One Step Ahead – Part 4

I knew that it didn’t actually matter how I were to present the evidence to Mindy; either she was going to accept her fate or she was going to try to find a way to get out of it. I had predetermined plans that I would follow depending on how she took it. Despite it technically not mattering how I presented the video, I wanted to make sure that it had as debilitating an impact as possible.

I figured that the best way to do that was steal her moment of power from her and turn it on her head. I had woken up around 9am both days that she had handcuffed me, I wasn’t sure how long it took her to put the cuffs on but I was crossing my fingers that 7am was fine so that I set my alarm for that. That night I slept like a baby. I was pretty sure that it was because I’d gotten no sleep at all, but knowing that I had the power now probably helped as well.

I woke up slightly before 7 and jumped out of bed to switch off the alarm clock. I checked around to make sure everything was in place, then stood to wait next to my door. I had only been waiting 20 minute when my door opened and Mindy walked in. She was wearing a little white t-shirt and a pair of pink boyshorts with SPANK ME pasted on the butt. Considering my plans, the coincidence was extremely entertaining. She was carrying new handcuffs. Some part of my brain idly wondered if she had bought in bulk to get a better price on these things because she sure had a lot of them.

Mindy had only taken a few steps into the room when she noticed my bed was empty. There was a noticeable slump of her shoulders but before she could turn around I stepped up behind her and wrapped my left arm around her, pinning her arms to her sides. With my right arm I reached in front of her and put my hand around her throat, not holding tight enough to actually choke her but constricting enough to convey that I didn’t want her to struggle.

“You and I are going to watch a little movie, and then, when it’s over, we’re going to have a conversation. Do you understand me?” I asked her.

“What the fuck are you talking about? Get your fucking hands off of me,” Mindy shouted back at me.

I let go of her, spun her around, and then slapped her face. I didn’t hit her very hard but she went reeling away from me. I grabbed her arm and started to pull her toward me.

“Get the fuck off of,” before she could finish speaking I slapped the other side of her face about as hard as the first slap.

“You son of a,” this time I really let her have it. She flew to the floor and I was sure that I was going to have left a handprint.

“You better think carefully before you say a single word about my mother,” I said to her with more menace in my voice than I knew was possible. “I want you to stand up and don’t say another word to me until after we’ve finished watching our little movie. If you understand me then nod your head. If you don’t understand then I’ll be happy to keep playing this little game every time you do try to speak.”

She stared daggers at me but after a few moments she stood and nodded her head. I told her to look at one of the walls then reached behind me and grabbed a remote off my dresser. I turned on a projector and the video started. She stood staring at it while I leaned against the dresser watching her.

To this day it remains one of the best moments of my life, watching the comprehension dawn on her face then transform into fear then melting into rage which slowly lost ground until there was again only fear. I waited until I was fairly sure that she understood the import of what she had just watched then switched it off.

“Take a seat Mindy. You and I are going to have a little conversation, and what comes of our conversation will be up to you. As you can see from that little video, I have proof of you doing something very, very wrong to me. In fact, I think that any sane person would agree that it’s so wrong that it would send you to jail. Even with a very good lawyer this wouldn’t be a short sentence. Do you agree with that assessment?” I kept my voice as calm as possible while saying all this.

Mindy stared at me with almost no expression on her face. After thinking it through for about half a minute she finally spoke, “What do I need to do to make this go away?”

“Why, Mindy, this is a horrible start! I asked you a very simple question and you failed to answer it. So far that’s one time that I’ve asked a question that you didn’t answer. We’ll make sure to keep count. Now, tell me if you agree that this video is proof of you committing a criminal act.”

Anger flashed across her face for a second then disappeared. “I agree that the video is what you say it is,” she replied after a few more moments.

I clapped my hands together, “Excellent! Now you already jumped ahead to the next question of how do you make this go away. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. I’m not going to give you the tape. Ever. There are multiple copies of it, some soft copy and some hard copy, so you can’t just destroy the laptop either.

“So if I’m not going to give it back to you then I’m sure you’re wondering what IS going to happen,” I gave her a bit of a fish eye then said, “I’m glad you asked! That was very considerate. Well! I’m not one for beating around the bush so what is going to happen is this: you now belong to me. In every way. You will do what I say, when I say it, no matter what it is or where you are when I say it. You are my mine from this moment forward.

“I’m going to assume that you’re still rejecting this in your head, trying to figure out a way around it so I’m going to explain something to you: what I want to do is get my revenge on you for the hell you’ve put me through. I would prefer to do that through my devices but I would be completely content if my revenge is sending you to jail for raping me. I will send this tape to the authorities at the slightest provocation or for ignoring the simplest of commands. I may have a preference for getting revenge one way, but it is a VERY slight preference. Do you understand me?”

“If you release that tape then everyone is going to see you getting raped too, seems to me like that’s a shitty revenge,” Mindy said.

“That’s twice now you’ve failed to answer my question.”

“What does that even mean, twice I’ve failed? Why are you counting that? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“That’s three.”

“Fine. Whatever. What was the question?” She asked.

“That’s four. I dislike having to repeat myself. My question was: do you understand that I will release the tape at the slightest provocation?”

“I understand that you think you will, but if that were true then you’d just release it right now instead of doing your stupid counting when I didn’t answer you.”

I had to admit, it was actually a good point and I don’t know why but it made me laugh. She was startled by the laughter and for whatever reason it made her skeptical but she kept her thoughts to herself.

“That’s true. Pardon my poor semantics. The slightest provocation may not be entirely accurate, but the soul of what I’m saying remains. If you push me on something I will get you sent to jail and be satisfied by the results. Now, do you understand THAT?”

“Yes, I understand you,” she said.

I was caught a little bit off guard by the sudden capitulation, she had replied immediately and with no animosity in her voice. After slightly longer pause than would fit in a normal conversation I said, “Alright then. Decision time Mindy. Either you give yourself to me to become my property or you go to jail. Which will it be?”

During the entire course of this conversation she had been looking me right in the eyes but for the first time her eyes dropped to the floor. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and bit it. Her fists clenched and unclenched but I got the impression that it wasn’t from frustration, it was just part of how she thought.

Eventually she looked up at me. “I don’t want to go to jail, but I have some conditions. I don’t want you to,” she said before I cut her off.

“I don’t think you understand Mindy, this isn’t a negotiation,” I said. “If you choose to be my property then I own you. If I choose to treat you poorly then that’s my decision. If I ignore you, let dust gather, over use you, or anything else, those are all my prerogative. Property does not get to set distinctions. This is an all or nothing. There is no inbetween. Now, which will it be?”

She looked me in the eyes, unblinking. I’ve always thought staring contests were silly. It’s painful not to blink and doesn’t really prove anything. I had no desire to lose any authority due to some stupid game but neither did I want it to look like like she could bully me just with the force of her personality. Instead I plastered an entirely apathetic look on my face and intentionally blinked at her. Slowly.

She kept staring for another minute or two then finally looked down. She mumbled something to the carpet.

“What was that? I didn’t hear you. This is an important decision in your life Mindy! I think you should speak clearly, don’t you?”

“I SAID, fine, I will be your property.”

“Mindy, with that attitude I find it hard to believe that you really mean it. Here, if you’re serious, let’s do this: you nicely ASK me to allow you to be my property,” I said.

Mindy stared at me in shock. I could see her wanting to exclaim that she’d never ask for such a thing but just the fact that she didn’t shout at me let me know that I’d won. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “Jason, will you kindly allow me to be your property in exchange for never sharing that tape with anyone. Please.”

“Yes Mindy, I will allow you to be my property.”

To this day I don’t know how I didn’t break out into an enormous grin after saying those momentous words. Oh I knew that there would be more battles of wills, training, etc. That didn’t matter. Not right now. I had done it. I won. She was mine. I’d won and everything going forward would be based in the reality that in the beginning she had ‘willingly’ accepted me as her owner. Life, for the first time in a very long time, was looking up.

I walked over to my dresser, pulled a blindfold out of the top drawer, walked back to her and gave the blindfold to her. She took it from my hand without saying a word and just stared at it. I didn’t see a reason to say anything yet so I stood in front of her and waited. She was still sitting on the bed so I felt as if I were towering over here, looking down on her in her indecision.

“I’ll put this on if you want but I’d prefer if you put it on me,” she said.

I wanted her to wear the blindfold because I was fairly sure that I would not be able to control my nerves. If my hands started shaking, my anticipation showed on my face, my erection became noticeable or any other tells were present I wanted her to remain in the dark, so to speak. I also had no idea why she wanted me to put it on her but I had a hunch she just wanted to tell me to do something.

Instead of answering I shook my head.

“So I have to put it on myself?”

I nodded slowly.

“What if I miss a spot and can still see?”

“Then you fix it so that you can’t see through that spot anymore,” I said.

She had been staring up at me and without looking away she lifted the blindfold up and put it around her head then tied it. She adjusted it a few times then seemed content that it was doing its job.

“Alright, your silly blindfold is on. Now what?” She said. It wasn’t quite a blatantly disrespectful tone but it was close enough to irritate me.

I wouldn’t have minded if I had thought that she was just trying to make a joke out of it, I probably still would have been annoyed but may have let it slip. I wanted to own her and control her, but I wanted to own and control Mindy the person, not Mindy the robot. That meant that she’d have her own thoughts and feelings, I didn’t want to discourage her personality. The appeal of owning her would be lost if all I owned was an emotionless doll.

Since her jibe appeared to have been intended to intentionally defy and annoy me I decided to add it to the punishment count. I took her hands which had dropped into her lap and lifted them up, pulling her to her feet. I bent down so that my face was inches from hers. My nose informed me that she smelled delicious, like mangos with a little bit of cinnamon. The thought was so out of place that I couldn’t help but smile making me grateful for the blindfold.

Trying to keep the smile out of my voice I said, “Now you find out what I was counting for. I believe we were at four earlier. I’m adding a fifth for that comment about the blindfold.”

I bent down a little farther then put one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders then picked her up, eliciting a little squeak of surprise from her. I carried her to her room and deposited her on her own bed.

“Get onto your hands and knees,” I said. “Lower your shoulders and arch your back to stick your ass into the air. Good. Don’t move. I’m going to go get some things. If you’re not in that position when I get back then your punishments double from five to ten.”

“What are you going to get?” Mindy asked.

She sounded nervous. It made me smile to hear that. It was nowhere near as nervous as I had been waiting for her to come into my room yesterday but it was a start. I left her there without answering her question.

When I got back to my room I collected what I wanted: a paddle, handcuffs, and a cane. It was amazing what you can buy on the internet. All I had to do was check a box that said I was over 18 and have a credit card. No problem. Discreet shipping too, I got them in boxes that made it look like I was ordering video games.

I didn’t return to the room right away. At first I told myself that it was because I wanted to make her wait longer, to build her nervousness. Then I shook my head. It wasn’t wrong, I did want her to wait more, but really I was scared.

I’d spent so much time living in fear of the power Mindy had wielded over me that it was hard for me to accept that the power dynamics had done a 180 degree turn. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it and I was afraid that I’d mess it up and somehow give some of the control back to her.

It was harder than I had thought it would be. When I’d been thinking and planning over the past two weeks I’d thought I’d just be so angry and so filled with lust that everything would come naturally. I was angry and I did still find her attractive but they were buzzes at the back of my head. I felt as if I was watching everything from a third person perspective.

Now that the moment had arrived I didn’t know if I really wanted to have sex with Mindy. She had raped and humiliated me, did I really want to do anything with her? Since I’d been planning on letting my rage and lust run rampant I hadn’t made any plans for this first morning. I knew that I needed to do something. Having a promise from her to be mine wasn’t enough, I needed to show that I was going to exercise my control over her.

One thing I was certain of now was that I was dominant sexually. I was turned on by the thought of a woman giving me power and control, but was I turned in practice? I didn’t know. So far it hadn’t worked that way with Mindy but I decided to go back to the original plan of letting what will be, be. I’d start with the punishment and see what I felt like after that.

I picked up my tools and walked back to her room. Mindy was still in the same position. Part of me was a little surprised but I offered neither praise nor surprise to her. I put everything down on the bed next to her. She didn’t turn her head to look but it was clear that she wanted to ask what I’d brought in.

“Get off the bed and stand at the foot of the bed,” I said. “Stand facing toward the bed.”

She immediately did what I said, whimpering a little bit when she got up and released her stiff muscles. She hadn’t been there very long but I guess it was enough for her to have gotten sore.

I walked up behind her took her hands and cuffed them together. After her hands were cuffed I took the bands of her panties and pulled them down. She stepped out of them without any instruction from me.

“Bend forward and put your chest on the bed,” I said.

She again obeyed without hesitation; I was startled by her lack of pushback but I wasn’t going to comment on her being a good girl just yet. After she’d bent down I took a moment to admire her ass. I’m not an ass man or a tits man, I admire the whole package, there are many things about a woman that I can find sexy, I always appreciate whatever her best attribute is. If a woman’s got a sexy neck, well by golly I’m going to admire her neck. Mindy had many very fine attributes, but her ass was one of her very best.

As she was bent over in front of me I had my first ever unobstructed view. No guilt for looking, no teasing condescension from her, just me getting to enjoy the view. I could see her pussy peeking out and then I saw something that set my heart racing; Mindy was wet. Not gushing, but she definitely looked wet. I couldn’t resist, I put my hand out and brushed her sex, my hands coming away with moisture on them.

I figured it out then, why I’d been so reluctant. I enjoyed control, I enjoyed power, but I had no desire to rape Mindy. I would never have guessed it but somewhere along the line Mindy had become turned on by her helplessness…unless it was still left over from her anticipation of this morning? I had no prior experience, I wasn’t sure if a girl would stay wet that long.

“It looks like someone got a little wet waiting for me,” I said to her. “Lick my fingers Mindy, lick them clean of your own juices.”

She blushed bright red and turned her head away from my hand that was reaching up to her, trying to move her mouth as far as she could from my fingers without leaving the position I’d told her to take.

“Uh uh uhhh Mindy, I don’t think you want to disobey me do you? Do you really want to add to the punishment you’re about to get?”

She froze then slowly turned her head back. I hadn’t moved my hand but she couldn’t see so she brushed her cheek against my hand before getting it into her mouth. There wasn’t too much moisture left but it left a bit on her cheek and Mindy sucked the rest off of my finger.

“Does it turn you on being helpless Mindy? Were you turned on waiting here in this room knowing I was going to come back and punish you? Were you excited waiting to find out how you would be punished?” I taunted.

“No! It’s not that,” Mindy shouted at me then gasped, seemingly embarrassed that her outburst had admit that she was in fact turned on.

“Not that? Explain to me what it was then, Mindy.”

“I…well,” she said then took a deep breath and rushed the next words out. “I don’t want to be punished. I don’t know what you’re going to do to me and it scares me…but I think I liked having to stay here. I don’t understand it but I felt so powerless and it turned me on. And…and I felt like your property, like I was just some whore you bought.”

The last bit was said barely above a whisper. Talk about world shaking revelations. Never in a million years would I have guessed that this bitch who had laughed while teasing me, who had handcuffed me to a bed and raped me, that she of all people would be getting off on being turned into property.

A world shaking revelation and a rush of blood to the head between the legs. I was was more turned on from hearing those words than I’d ever been from anything else in my life. Her admission hung in the air between us but neither of us said a thing. I could see her pussy, even more engorged after her embarrassing admission. I tucked away that admitting something embarrassing was a turn on for future use.

“Be that as it may, it’s not going to get you out of your punishment. I’m going to spank you ten times with a paddle for each missed question and ten times with a cane for disrespecting me. You will count spanking. If you miss one you will have to start that set of ten over. At the end of every ten you say say, ‘Thank you Sir for punishing me for my mistake.’ Tell me if you understand,” I said.

“I understand, Sir,” Mindy breathed in a voice slightly louder than a whisper.

I thought I’d been turned on before but her calling me Sir without any prompting had just ratcheted things up a few levels. I wasn’t going to make her punishment any easier though. Turned on or not, I still had years of frustration to work out and this was just going to be the start.

I picked up the paddle and without any further ado brought it down hard on her left ass cheek. Her entire body went rigid and she screamed for all she was worth. Apparently, I wouldn’t need to put any more strength into my spanks to get the desired reaction. When she was done screaming she shouted “ONE!” then pushed her face against the bed, and made a noise that sounded a little bit like a sob.

I brought the paddle down again in the same spot. She didn’t scream this time but her whole body went rigid again. “TWO!”

“THREE! FOUR! FIVE!”

I swapped cheeks for the next five. After only nine her ass was starting to show signs of her punishment. I brought it down again on the right. “TEN! THANK YOU SIR FOR PUNISHING ME FOR MY MISTAKE!”

I’d never done any drugs but I certainly felt like I was on one right then. My head felt like it was miles above the rest of my body. I was floating on a happy cloud of arousal.I stopped for a moment to look at her. Her body was shaking as she gasped in huge, trembling breaths. Mindy doesn’t tan, her skin is always a very pale white so the red blotches were a stark contrast to the rest of her skin.

I brought the paddle down again, aiming to hit both cheeks at the same time. “ONE!” She’d stopped going rigid for each smack. She still convulsed a little bit but I thought that she’d adapted to the pain surprisingly quickly. I aimed the next blows for higher on her ass, then lower, then low on the left side, low on the right side, low middle, then dead center the rest of them.

“THANK YOU SIR FOR PUNISHING ME FOR MY MISTAKE!”

The power was still a heady mix. Every time a blow landed with a splat I could see the effect ripple through her ass then down the muscles of her legs. I’d enjoyed watching this but decided to change it up. After the first twenty which had been a slow pace, with plenty of time for her to stop and count I thought I’d pick things up a little bit.

I brought the paddle down ten consecutive times. Mindy lost count at 6. I wasn’t hitting her quite so hard as I had been previously but I think that quantity was making up for the lack. After a moment of hesitation I brought the paddle down another ten times. This time she kept up with me, shouting her thanks at the end of it. The moment she was done thanking me I gave her another ten smacks.

“THANK YOU SIR FOR PUNISHING ME FOR MY MISTAKE!”

After the first four sets I put the paddle down and picked up the cane. It was made out of bamboo and the site I’d purchased it from promised that it would serve its purpose. I’d tried bringing it down on my own legs after it had arrived and even with the lack of angle or leverage I’d felt a bit of sting. I did not envy Mindy her place.

I took aim to lay the cane across the center of her ass, hitting both cheeks then brought it down. The scream after the first paddling had only been a small prequel. She screeched louder than anyone I’d ever heard in my life…then took a very deep breath and said, “One.”

This time I aimed a little lower, trying to catch her on the bottom of her ass, right above where her legs started. Same results as before. “Two.”

I aimed for the same spot on the third blow but missed and hit the top of her legs instead. Her scream was not at all diminished. “Three.”

After missing I aimed the next three to generally hit the center ass, bringing them down harder than the first three and back to back. “Four…Five…SIX”

Mindy had slid forward on the bed a little bit during all the spankings and when I paused after the sixth I noticed that she was grinding her hips against the edge of the bed. I thought for a moment that she was just squirming around in pain but it was too deliberate for that. I was pretty sure that she was grinding her clit against the edge of the bed.

I was amazed that she could be finding any pleasure while being caned but I was too turned on to stop her. Instead I kept up the spanking, getting up to nine fairly quickly. After the ninth it was obvious that she was grinding herself against the bed in a sexual manner. She was humping it wildly after the ninth and her screams had ceased entirely.

I shook my head with a smile on my head and a boner in my pants then brought down the final stroke…except she only grunted. There was no counting. Not a word from her, just grinding against the bed with little whimpers and moans.

“Mindy, you didn’t count,” I said.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” she said with a thick voice that sounded both as if she had been crying and husky as if she were on the verge of an orgasm and had absolutely no repentance in it. “Please spank me again, Sir. I’ll make sure to count this time.”

How does a guy turn that down?

I brought the cane down harder than I had yet. She screamed again, her hips stopped grinding, she just pressed herself hard against the bed and held herself there for a moment. Then she counted the first stroke.

Her ass was glowing bright red and had some pretty nasty welts across it now. I was nervous about breaking the skin, as much as I liked making her ass glow I had no desire to make her bleed, so I decided to aim around her ass a little bit more to hit new spots. I hit higher up on her lower back and at the tops of her legs. She didn’t scream anymore but each blow brought a grunt from her.

She’d started grinding her hips again after the second blow and had continued to do so through the ninth. I brought the last blow down on her ass again, not quite as hard as the first from this set but hard enough despite that.

She did scream after that tenth stroke but it was a different scream from all the rest. I stared in open mouthed shock and lust as Mindy came. Her entire body was going through convulsions, she was moaning at the same time as screaming. It seemed to go on and on without end, she just came and came. I watched her juices literally running down her legs could see her asshole wink.

When she finally stopped cumming she said in a voice that can only be described as satisfied, “Ten. Thank you, Sir, for punishing me for being disrespectful.”

It wasn’t exactly what she was supposed to say, but in that moment I didn’t care. I was still in shock.

After a moment she said, “Sir, may I move?”

I mutely nodded until I realized she couldn’t see. “Go ahead,” I said, then thought better of it, “wait for a moment.” I took the handcuffs off of her then told her that she could move.

She pushed herself up onto the bed, laying flat on her stomach with her legs and arms spread out wide.

I walked around to the head of the bed and got onto it, sitting down cross legged next to her head and pulling the blindfold off of her face.

“Mindy, that was a pretty amazing orgasm. Tell me what happened there,” I said.

She just lay there breathing hard for a moment without saying a word. I knew she wasn’t sleeping so I was about to say something about failing to answer when she finally spoke up.

“I’ve never felt so dominated before in my life. I can’t explain more than that. I felt as if I was being truly dominated and it felt right, as if everything were right with the world. I don’t know if I enjoyed the pain for the sake of the pain or if it was related to being dominated, but whatever the cause I loved that pain more than any pleasure I’ve felt.”

She blushed and tucked her head down so that it was pressed against her shoulder, as if she were hiding from me.

I stroked her my hand through her hair a few times. I think I felt more affection for Mindy in that moment then I’d felt for her in all of the time I’d spent with her previous to this put together.

I was also hornier than I’d ever been before in my life. I stood up and took her arm and pulled her to the edge of the bed, then took her other hand and lifted her up a little bit so that I could look her in the eye.

“Now that you’ve had your punishment you’re going to serve me for the first time,” I said.

She nodded her head with a small smile then got out of bed then got to her knees in front of me. I saw that she was careful to not sit on her heels and put any weight on her tender butt.

She pulled my shorts and boxers down, freeing my cock from its confines. It was still rock hard from everything that had happened. Without hesitation she went to work on it. I’d gotten blowjobs from Mindy before but I don’t know if it was because this one I was a willing participant in or if it orgasms inspired her performance, but this one put the others to shame.

As turned on as I was I knew I wasn’t going to last more than a couple of minutes at most. Mindy must have sensed it too because she stopped and turned around to drop herself back on the bed with her ass in the air.

“Take me, Jason! Take your dirty slut! Pound my pussy and show it who owns it!”

It was a tempting offer but one I didn’t want to take right now for a variety of reasons. Instead I grabbed the sides of her hips and pulled her off the bed.

“Use your mouth to finish the job, Mindy. You haven’t earned the right to have my dick inside you again.”

She turned around with a completely crestfallen face. I think of all the things I said to her that one was the one that made it most clear to her how upset I’d been at her actions of the previous morning.

The disappointment changed to determination and she set to work again with renewed vigor.

When my was down in her throat I felt myself pass the point of no return. I pulled myself out of her mouth. When she tried to pull me back in I told her, “No, you haven’t earned the right for me to cum in your mouth either.”

Her head fell to her chest for a moment, but then she nodded and looked back up at me with a smile on her face, waiting for my cum to splash onto her.

She started rubbing herself while she waited, and she only had seconds to wait. I grabbed the back of her head, gripping her hair and holding her head in place with my left hand while with my right I jacked myself off. When I came it felt as if all the tension and pressure inside of me was released and I came and came. It covered her face and dripped onto her breasts and shoulders. She started shaking too and I realized she’d just cum.

When I finished cumming she didn’t say a word but sucked me into her mouth to clean me off. Every few moments she’d stop to bring a finger covered with my cum into her mouth until both my dick and her body were clean of my spunk.

When she was done cleaning me I pulled my shorts up then bent down and kissed her on the top of the head. I turned to leave but stopped when she spoke.

“Jason, err, Sir, where are you going?”

“I’m going back to my room to sleep. You should get some rest too,” I said.

“You could sleep here. With me,” she said.

With my back to her she couldn’t see my smile. The day after one of the the worst days of my life I’d just had the best day of my life. I’d never have thought I’d own her so completely so quickly but there it was.

“Not today, Mindy. Maybe another time. Maybe.”