened. Emma relaxed, more than anything else. After all that pleasure, actually having it be over for the moment was downright soothing. From her mind palace, she listened to her own orgasmic screams like they were Beethoven. She was squirting, too. Wasn’t that something. And Scott was talking. Maybe in his head. Maybe in real life. The difference didn’t matter anymore. And someone was talking to him. Maybe it was her.

“Wasn’t that nice, Slim?” a redheaded woman said—which threesome had that been, Emma wondered? Maybe they could look her up in real life. She looked cute. And very much a bottom.

Hmm. Emma was milking the last of Scott’s hot cum from him with her slender hand. Had she thought to do that? Or was the redhead doing it? No. She would not interrupt her own mental bath with irritating little questions like that. Much more fun to just lie back, relax, and sneak a peek at the part of Scott’s brain lit up with that last gulping ejaculation.

“Oh, yes,” Scott sighed, with a calm that Emma appreciated with heartfelt sincerity. She loved letting him vent. And being what he vented into.

“Amazing how much fun a nice hot cunt can be,” the redhead opined, rising majestically to her full height beside the recumbent Scott, the nearly swooning Emma. “Even when it isn’t mine.”

Damn right, sister, Emma thought to herself. She was not at all sure where she was any more, but felt gloriously relieved, all through her body.

“Let’s just stay here,” Scott said. “This is perfect. Everything’s fine… I fixed everything. I just have to keep going from here—I can do anything with Emma at my side. And you… you…”

“Maybe you’re right,” the redhead said, and cast her gaze over Emma, who obligingly preened. “And it is tempting. But we have work to do. The Phoenix, Scott. That’s more important than you, than me—even mutantkind.”

“Nothing’s more important than you, Jean.” But Scott looked at her. “Except… there are things…”

Jean, Jean… who that was, Emma hadn’t the foggiest. Some other friend of Scott’s? Maybe a former X-Men? There was no way she could keep track of all of them… X-Factor and Excalibur and X-Force, aliens and robots and sometimes Namor… well, she didn’t care. She wouldn’t have cared if Scott brought in Beast and all his Avengers buddies to watch why Emma had gotten with such a square (hint: because his dick made him a rectangle and he knew what to do with it). She was so horny, they could all take a crack at her when Scott was finished. If he ever was.

“Don’t worry,” the redheaded Jean said, swatting Emma smartly on the ass. Bint. “You’re still be here. In a manner of speaking. You’re just be somewhere else too. Just like you’re in the White Hot Room with me.”

“Can I say goodbye, at least?”

“I’ll do it for you, since I’m you. You always were shit at goodbyes, my love.”

She kissed Emma soundly on the lips. Her mouth tasted of Scott.

Emma really hoped he hadn’t come in her mouth too recently. She would hate to think that when he’d come inside her, she had missed out on one solitary drop of cum.

“Hurry back,” Emma yawned, pressing her cheek against the floor. “And bring the redhead with you.” She waved her hand dismissively, her mind already casting out to find some happy memory of herself in the universal subconscious—always so flattering to find out what people really thought of you when what they really thought of you was good. “You don’t have to bother with her clothes, though.”

***

Scott jerked awake, well-rested, but with none of the sluggishness of sleep. He felt instantaneously cool and alert, like his consciousness had been deposited back into his sleeping form even more firmly than usual. Another trip through time or space, he wondered? Jean had talked about his personal timeline—he could be anywhere, any when.

Feeling wonderfully collected and composed—almost rejoicing in the simple strength of his awoken body—he swung his legs out of the bunk he was in and deposited them on the floor.

Immediately, he staggered. The floor was rolling, tipping, trying to send him careening from one wall of this cabin to the other. For a second, Scott worried he had been dropped into one of Arcade’s Murder-World, but then he realized it was far simpler: he was on a boat and whatever the clarity his Phoenix Force afforded him, he still didn’t have his sea legs.

Rallying against the discontented vertigo of his new circumstances, Scott gave himself a quick check while he grew used to being at sea. His cheeks were relatively clean-shaven—they’d seen a razor in the past twenty-four hours. His condition was possibly even better than it had been in Utopia. It was impossible to really gauge, of course, but he thought he was in his twenties, with a corresponding lack of the war wounds and scar tissue he carried in the present day.

Jean, he worried dizzyingly, nearly giving in to a vomitous fit of unsteadiness. Facing the real thing, or no, the old thing, not yet corrupted or not yet changed, but just simply the girl he’d fallen in love with—it seemed so much more than he could bear.

No: his clothes were looser, less formal than what he’d worn in schoolboy days, and he couldn’t recall any real boat trips with Jean, at least not ones that had been overnight. The jeans, the denim jacket over an A-shirt, the sturdy workboots and frayed knit cap lying within easy reach—he was a working man, back in the brisk sea air of the Gulf. The trawler Arcadia, hailing from Shark Bay.

The information relieved some pressure within him, made the bile lower in his gullet. Gripping the knit cap but not putting it on yet, Scott proceeded out of the cabin, on the stairs onto the deck. As he’d expected, there was Lee Forrester at the wheel, hard at work.

She was lovely—the tawny blonde hair cut short to stay out of the way of her gorgeous face, features stark and weather-strong, from hearty Norwegian stock. Lithe body well-muscled under her crisply functional clothes, her fashion slightly masculine, but he’d seen it, knew everything to be soft and warm and inviting. But that had come later. Too late. They’d never really had time for it to progress, develop. Everything had gotten crazy and the simplicity—the loving simplicity of this time in his life that stuck solidly with Scott—was gone before he’d ever really appreciated it.

Scott headed back down into the cabin, sitting on the bed, wanting to further center himself. He could still feel the anxious twang of sex with Emma, his loins sweetly exhausted, lips burning with her heated usage of them, her touch fervent on his back, nails prying at his lats…

“Stop living in the past,” Jean told him. She was lying under the covers, sweetly nude, her crimson hair glowing across the pillow like the embers of a dying fire. “Well, the future…”

“What am I doing here if not living?” Scott asked her.

“You know the answer to that.” Jean sat up, reaching a hand out to drop in his lap. Her fingers settled, thrillingly warm, over his thigh. “I’m your past, and you can take me with you, I can walk alongside you a way, but I can’t be your everything.”

“And Emma can?”

“Perhaps.” Jean had a Cheshire cat smile that could put the White Queen to shame. “But she’s not here. And I’m not here. You’re here.”

“With Lee,” Scott said. Not needing a psychic link to follow her train of thought. “I remember this… Lee had just gotten the Arcadia tuned up and she wanted to take it for a shakedown cruise, outside the fishing lanes. And she didn’t want to pay full wages without taking in any fish, so it was just the two of us—“

“My!” Jean arched an eyebrow. “That’s very professional.”

“It was,” Scott said. “We didn’t do anything.”

“You thought about it. So did she.”

“At the time,” Scott stressed, “she wasn’t really sending any signals.”

Scott heard a splash. Getting up, he went to the porthole and pushed open the foggy glass. The sea outside was crisp and green as a bottle of beer at the end of a long day, the clear blue sky painted with wisps of clouds, the waves calm, the horizon bare of ships. He saw Lee’s lithe arms, legs knifing through the gentle waves, her bare back propelled quickly through the water, subtle muscle showing in full effect.

“Anchor aweigh, first mate!” Lee reported to him with a jokey salute. “Come on in! The water’s fine!”

“I don’t have a suit!” Scott replied automatically.

“Me neither!”

“…I’ll be right over,” he said.

Jean smiled at him. “There’s a naked girl swimming in the ocean.”

“That’s beach life for you,” Scott replied.

He went up on deck, remembering the last time around. He’d been a little mortified at Lee’s offer, not taking her up on it, but pulling in even more tightly on himself and his grief. Now, more than anything else, he had perspective. Jean had died. That love had gone out of his life. But he’d had it for a time, and now he could have something else.

He stepped to the railing, resting his hands on the cool metal. He could see Lee’s white body and spark of pale hair, undistilled by the water that covered her. She shimmered underneath the lightly curling waves.

“Well. She’s luscious,” Jean announced, leaning on the railing like they were a pair of honeymooners on a cruise. “What a breast stroke.”

Scott was glad that pun only he could hear. But Lee did have an impressive breast stroke. She clove through the water with a steady two-mile-an-hour stroke, very powerful.

He wondered if he could do better.

He started to take off his clothes. It was a warm day, warm water, but the breeze was cool, the sudden tingle of it on his skin strange and new.

“That’s good, get your feet wet,” Jean said. “And anything else you might—“

The rest was drowned out as Scott cleaved the water in an expert dive. He came up for air, shaking the damp hair out of his eyes. Another advantage of this whole adventure: with the Phoenix Force, his optic blasts were under control. And at this point, Lee didn’t know he was a mutant, didn’t know about his eye-beams. To her, his ruby quartz glasses were just for some minor medical condition. Taking them off to go swimming was perfectly natural.

Just before he’d come up, he’d seen Lee’s gorgeous body underneath the waves—a little hidden by distance and darkness, but he’d gotten an overwhelming impression of sleekness, smooth, tanned skin, working muscle on her but nonetheless beautifully proportioned. He expected she was an endurance swimmer—a good background for a sailor to have.

“You’d better not be wearing underwear,” Lee said. “I don’t allow clothed swimmers alongside me when I’m stripped.”

She was swimming circles around him, a lovingly curved buttocks occasionally emerging from the surf. And as she delved her head into the water, Scott was aware that she could see very well what he was and wasn’t wearing.

“And what experienced swimmer doesn’t have a bathing suit on hand?” Scott retorted. “On a boat?”

“Who says I’m experienced?”

“I do.”

“Junior varsity,” Lee confirmed. “Now, who says I’m not forgetful?”

“You don’t strike me as the type, cap’n.”

“I am when I want to be.” She stopped swimming, started treading water—Scott could see her breasts bobbing almost at the surface, the pink nipples sinking in and out of the water. Then she let herself sink down to her chin. “How about you? You forgetting anything?”

“A few things,” Scott nodded. His nudity sent tempting rushes through his groin, his cock stiffening with the full realization of being out alone, all alone, with a beautiful woman, naked woman.

“I know I am.” Lee ducked her head a moment, a sudden tear glistening in her eye, but she buried her face in the water and came up clean. It’d been a while since her father had died, but he was still dead. “Having you around—it makes some of the bad stuff go away. You’re like bedrock. I can just… hold onto you.”

“You can,” Scott said. Their bodies touched—his kicking leg brushing her kicking leg. He felt her warm, silken thigh, made even smoother by the water. “If I haven’t made a move until now, it’s not because I’m uninterested. It’s because… I lost someone. I was, am afraid of losing again.”

“So take a risk,” Lee told him. “Life is a risk, after all. Right down the line.”

“Is that an order, captain?”

“Yes. But if I hear one crack about you not being my first mate…”

Scott reached out, running one hand down the slope of Lee’s naked back, the muscle intriguing his touch, the satiny voluptuousness of her buttocks even more so. It was slick and gentle under his fingers. He didn’t know what he’d been so afraid of.

Lee responded in kind, rolling with it, reaching down to squeeze his half-hard cock as daringly as he had her buttocks. He let out a surprised sigh—the look on her face was almost exploitative, enjoying finally being able to touch his torrid flesh. Then she pumped it. Felt very, very good. Even if Scott had subjectively just had sex with Emma, this body hadn’t been with anyone since Jean. His balls were loaded, his manhood hungry. It strengthened to full erection with barely any prompting.

“How’s that for a stroke?” she asked.

“Not bad!” Scott wheezed. It was taking most of his self-control just to keep from coming. The warm waters of the Gulf seemed to be doing almost as much to draw out his cum as Lee’s hand was. “How’s mine?”

He reached down, the tugging current seeming to guide his hand, finding her warm inner thigh. It went higher than where he’d touched, and he explored just how far—soft bush, warm labia, tightness inside. She gasped as his fingers bored in; his cock throbbed with intense pleasure. He could see her bodily quivers, enough to push little concentric circles out into the water. She gave another gasp as his invading fingers found and conquered her clit, thumb expertly compressing it. Her breasts heaved out of the water, nipples hard and fat, demanding to be sucked.

A crack of thunder interrupted them. Scott turned automatically—there was a dark storm cloud on the horizon, thunderhead pregnant in front of the sun, with lightning bolts forking through the looming darkness.

“Storm,” Lee said, suddenly all business. She eased herself off his hand and swam for the Arcadia. “Better batten down the hatches, sailor! I just got this thing fixed.”

Scott stared after her in awe. Such professionalism. No wonder he had been so drawn to her. He swam rapidly after her, coming up onto the trawler to find Lee had already attended to most of the duties with typically curt efficiency. The anchor was already down, the ship beginning to tug insistently at it as the waves grew. Lee faced him, naked, her clothes in her arms.

“Better get below decks,” she announced.

Scott took in the shuddered boat—now like a ghost ship, all creaking anchor chain and sunny deck. “You really don’t need me at all, do you?”

“Don’t be silly,” Lee retorted, beckoning him to the stairs with a toss of her head. “Right now, I need you worse than I’ve needed a man in a long time.”

He followed her down. Closed and spun locked the hatch. She turned back around.

“Aren’t you going to get your clothes?” she asked.

“I don’t need them.”

She dropped the pile from her arms. As if thrown by the pitch of the boat in the choppy waters, she fell upon him, knocking him onto a bunk, straddling his lap. Fitted her cunt to his cock as efficiently as she’d set the Arcadia to rights; sat on his stiffness. He didn’t enter her, but his length parted her lips—she could feel every vein running through his prick. Desire swept through his body, warring with the pleasure he already felt. He wanted to grab her hips and fuck her deep. The thought of savoring this was almost anathema to him.

“Oh God, I never could’ve waited if I knew you were so big!” Lee moaned, giving a bounce. He almost died. His hands pressed tightly against her breasts, hot, hardened nipples digging at his palms, jelly-firm flesh warming his hands. The water dripped off her, onto him, glowing with her body heat.

It was too much. No matter how restrained he wanted to be, how reserved, he couldn’t. Emma and Jean had weakened his resolve too much. He hoisted himself up, grabbing Lee’s weather-beaten face, and forced his mouth onto her lips. He was ruthless in driving his tongue into her. Found soft tongue, wet mouth, quickened breath.

Her eyes shot wide; the passion of the kiss startled her more than the hardness of his cock. He reamed her silken mouth and she started to bend under him, body plied backwards, legs ready to spread, loins ready to accept his hardness. Then a wave bashed the Arcadia—he could hear it wash across the deck. They were toppled from the bed, Lee pulled away from him, sputtering. The ship rocked back the other way, Scott catching her before she could roll off. He could see the fast beat of her pulse in her throat, the pinkness of arousal blooming under the seawater that dripped from her lissome body.

The floor was unsteady, but he couldn’t be bothered with it. Right there on the deck, he hugged her lovely naked body close, felt the push of her cleavage against his chest, felt her crotch making fierce pumps against his lower body as she tried to capture him. She needed to be fucked, needed it bad, and he was going to give it to her and give it to her right.

He entered her; she let out a piercing scream and flowed with it, locking her legs around his back, giving a series of needy, heavenly clenches against him. The ship tilted again; they rolled end over end across the floor, his cock throbbing madly inside her, he could’ve fainted from the heat, the pressure, the surging pull to orgasm in his own loins. Although later he’d remember Emma and Jean as being just as sweet, just as capable, at that moment, he couldn’t have ever remembered such friction.

They stopped again. She thrust on his cock, impaling herself, eyes big, lifting under him, overcoming his weight with sheer muscle, going “oh, oh, oh!”

The boat shimmied again; they slid across the floor, still locked, before coming to a rest. Scott grunted and rocked himself rapidly in and out of her tight cunt.

“Scott!” Lee cried, almost begging.

He could not help her, not in his moment of exquisite friction. He was totally lost in the interplay of their bodies, in the sweet flesh, the enveloping cunt, the satiny clenching of her wondrous muscles. Water showered them—porthole, he’d left the porthole open—but he ignored it.

“Permission to come aboard?” Scott gasped, ramming her wildly.

Lee laughed. “You asshole!”

The ship really swerved—they spun, gravity closer to the wall than the floor, so he fucked her there. Her strong body strained up, locked, her cunt going into spasms. She shot herself against him and he pushed down on her, as if fighting gravity, staying in this divine pleasure. She stayed with him, buttocks tight, loins grinding on his. She keened: “Ahhhhh!” He drove into her while she whined and moaned and throbbed, coming again and again until she thought she would black out with delight, then gravity resolved and the ship righted itself and he landed on his feet, Lee wrapped around his body, chin on his shoulder, exhausted, eyes dazed, body shining with sweat.

It was all his now. He returned to the bed, aching all over with need, laying her down and mounting her and ramming himself all the way into her cunt, close to his own pealing orgasm. Pure erotic power surged through his body as he planted himself deep inside Lee, thrusting hotly into her, the sway of the ship only seeming to move in his direction. It was like he was fucking her so hard that he was literally rocking the boat.

Then pleasure gripped him like a giant fist, squeezing sudden tension into his belly, thighs, manhood. He let it tighten him, paralyze him so that all that could escape was a wounded grunt. Then it released dizzyingly, an exalting feeling of immense power going through him. He spurted; his cock relaxed into one long ejaculation, separated only barely by twitches and pulses. Everything else was a long ribbon of jism fired deep within her ravished sex.

Lee felt it all gushing inside her, soothing her overworked walls, her stretched lips. Aroused all over again, she flexed herself around his cock, thought she succeeded in provoking one more push of ejaculation from him.

Whatever tension was left in Scott’s body after he’d awoken at sea, it left, unlocked and broken open by his gorgeous ejaculation into Lee. And Lee was totally receptive to it, utterly submissive, clinging to him like there was nothing more precious to her than holding him in her sex as he pumped her full of himself, centering his seed deep, deep in her waiting womb. Her mouth fell in shock as she felt how virile he was in spurting for her, a river of cum flowing into her with throbbing, gushing effect.

It felt like something amazing had happened to her, Lee thought dazedly. She was filled with an incredible arousal, like she’d discovered the only real pleasure in the world. All she wanted was to fuck.

But she was borne along by Scott’s feelings, and he was glowingly empty. Folded down on her soft, fulfilled body, feeling like a new man. The neurosis, the doubts, the castigation, those were falling further and further behind him. Now he felt loved, open-minded, friendly, and happy. Scott moaned and pulled himself out of her sex, leaving her flat on her back upon the bed.

“That was the best I ever had,” he told Lee.

“Better than me?” Jean asked in surprise.

At the time. “Just wonderful,” Scott added, barely amending himself.

***

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Illyana knew she was attractive to men, despite her wholesome, innocent appearance. Because of it. Most of them knew her chiefly as Piotr’s kid sister, she had started out in their imagination as a child, and she dressed to prolong that impression. Fashionable, but a little outdated. Her clothes looser, more ‘vintage’ than they necessarily had to be. Hiding her fit, luscious body in clothing that only halfway flattered it.

Then standing a certain way, or sitting a certain way—showing off long legs crossed outside her skirt, or angling her torso so bare breasts pressed against her shirt. Leaving people unsure if she even knew she was doing it. But receiving, appreciating lustful looks from her classmates. Even from some of the teachers. People who knew her mostly as Piotr’s ‘little snowflake.’

Anyway, she didn’t want to divert attention from her face. That was her chief asset, her most striking feature, especially among the hardbodies of the X-Men. Her face was downright angelic, round and lovely, almost saccharine except for the slightly wicked look in her eyes. She stood five foot five, her athletic body magnificently toned, a total war machine except for the long, honey-blonde hair flowing down her shoulders. She couldn’t bear to cut it.

Today, she wore a pleated skirt, rustling and crinkling on her hips, pulling in daringly on the backs of her thighs. A baggy yellow shirt with a circled X in black upon the front declared her loyalty. Despite its folds, it fell caressingly upon her bobbing breasts, letting them push out against the fabric in all their splendor for about a nanosecond with every step. Her hips swayed salaciously, separated from her shiny white tennis shoes by smooth, golden-brown legs that tapered beautifully from muscle into bone structure. Red plaid knee socks encased her calves: the tightest thing she wore that wasn’t underwear. Her pouty lips were glossed with pink lipstick, while seawater-green eyes and a petite nose set off her shining face. She was as well-armored as she’d ever been in Limbo.

Coyly unaware of how her skirt swirled around her ass—it was magnificent—she walked and pretended not to notice the stares her simple, clean stride netted her. She liked the lust she was provoking in them. It was a kind of power. One more way to get people to do what she wanted them to do. The thought gave her a smile she had to stifle. It was anything but sweet.

And she’d have to be sweet to catch hold of Mr. Summers. He wasn’t into bad girls—at least, he didn’t yet know he was. He would. She shivered at the thought of his clean-cut handsomeness, his All-American physique, the overall impression of pristineness he gave. How she’d love to see him decadent. All the other teachers had looked at her, at least once, but he was so intent, so upright, strong, moral. She wanted his cock in her mouth. She wanted his cum in her belly.

She arrived at his class. Not hers, mind you. Through the Plexiglass window in the door, struck through with security wire, she could see him leaning on his desk as he administered a test. He wore a dark blue polo shirt, tweed slacks, and a pair of brown loafers. A sport coat hung from a hall tree in the corner. God, it was unbearable.

Illyana pushed a finger against the glass as if it were a buzzer. Momentarily, Mr. Summers noticed her, meeting her eyes behind his ruby quartz glasses. Illyana gave him a big smile and wave and he looked put off. Even with Illyana biting her lip—he gave a look over the class, bent faithfully over their tests, and then went to the door, cracking it open an inch to let sound through. Illyana could hear scratching pencils inside, squeaking seats and isolated coughs.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” he asked, his breath fogging the Plexiglass between them. Illyana stuck her tongue in her cheek, bopping her head a little to distance herself from how obscene the little gesture could (and did) come off.

“It’s my free period,” Illyana said.

“It’s not mine.”

Illyana got goosebumps all over—she felt like she was all alone on him. It was so sexy, maybe having his eyes on him, but maybe not—impossible to know through those red sunglasses. She smiled demurely.

“I think I need to talk to you about my behavior,” she said.

“Your behavior?”

“I don’t know how well I’m doing in class—if the teachers think I’m doing a good job or not. America is still so strange to me. I just don’t think I really know what’s expected of me.”

Mr. Summers looked at her in surprise; she could just barely read it off the curl of his lips. But he nodded. “You can come to my office after school this afternoon; we’ll discuss it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Summers,” Illyana said, fogging the glass herself. He gave her a curt nod and withdrew back into the classroom.

Illyana put her two pointer figures on the little pool of condensation she’d made and curled them around to make a heart before it could fade away.