"My fascination with spanking began long before I met Molly, you know."

"Rosie, you obviously want to talk about it, don't you?"

"If you don't mind, Barbara," Rosie answered.

"Of course, I don't mind. We've talked of so many things; it really was only a matter of time. It's so long ago, I thought you may have forgotten."

"Well, Barbara. Where would you like me to start? Of all the things my life amounted to, it was one of the most important to me. And the most exciting."

"What was, Rosie?"

"Meeting and spending so many years with that wonderful woman."

"How many, Rosie? I know it was a long time," Barbara answered, hoping Rosie would stay awake long enough to continue their conversation.

There was a long pause as she gathered her thoughts. 

"I loved her, you know. Molly. And she loved me too."

Barbara stayed silent.

It wasn't the first time, or the second, that Rosie began like this, and she knew that these lucid moments were almost liquid in their spiralling, spinning intensity, draining away, sometimes as quickly as they arrived.

And so Rosie told her tale again, of how...

That night was so restless, not knowing for sure how to approach this most unusual situation. 

She'd picked up her phone so many times to tell Molly that it was okay and, of course, she would help with the homework. Rosie had driven home in a far more excited state than she possibly expected to.

It had been a while but she was remembering the first time, you see. 

It was a regular thing between Rose and her friend, Miriam. They'd go for a dance and a couple of drinks, buy takeaway food and share it once they got back, usually to Miriam's home, often with Miriam's mum, if she was still up and about. This time was a bit more special because they and two friends were celebrating.

School was out. Over. Their final exams were done and dusted and they were free for the summer months until whatever their futures were arrived.

Arriving home a little merrier than normal, Miriam struggled to keep them quiet, constantly shushing them and asking for them to keep it quieter for her sake.

"Why? Will mummy smack your little botty? They joked," dissolving into drunken laughter.

"No! Don't be silly."

But Miriam knew better and when her mum started moving around upstairs, obviously disturbed by the noises they were making, she made excuses for them to go except Rosie who was stopping the night.

They didn't know how cross Miriam's mum got.

Rosie hadn't been asleep when she heard Mrs. Jacobson getting up ready for work, and once she heard the front door close, she quietly got up herself.

Making tea, she found a note left for Miriam and surreptitiously read it.

"Hope you had a good time. I will be very tired all day. That's not fair, is it? Make sure all your chores are done before I get home. You know exactly what I mean. Love you. Mum. Xxxx."

By the time Miriam got up an hour or so later, the kitchen was spotless, everything ready to be put away.

Miriam read the note when only she and Rosie remained.

"Better get on, Rosie. Mum is cross about the noise last night. And you look knackered."

"I didn't sleep. I met your mum in the bathroom at half three. She is nice. Odd, sometimes but nice."

"You know that note you've probably already read?"

Rosie nodded.

"It means I'm in trouble. It's her code. At the very least, I won't be allowed to see you for a few days."

"You're grounded?" Rosie asked.

"No. Well yes. Kind of. She'll take my phone and tablet and expect me to come straight home from work. No TV. Bed early. I know she loves me but fuck me, it's a pain."

Rosie mucked in, and by lunchtime, all the chores—vacuuming, dusting, bedding changing, and washing—were done. Miriam cried; she was so grateful. 

"You'd better go. She's home soon, and I've got to be ready."

"What for?" Rosie asked.

"I'll tell you later. Thanks for all your help. I couldn't have done it all without you. She wrote 'all' my chores, not expecting them to be done. See you soon. Love you, Rosie."

"Okay! What the hell?" Rosie asked, seeing Miriam almost a week later.

"Mum was mad as hell. She says you can come for tea," Miriam greeted Rosie as they met in the coffee shop next to where Miriam worked.

"You want to know what happened? I'll tell you exactly what happened," Miriam said crossly once they were safely ensconced in her bedroom with toast and marmalade and mugs of sweet tea for tea. "I got punished, well and truly, because you kept on mucking about."

"I'm sorry," Rosie apologised, but couldn't help asking for details.

"You want details. Bloody details. Well, I've not been allowed out. I've even made to do extra chores; thanks for the help on Sunday, by the way. I've been made to go to bed early every night for a week. And you know the worst part?"

"No."

"I've been spanked."

"What?" Rose asked in disbelief. 

"Yes. I got fuckin' spanked like a naughty kid. That first night, she lectured and lectured, telling me if it had been her when she was my age what would have happened. My grandma would have taken a hairbrush to her. The more she ranted, the more my nervousness made me smile. And no amount of apologising could change what happened. And I can tell you. A mum-mad spanking on a damp, bare bottom is the worst of all. Harder. Longer. Far more stingy. And I wished it all on you. Her hand got tired, so she said, and finished off with loads of whacks with my wooden hairbrush that I'm sure, now, she'd bought me for last Christmas with just this in mind. God, it hurt. And yes. I cried buckets of real tears. You would have, too." Mariam's tale came to an abrupt end.

"What?" Rosie asked her friend, cuddling her tightly in sympathy for what she felt was her fault but questioning the strange look that came over her face.

"Well," Miriam continued, hesitantly. "Don't you think you're to blame, even a little?"

"I suppose so."

"So what should we do about that?"

"Tell your mum, maybe," Rosie suggested. 

"The way I see it is this. I got my bum spanked because of you. Yes?"

"Yes. Probably some of it; no, most of it was my fault."

"And is it fair? I got smacked for something I didn't do. It should have been you. Yes?" Miriam continued reasoning.

Rose saw exactly where the reasoning was going and agreed without any argument. 

"You want me to feel..."

"Yes," Miriam interrupted. 

"When's she home? I'll explain, and she can..."

"No," Miriam interrupted again. "I think I should do it. I was smacked, so I think I should smack you. Just like I was."

"Okay," Rosie answered, hesitantly. "When?"

They both went very quiet for the longest moment. Then they both spoke together, Rosie standing and beginning to prepare herself.

"Now?"

"Why not now?"

"It's going to hurt, you know."

"Yes, I suppose it will. But it hurt you because of me, so that's fair, isn't it?" Rosie was already undressed down to her bra and panties. "Is this alright?"

"No. She smacked my bare bum. Take your knicks off and come over here," Miriam said, perching on the bed edge. "And even if my hands are not tired, I'm going to use my hairbrush some of the time, too."

"You're supposed to be smacking it, not stroking it," Rosie joked when the palm that was supposed to be punishing was pleasuring instead. 

"You have such a cute bottom, though," but the stroking stopped immediately, being replaced with hard, stinging smacks to the bare, unprotected bottom, at least five at a time on each cheek, a short pause, then a repeat. In less than ten minutes, an unhurried fifty to sixty smacks on each side had turned Rosie's pale pink, pristine bottom cheeks into a wonderful selection of differing shades of different reds.

And Miriam felt something so much more than the justified revenge she'd been expecting. Rosie's cries and pleas to stop only made the feeling building inside her more intense. Picking up the hairbrush, she used it just like her mum had, covering each square inch of her already reddened bottom with another layer of increasingly intense stinging, adding to and increasing the area to cover Rosie's thigh tops, too.

Never trying to escape Rosie bore the increase with renewed vigorous crying.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"And so you should be," Miriam told Rosie, breathing quite heavily but continuing to paddle her harder and harder. "If I had my way, which I suppose I do at the minute, you'd be back for more spankings. I got it all. I was spanked for all your naughtinesses."

The spanking continued until Rosie agreed.

"Okay! Okay! Okay!" Rosie wailed. "I'll come back. I'll come back for more."

"More of the same?"

"Yes, Mimi."

"Three more of the same. One for each of you?"

"Yes, Mimi! Three more of the same."

"Only harder."

"Yes, Mimi..."

"And longer."

"Yes! Yes, Mimi. More and harder and longer." 

The spanking continued until Miriam reached the satisfaction point.

"When?"

"When what?" Rosie asked through panting floods of spanking tears.

"When are you coming back? Mum's away with friends on Saturday, until late."

"Okay. Saturday."

"Now. Get up and dressed."

Rosie did as she was told but made excuses to leave. She had far too much to think about.

The short walk home was most uncomfortable, her panties tight against her swollen, punished bottom, but Rosie was also hyper-aware of other feelings, invariably arising from her far from infrequent and increasingly powerful self-pleasuring sessions, regular and improving masturbating, for the uninitiated. 

"Just going for a shower," she called to her TV-watching Mum, dumping her coat and bag at the foot of the stairs and scurrying up to the family bathroom, where there was better light and a full-length mirror in there too.

"I must get mum to get me one of these," she thought, idly, stripping and twisting to investigate what Miriam had been doing with her palm and brush.

"Fuck me," she breathed quietly into the steam-filling air when she saw the colour of her bottom cheeks. Her fingers, though, almost subconsciously, found their way between the lips of her arousal, ahead of the expected climax erupting, no, exploding from deep inside her, turning her legs to jelly, and had she not held tightly onto the wash hand basin, would surely have ended in a naked heap on the floor.

"You alright, love," her mum called.

"Yes. Thanks," Rosie replied in the best voice she could muster, her fingers coaxing a second, equally marvellous orgasm as she used her spare hand to stroke her super-sensitive, super-spanked bottom, watching the reddened area in the mirror as she did so.

"What the actual fuck?" she said to the empty room once she felt steady enough to step into the hot shower.

The water increased the painful stinging on her bottom.

"This is fantastic," she whispered, feeling the same erotic stirrings once again.

Ten or so minutes walk away, something similar was happening in another home.

Mariam's mind was spinning and whirling as, soaking in the hot bath water, she could still feel the sting on her palm where she'd constantly spanked her best friend's bottom. Her first orgasm coincided with one happening streets away, as though they were somehow telepathically linked. Fingers soaped and deep inside her, imagining they belonged to Rosie, triggered another as she knelt up in the slightly too hot water, enjoying the added sensation of the water draining from her.

Miriam heard her mum coming up the stairs. 

"Are you alright, love?"

"Yes, thanks, mum. Rosie just left, so I'm just having a bath, then off to bed."

"Okay. Is she coming Saturday?"

"Yes, mum," Miriam answered, smiling, knowing what was happening Saturday and looking eagerly forward to it.

But Saturday didn't happen as planned at all. In the kerfuffle of forgotten other arrangements, Miriam going with her father to his sister's wedding, Rosie arrived at the house early as planned to find Mrs. Jacobson there instead.

"Hi, Rose. Miriam forgot about her aunt's wedding. Richard picked her up an hour or so ago and must also have forgotten to let you know, the naughty girl. She was looking forward to your day together, too. Would you like to come in for a cold drink or something? It's already hot out there, isn't it?"

"Yes, please. Mrs.Jacobson. I walked quite fast. We were supposed to spend the day together because you're going to be away. And I'm so sorry for disturbing you the other weekend. I just couldn't sleep, and it wasn't Mimi's fault at all. Really." Rose's nervous babbling came to a sudden halt as Mariam's mum ushered Rose into the kitchen.

"Firstly, it's Caroline. I think you're old enough, though, to dispense with the 'Mrs.' title, okay? And secondly, you know what happened to Mimi because of your actions?"

"Yes, Mrs., sorry, Caroline. She told me. It's the reason I'm here for the day."

"I don't understand, Rose. Why are you here?" Caroline asked.

It all came spilling out, ending with Rose telling Caroline about her previous spanking and what she was expecting from Miriam then.

"You were going to spend the day together, and Miriam was going to spank you again?"

"Yes. Three more times for the spanking she got that honestly were my fault. As you can see, I just can't be quiet."

This last made Caroline laugh.

"How about if I do it? In her absence? You are expecting to be spanked, yes? I can spank, to which Miriam can unhappily attest. You're here. I'm here. What do you think?"

Suddenly Rose was in a bit of a quandary. 

Barbara, remembering her, was suddenly listening more intently. She loved rehearing these oh-so-sexy stories, as did her girlfriend, who loved reenacting the spanking parts in prolonged, intimate, and painful detail. But this was new. New stories always got her exactly what she wanted. So she switched on her voice recorder app so no detail could possibly be missed.

Rose started to nod in agreement.

"Use your words, girl."

"Sorry, Mrs. Jacobson, Caroline. Yes please."

"Yes, please, what, Rose?"

"Yes, please. I'd like you to do it instead of Mimi."

"Do what, exactly," Caroline pushed for more details.

"I want you..."

"Speak up, girl. You want me to what, exactly?"

In those days before consent was such an important part of everything, Caroline liked it best if she knew exactly where she stood; even though Rose had already said what she wanted, it turned her on even more to hear her daughter's friend being specific. 

"I want you to please smack me on my bare bottom like you did, in error, to my best friend. She was trying to keep me quiet. I wouldn't. I deserve it. She didn't."

"Alright, Rose. Come with me. You say you feel you're due three more bottom smackings to make up for what Miriam got, as she's already given you one?"

"Yes, Caroline."

"Then over my knees, you go," Caroline said, sitting on the sofa, pulling Rose into position and, taking complete charge, lifting her dress, revealing her bottom, broader by far than her daughter's, covered in tight-fitting lycra.

"We'll have these down in a little while," Caroline continued almost to herself, "but for now, they can stay where they are."

Just like her daughter had done less than a week ago, Caroline couldn't resist stroking and caressing the freely offered teenage bottom, but Rose didn't dare make comments this time.

Even before beginning to spank, dampness began building between Caroline's tightly closed thighs. She could and would enjoy this in ways that were forbidden when doing the same to your own flesh and blood, and raising her palm high brought it down with a rewarding, resounding crack on Rose's tightly encased bottom cheek, repeating the process in her favourite side-to-side, alternate cheeks in turn pattern.

A minute and perhaps a combined forty spanks later, both the woman and her spankee were breathing in ways different from how they'd begun the morning's workout.

Rose realised immediately, with the first of the many punishing smacks she received during the next half hour or so, that Caroline meant business. And they just got harder the more she was spanked. The delicious rubbing was merely an unnecessary ploy, making her feel... what? 

That tingle.

Those tingles. 

Between bouts of increasingly stinging, loudly cracking smacks, fingers glided across her tightly covered bottom, edging closer and closer to her unexpectedly aroused slit.

More smacking, now down onto her bare thigh tops.

Caroline usually liked to drag panties up between a recipient's bottom cheeks. The lycra shorts, too full-backed and too tight, would have to come down.

In another minute or so, though, she was enjoying spanking and teasing Rose with gentle fingers, then hard smacks.

"When I spanked Miriam, I embarrassed her by making her strip halfway through, her pyjamas folded neatly on the end of her bed. Do you deserve the same fate that my naughty daughter underwent? I think you do."

Caroline paused long enough for Rose to awkwardly jump up, quickly strip, and dive back into position.

"I said neatly," Caroline admonished, smacking the now-bare girl's bottom and thighs until she jumped up and folded the discarded clothes to Caroline's satisfaction, made even more difficult by the hail of smacks she continued to receive while undertaking the task.

"Now," Caroline said. "Scamper upstairs and bring the clothes brush you'll find in my top right-hand dressing table drawer. The longer you take, the harder I'm going to spank you. Go!"

Caroline took this opportunity to stroke her super-sensitive and soaking-wet cunt, sliding her fingers behind the gusset of her panties and slipping them inside herself.

Hearing Rose returning, big-backed brush in hand, she quickly withdrew the fingers and surreptitiously inhaled their musky aroma.

"Just can't wait," she thought, her climax almost arriving. She knew she was going to, though.

"Right. I'm not sure if I want you back over here," she said, closing her legs tightly, loving the change in stimulation, "or over the back of the sofa. Let's try my knees again, first."

When Rose was back in position, Caroline leant forward and whispered in Rose's ear.

"Are you enjoying this, my dear? I am."

"N..n..no!" Came the stuttering reply.

"Not even a little bit? Naked over your best friend's mum's knees, bottom already spanked rosy apple red and willingly in place for whatever she sees fit to inflict on you next."

Two sudden and very hard swats with the heavy wooden clothes brush made Rose realise that this wasn't Miriam. Her Mimi. Her best friend since infant school. Who'd spanked and hairbrushed her bare bottom in this same position less than a week ago?

Fingers, not her own, for the first time, invaded her. And the excruciating pleasure it gave her was too much to bear.

"No, you don't," Caroline growled, securing the girl attempting to escape from her knees with an arm curled around her waist.

The clothes brush met its mark more times than either participant could count and added to the rosy apple red, deepening the colour with the addition of all the new and painful swats.

And Caroline didn't stop there. The hand of the arm holding Rose in place snaked down her belly towards her crotch. Passing through the patch of well-trimmed pubic hair, Caroline continued the journey of her dextrous fingers until she found the hard protrusion of Rose's clitoral pearl, rubbing it gently, wishing she was licking it, sucking it, while the brush beat an increasingly painful tattoo on Rose's bottom. And thighs. Then her bottom again.

"You want to escape now," she asked Rose, wet fingers now deep inside the prone girl whose position now would give perfect access for Caroline's tongue to explore that other, adjacent hole. Maybe next time.

"No, Mrs. Jacobson...Caroline. Wh-What'sappening. ? How can...oh fuck...oh God...oh fuck. Spank harder. Harder."

Caroline did as she was asked.

The orgasm that took hold of Rose was the best of her young life so far. Sweating and shaking, she howled in her ecstasy, and as she did, Caroline reversed the brush, sliding it deep inside the wetness, triggering a second wave, even more powerful than the first.

"And you've still got two more spankings to come, my dear, if that's what you want," Caroline said quietly into the calming girl's ear as she was cuddled and soothed, still, naked, on her lap. Caroline continued to gently stroke the area she'd so recently been beating. 

Rose found the gentle touches sensuously settling. She never wanted to leave, even if she spent all of her time naked and in such pain as she'd just experienced. 

"Sorry, love. I've got to go," Caroline said, genuinely sorry to leave her new plaything. "D'you want to stay here for a while? Until you're a little calmer. I'll not be back until later, maybe 9.30ish. I'll drive you if you want me to. And I'll ring you. Soon.

And the old woman left Barbara, who was now feeling horny from the story she was telling, drifting into the oblivion she sadly spent so much of her days in.

"Getting old," Barbara thought, "really was the pits for some."

But she still called to see her friend every day.

"Hi Barbara I've talked so much, I never thought that tea was coming. Don't dawdle, girl. You know what happens to girls that dawdle."

Six weeks had passed.

"Yes, Rose. I know what happens. Here's your tea."

"You're a good girl. Two sugars and plenty of milk. All this talking has made me thirsty."

"Just how you like it. Ready to drink."

"Shall I keep going or are you bored now?"

"I'm all ears," Barbara answered, remembering just where they'd left off last time.

For the next year or so, Rose was dealt with at least once a month each by Miriam and her mother, Miriam having no idea whatsoever that Caroline was also secretly doing something with her best friend.

The three 'repayment' spankings Mimi gave Rose ended in an evening of confession over bottles of beer that loosened both their tongues enough to admit to each other the extent of the pleasure they both gained.

"You do it too," Rose eventually asked.

"Yip," Miriam responded, "every time since the first."

"And?"

"Do you love me?" Miriam asked.

"Yes," Rose answered Mariam's quiet question. "Yes, I do."

Unexpectedly, their first kiss lasted until they heard Caroline coming in late from her work.

"Next time," Miriam whispered, "I'm going to do that to you while you're still naked and stinging from your spanking."

"But," began Rosie, "I've paid my 'debt', surely? Why do I get more?"

"Because I'm sure that you're a naughty little girl who needs and loves to be spanked, aren't you?"

"Yes," she answered tentatively. "But can I have a turn?"

"Turn at what?" Caroline asked, coming into the sitting room. "A turn at tidying this mess up?"

"Sorry mum. We've just been chatting about next year. Uni and stuff. We lost track of time. Rosie wants to be a legal secretary like you, don't you?"

"Oh! Ok!" This disarmed Caroline, and she began tidying with both girls doing their bit, too.

"Would you like me to drive you home, Rose? It's very cold outside."

"Yes, please, Mrs. Jacobson. I'll just grab my coat."

In the car, Caroline suggested another spanking; she still had two to come, and they arranged to meet early the following week at a friend of Caroline's apartment when Miriam was otherwise engaged.

"It'll be harder," Caroline intimated as Rose left the car.

"I hope so," was Rosie's response.

And the harder Caroline smacked Rose, bouncing her bottom firstly with her hand and then with a new heavy hardwood paddle she'd just bought from Simple Secrets, the better Caroline felt. 

She gave Rose the kind of spanking that made Rose forget that there was a world anywhere except for inside these exceptionally tidy four walls, in this fabulously decorated room, with this beautiful, severe, glorious-smelling woman.

Caroline had sat on an ornate leather ottoman and draped the semi-naked girl, bottom uppermost, across her tightly closed, bare legs, the skin-to-skin contact ratcheting up the already increased eroticism of their secret rendezvous. 

Fuck! Caroline was horny.

She couldn't resist gently palming Rose's gorgeous spankable cheeks through the luxury silky shorts she'd bought for her from the same secluded sex shop she'd bought the paddle from. 

"Bottoms," thought Caroline, "rarely, if ever, come better than Rose's."

Rosie didn't want to play pit-a-pat. Although by the fourth spanking from her friend, there was becoming a higher level of satisfaction, what Caroline did, was doing, was something else again.

It started hard. Shorts in the perfect place. Smoothed over and over, even though they were drum-tight across her broad hips and round bottom. She had no gentle build but hard, open, curved palms that walloped to her big bottom end, making her big, firm, bare breasts jiggle and sway at the other left-hand end.

"Soon," thought Caroline, noticing this happen, "maybe even next time, those big beauties would also be an object or her then divided attention." Reddened, spanked breasts were also just another of her "things."

It took three or four overlapping spanks to each cheek to ensure perfect coverage. That's what Caroline undertook before changing cheeks. 

Rose just kept wiggling invitingly.

Caroline kept on accepting the invitation. 

Spanked and tender, now red halfway or more to her knees, Rose felt a subtle change in Caroline's breathing.

Caroline noticed the same in Rose.

Caroline warned that she was picking up her new paddle now, and it was going to sting, and Caroline did not lie. Rose felt as though she was being hit. Hard. But the telltale wetness from her recently exposed pussy told the real tale as a trickle tickled her inner thigh, legs parted in case Caroline wanted to slide something inside her slippery slit.

Again.

For the time being, Caroline didn't, paddling the big bouncing bottom scarlet, deepening the shade to her own very specific satisfaction. Smacked-bottom-red and paddled-bottom-red were two of her favourites. As were the building sensations between her thighs. The shrieks of stinging pain became sobbing tears and music of a different kind to Caroline's ears. Beating hard and fast now across the centre of both cheeks, she also felt Rose's orgasmic contractions begin well in advance of anything being inserted. 

"Fuck me, I'm good," she thought to herself, continuing hard but not as fast.

"Next time," she said to Rose, gently lowering the punished, sweaty girl to the thick, plush carpet, "before you cum, you're going to do something for me."

Rose enthusiastically insisted on doing it now, whatever Caroline wanted. 

Laying Rose out on her back, beaten bottom uncomfortably bare on the soft carpet, Caroline stripped her soaked knickers from her wet crotch, knelt over her face, parted her pussy lips, and proceeded to suffocate Rose, the wetness sealing both nose and mouth. It felt wonderful, baring her cooped-up cunt as she rocked back and forth, grinding towards her first climax in what seemed like ages.

"Lick me, my naughty little spank slave," Caroline demanded, allowing Rose to breathe and then resuming her suffocation seat. She felt Rose's tongue licking front to back, back to front, invading her as deep as she could, finding her clitoris and gently probing and sucking until the inevitable and earth-moving orgasm took her almost unexpectedly, remembering only at the last minute to allow Rose to breathe properly again.

"You've had an incredible teacher," Caroline cooed to Rose, cuddling her tightly as they lay intertwined on the floor, her hand gently stroking bright red beaten cheeks.

"Nope. That was a first."

Caroline looked at her, astonished, then kissed her deeply, loving the taste and smell of her own sex all over Rose's face.

Barbara came close to coming as she listened intently. 

And just like that, the young woman Rose was gone again, and the old lady Rose, too. 

"My tea's cold; let's have another one. It's ages since you've been to see me."

Weeks, maybe even a couple of months later, Rose's life story continued.

"Ah! Tea. I've not had one all day. Caroline brought me hot, sweet tea sometimes. We'd gone to her friend's apartment on the edge of town, having to be discreet because I was cheating on my girlfriend with her mother."

Miriam said yes, Rosie could have a turn just so long as she could keep on spanking her whenever the fancy took her. They kissed and cuddled in the dark until Rosie's bottom recovered from her second thorough punishment from Caroline. Rose very quickly introduced Mimi's eager sex to her tongue, Mimi not offering to reciprocate until prompted but learning almost instantly how to please.

Rose told Miriam that on her next visit, she wanted to take her turn. So that was the plan.

The visit was electric, explosive, and erotic to the nth degree. Turning the tables opened new worlds for both girls; their adventurous journey continued, in detail.

To be continued.....