Even More Kinky Women

Deonna’s Cheating

 

ONE.

 

“When I had sex with Sayre, it was an accident,” I explained carefully to Michelle.

She looked at me skeptically for a second, shook her head, and then burst out laughing. “Right, Deonna. You accidentally fell on his dick with your girlie bits,” she said sarcastically. “Happens all the time.”

“Right!” I agreed happily and took another too large sip from my glass. I was never a good drinker and Michelle had gotten me to talk too much. Alcohol wasn’t my only weakness. Sex was the other.

“Does Alex know?” she asked.

“Hell no!” I blurted too loudly and then tried to modulate my voice. We were alone in Michelle’s house, but somehow talking about my indiscretion made me want to keep my voice down. “And he’s not going to either.”

She continued to shake her head. “I wish I was as brave as you. I mean…everything with Rob is great…but sometimes I wish we hadn’t gotten married so soon. I’d have loved to have sex with another man.” Her eyes went unfocused, and not from the rum we’d been drinking. “Tell me about fucking Sayre.”

I didn’t want to tell too much and sound like I was bragging, but I wanted to brag a little as well. Once I had rounded thirty I figured that my life was going to being sexually dull. That had turned out to be far from the truth. “Oh…it’s just one of those stupid office things. I wouldn’t even call it a romance. We got done with that conference last week, we’d been flirting for weeks, but I wasn’t expecting anything to come of it. I didn’t want anything to come of it.” That was a lie but either Michelle didn’t care or wanted to believe me. “So we had an afternoon to kill.”

“And you killed it in bed?” Michelle asked eagerly.

“Yeah…”

 

I wanted to be a good girl growing up. How did my life and marriage devolve to a series of lies?

The conference our office sent us to was the exact same conference from a year ago. Nothing had changed. Yeah, maybe the new hired got something out of it, but it was a waste of time for Sayre and me; we’d been working for the same company for the past five years, but in different departments. Our interactions were enough to set up a flirty relationship that never went anywhere.

And—God help me—Sayre was one of those gorgeous guys who don’t spend a lot of time on their appearance and look all the more sexier for it. Or maybe he spent a lot of time making himself look the right level of disheveled sexy with his shaggy dark blond hair, more than occasional chin stubble, dress shirts that fit perfectly to outline his muscles. When he wore a tie he was professional looking, when he kept his shirt unbuttoned at the top I was always tempted to help him finish unbuttoning it.

I’d never tell anyone, but his green eyes always made my panties a bit damp.

We were in the largest conference room of the hotel listening to the presenters drone on about actuary tables, long-term benefits, risk aversion, and human resource issues. I was trying not to fall asleep. “Didn’t we listen to this same presentation last year?” I asked Sayre who was sitting next to me.

“Yup.”

“So why are we listening to it again?”

“Company paid for it.”

“Stupid reason.”

He shrugged. “I was hoping to talk to her afterwards.” Sayre used his chin to indicate the attractive woman on the slightly raised dais who was tasked with keeping the audience awake.

I glanced back and forth between him and the woman and then asked the obvious question. “Why?”

“I banged her last year. I was hoping to do it again tonight.”

I had to hold my hand over my mouth in order not to laugh. I wasn’t sure if he was making a joke or bragging. “Right…” I managed to slur out.

He continued on. “I chatted with her a little before lunch. She was extra careful to show me her new engagement ring.” He frowned. “I don’t think she was interested in a repeat performance.”

I couldn’t help but tease my coworker. “Maybe you were just lousy in bed,” I commented while slowly rotating my own engagement ring around on my finger. Sayre knew I was married; I wasn’t hiding anything from him. I was hiding it from myself.

“Nope. That can’t be it.”

“Why not?” My voice rose slightly above a whisper and people glanced our way. Sayre took a moment before he answered me.

“I’ve never had a complaint. I know I’m a good lay.”

“Well, there’s no way to prove it,” I commented trying to put an end to where the conversation was going.

He turned his head and pursed his lips. “I could prove it to you.”

“Sure you could.”

“We are in a hotel,” he pointed out. “All we would need is a room and a couple of hours.”

“Sounds like according to her,” and I indicated the speaker on the small stage, “it would only take a couple of minutes.”

Sayre made a face and looked back at her. She was wearing a skirt that was maybe a bit too tight and a bit too short. Her blouse didn’t plunge, but it showed off a hint of cleavage. Next to her I felt more than a little mousy in my business casual attire. He made a decision and nodded. “I’m not sticking around for the same show twice. I’m leaving. Want to come with me?”

There was only a second between him saying the words and him standing up and quickly exiting the room through the back door. There were enough people in the large space that no one really noticed.

I hesitated. What did I want to do? Stay here and listen to corporate bullshit or see how far Sayre was willing to take this little game.

I followed him.

Sayre walked up to the front desk and spoke with the woman behind the counter. I stood a respectful distance away. A couple of minutes later Sayre turned around and walked toward me with a hotel key card in his hand which he flashed at me.

“Did you just waste two hundred bucks,” I asked him.

“Room 314,” he replied. “If you’re interested.” He headed for the elevator.

He had no way of knowing, but I had cheated on every boyfriend I ever had going all the way back to middle school. Back then and up to high school, it was just kissing other boys. In college, I had sex with other guys no matter who I was dating. I was especially bad after college and before I met Alex; I didn’t want to think about how many men I had sex with in my life. After I got serious with Alex I only had one hook up with another guy. It was just sex. Really. And I had been so good since Alex and I had gotten married. I hadn’t cheated once in two years. It was a new record for me.

And there I was going up in a hotel elevator with Sayre just so we could have an afternoon fuck.

“I’m married, you know,” I told him. We had adopted the typical pose of people traveling in an elevator: side-by-side and staring at the floor indicator.

“I know. I have a girlfriend.”

“Are you going to tell her about this?” I asked.

“Nope. Are you going to tell your husband?”

“Nope.”

We didn’t even bother to open the curtains to the windows. Three steps in and we were kissing. A few more steps together and we fell on the bed and started shedding clothes. I briefly wished I had worn something a little sexier than tan pants and our company polo shirt, but then they were off and it didn’t matter. Underneath I had worn a typically plain yellow bra with some flowers on it and matching panties. Nothing special…and I wished that I had worn some sexier lingerie, but that didn’t matter because a few moment later they were off as well.

Sayre was dressed much like me. Underneath is corporate casual we wore a pair of tight boxer briefs. I peeled them off to discover three important things. First, he shaved and trimmed his pubic hair. It was sandy brown like the hair on his head, and he wasn’t shaved smooth like a porn star, but he knew all about manscaping. Second, he had a semi-hidden tattoo of Bugs Bunny on his hip bone. There had to be a story behind that, but I wasn’t interested in that right then. I was more interested in his cock. Third, his cock was a bit shorter than my husband’s but it was definitely much, much thicker. I worried briefly about the difficulty in fitting him inside me, which had never been a problem with other men, but then I shrugged off any concern to lower my mouth onto him.

He stopped me. “You don’t have to.”

I glanced up at him. “We’re both naked and you’re saying no to getting head?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure we’re going to have sex…or have you changed your mind?” The delay was killing me. Giving head was one of my specialties and he was slowing down the process because no matter how much fun it was to blow a guy, it was nothing compared to actual fucking.

“No,” he said. “it’s just…Robin doesn’t like to go down on me.”

I was pretty sure he was referring to his girlfriend. In response, I opened my mouth and brought as much of his semi-erect cock into my mouth as possible. I was pretty sure he was thick enough that deep throating wasn’t a possibility, and besides, I wasn’t that good at that. Still, I could taste his salty-slick precum oozing from the tip. He got bigger and harder as I sucked. I loved the feeling of the squishy hardness of the glans on my tongue and between my lips. There’s nothing precisely like a man’s cock. They’re all different and all wonderful in their own way.

His balls were heavy. I kept one hand on them, lightly massaging and teasing, but also as a gauge to see where he was. While I was happy to start things off with some head, I wasn’t going to have him finish in my mouth.

Every man is a little different, but they all make the same sound and their cocks start to throb in the same way, but the most critical sign is their balls tightening up to their bodies. When that happened with Sayre, I backed off.

He groaned in disappointment. “Don’t stop.”

“Time to switch,” I said, crawling up his body. He was on his back so it was easy for me to straddle his hips and lower my pussy down onto his saliva-slick cock. I was plenty wet as well; giving head get me going. If we were smart we would have discussed diseases and pregnancy risk and one of us would have dashed to the hotel vending machine for a pack of cheap condoms. Instead I just lowered my pussy onto him and we both sighed at the meeting of our bodies.

“Is this safe?” he asked me.

“No, but I won’t get pregnant.”

If there was one thing I had learned in my years as a slut was to always have reliable birth control. I didn’t want kids, not yet, so I had an IUD. Before marrying Alex I always carried a couple of condoms in my purse, but I had given that up with getting married. Apparently I was going to have to start the habit again.

I crouched on my feet and started pumping my ass up and down, enjoying Sayre’s cock filling me up. He wasn’t huge, but he wasn’t tiny either. I really felt him inside of me. I liked being on top because that let me be in control. I’m in fairly good shape from doing lots of running and my thigh muscles are more than strong enough to hold myself up and ride a cock for long enough. It’s fun, but it takes some strength.

“Oh fuck,” he said as I worked up and down.

“You like that?” I asked, proud of myself.

“Uh-huh.” He grabbed my ass and started thrusting his cock up into me. We found our rhythm right away. It was good sex, great sex. Our bodies were slamming into each other. The slap of flesh on flesh filled the air. When I started cumming, my thighs quivered and I fell forward onto Sayre, my weight on my knees and hands. I didn’t move as Sayre kept going for another minute before he finally finished by cumming inside me.

That’s the feeling I love. Orgasms are the best, of course, but when a man cums in me, there’s something so raw and visceral about it that I know I’ll be seeking it out again and again.

“Was this wrong?” Sayre asked with me on top of him, my weight pinning him down, his hands on my ass, his cock still inside me.

“No. Why would you ask that?” I was trying to keep it casual and fun. That’s what sex should be.

“Well…you’re cheating on your husband and I’m cheating on my girlfriend…”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” I said bluntly.

Cheating and I have a strained relationship. I love sex especially with new men and back before I got married, I loved sneaking around on my current boyfriend to do it with someone else. It’s fun, but there’s also the occasional guilt that goes with lying. And then sometimes the cheating and lying leads to the end of a relationship. But mostly it’s fun.

Mostly.

“Wow,” he said softly, almost without any emotion. “That’s…almost cold.”

I knelt up, a bit angry. He was still inside me, but I could feel him shrinking and retreating. “Are you going to tell Robin about this afternoon?” I demanded from him.

“No…”

“And is that because you don’t want to hurt her feelings or because you’re a big, fat liar, or is it because you want to continue your relationship with her?” I snapped at him and then waved my hand across his face. “Don’t bother answering it doesn’t matter. You’re going to do what you’re going to do and I’m going to do what I’m going to do.” I threw my leg over his body, letting him slip out of me. I hated that sensation. I wanted a cock in me all the time. I looked down at his limp, wet cock and I was still interested. “So are we done or are we going to fuck again?”

He seemed puzzled. “You want to?”

“Hell yes,” I told him. The nice thing about being a woman is that if I’m in the mood, I can have sex all day. The best any guy has ever done for me is getting hard five times to fuck me over the course of the day. With him, I came more than twenty times. I don’t have trouble orgasming. It might even have been as high as fifty times if I bothered to count all the little tremblers. But he only got five little orgasms out of the deal.

I reached for Sayre’s soft cock. He pulled back a little in surprise, but I wasn’t letting him get away so easy. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t bite.” I then leaned down and took him into my mouth.

Anyone who says they don’t like the way their partner tastes or smells needs to find a new partner or stop having sex. I’ve been with a few guys who needed a shower, but that was okay. I’ve always loved the musky scent of men. I mostly like the flavor of their cum but some guys taste better than others. I don’t mind the taste of smell of myself on their cocks; it adds a certain visceral dose of reality to fucking. The pleasant flavor of my pussy, his musk, and his cum on Sayre’s cock all worked to rev me up more than I already was.

I’d always noticed that the first time I fucked a guy he’d always be able to get it up for me fairly easily and in quick succession. Sayre was no different. A minute of head and he was hard and ready to go.

“Fuck me like an animal or fuck me like a wife?” I asked him, taking his cock out of my mouth.

Sayre blinked at me, not comprehending. “What?”

I sighed. “Doggy style or missionary?”

“Missionary,” he quickly decided. “I like fucking face to face.”

With a nod, I rolled to my back and opened up my legs. “Lay on, Macduff,” I encouraged him, keeping a hold on his cock. That was all the encouragement that Sayre needed. He climbed on top and together we put him inside of me. Missionary isn’t my favorite, so I didn’t just lay there. I brought up my knees, further opening myself up to him, and he quickly got the idea. Sayre was a good lover. He instinctively knew what I wanted and what was most effective. He hooked his arms behind my knees and essentially pinned me to the bed while he slammed hard and fast into my pussy.

I came quickly, which I love because it feels like I’ve lost control of my body. My orgasm was so forceful that my legs came down to the bed, breaking Sayre’s pin on me, which brought our faces close together. I couldn’t help it; I grabbed his face and kissed him. Kissing is such an intimate act, more so than actual sex. He seemed surprised by my kiss. We had kissed to start off our encounter, but we hadn’t kissed once things got going. He fucked me all the harder and faster for it. I took every thrust and managed to cum—hard—one more time before he finished.

It was crazy and intense and we both dozed off right afterwards, too exhausted by our lovemaking to do anything else.

 

It was an alert tone for a text message on Sayre’s phone that woke up both of us. “Shit. What was that?”

“My phone.” He disentangled himself from the sheets, stumbled out of bed, found his pants and eventually his phone. I closed my eyes and flopped my head back down on the pillow. I wasn’t fully awake but I knew one thing for certain: I was still horny and I wanted to fuck Sayre at least one more time.

“That was Robin,” he said. I forced my eyes open and saw him tapping at the screen of his phone. It took me a moment to remember who Robin was. The woman he fucked. No. I was the woman he had just fucked. Robin was his girlfriend.

“So?” I asked.

“I need to get going,” he said.

I grabbed my phone and checked the time. It was still the middle of the afternoon. Nowhere near to the time when we’d normally leave the conference. We’d been asleep maybe all of thirty minutes. “Why?” I asked.

“Because she wants to know when I’ll be home.” He started to pull on his pants. I wasn’t done with him yet. There was an easy way for one more fuck.

“You’d better not go home like that,” I told him. “She’ll smell you and know that you’ve been fucking someone else. It’s a good thing that hotels provide showers.”

“Shit. You’re right.” He dropped his pants and headed to the bathroom.

I followed. “What’s your hurry? Is she expecting you back early or something?”

“No, but…” he didn’t finish his sentence. He was worried about getting caught cheating. I wasn’t worried about Alex finding out, but then again, I wasn’t Sayre. Yeah, he’d fucked the conference presenter a year ago, but I couldn’t remember if he was dating Robin back then or not.

Tossing aside the sheets, I showed off my body to him. He was such a man and watched as I slid my hand down my side toward my pussy. I lightly skimmed over my clit and pushed my index finger up into myself. “Wouldn’t you rather fuck me one more time before you have to go?”

“Uh…” he glanced down at his limp cock. “I’m not sure I can get it up again,” he said sadly. I rolled my eyes and levered myself out of the bed.

“Okay, fine. I guess our date is a two fuck date.” I stepped around him and headed toward the bathroom. “Care to join me in the shower.”

After I’d humiliated his masculinity a bit, Sayre wasn’t going to say no to the chance to prove that he was a lusty, healthy, and horny man. He followed. I turned on the water and stepped under it, the cold stung me for a moment before it warmed up enough. The few seconds of cold water blasting my chest made my nipples hard. I turned around to face him. The nice thing about hotel showers is they are often larger than average because the good hotels know that people come to them to fuck, not to sleep, and more often than not, there’s going to be two people in those showers.

“Wash my pussy,” I told him, thrusting my hips forward a bit as I handed him the bar of soap that was waiting on the edge of the tub. Sayre didn’t need to be told twice. A second later he was lathering up my mound. In a few seconds I’d be washing away all evidence of my infidelity, but right then he was enamored of my pussy.

Alex loves eating pussy, which I can understand, but he hates getting a hair in his mouth. When he asked me to shave so he didn’t have to be annoyed by random hairs in his mouth when he ate me out, I was happy to oblige.

It had been a week since I’d last done a thorough shaving, so I was well past the stubble stage but nowhere near any real length. I just had peach fuzz.

“Your pussy feels amazing,” Sayre commented. I could feel him manipulating my fuzz while at the same time teasing me.

“It would feel even better if you were doing that with your cock.”

He laughed and turned me around, rinsing me off. We continued to shower, washing each other. He liked to reach around my body and soap up my tits, running my nipples under his fingers.

“I wish you had long hair,” he told me. “It’s sexier. You look a little too butch.”

I snorted at him. “I’m not a Barbie doll designed to be dressed up and played with for your amusement,” I told him, playfully squeezing his balls. “Everyone knows that women with short hair are the ones that are wild in bed.”

“You expect me to believe that?” he asked skeptically.

“Yeah. Of course. Long hair is a pain in the ass. It gets in the way. It gets pulled to easily. It’s annoying.” I ran my hand through my short locks, barely an inch long. “This is aggressively sexy, never in the way, and,” I tilted my head back into the water, “I rarely have bedhead which is always a challenge when cheating. Plus it dries quickly this way.”

“Bedhead when you’re cheating?” he asked. “You do this a lot?”

“No,” I half lied. “Just enough to know better and how not to get caught.” I didn’t want to answer any more uncomfortable questions so I put my hands on his shoulders—he was only a few inches taller than me—and gently pushed down. “I know you can’t get it up right now, but I’m still horny.” He got the point and went down to his knees to eat me out.

It felt wonderful, his tongue on my clit and sucking on me while the hot water pulsed on us. Cumming was easy when I thought about how he was undoubtedly eating some of his own cum from my pussy.

My only regret was that I went home to Alex and there was barely any dried cum in my panties.

 

 

TWO.

 

Michelle looked at me, her eyes insanely wide. Wide to the point where I was starting to think she either was on drugs and not just drunk, or maybe she was mentally unbalanced.

“Holy shit,” she breathed.

Maybe I had gone into a little too much detail with my story. “What?” I asked semi-innocently.

While she tried to shrug it off, I could tell that Michelle was both fascinated and turned on by my story. She dry swallowed. “You’ve done this before?” she asked.

“Had sex with a guy? Of course.” I tried to deflect her question but Michelle wasn’t having any of that.

“No. Cheated on Alex.”

“Umm…no.”

She blinked. “I thought you said that you had cheated in the past.”

I half-nodded and swirled my drink around in the glass. “Well, yeah. I pretty much cheated on all my boyfriends in the past. But this was the first time I’ve cheated on Alex.” I finished what remained in my glass. “Well, the first time since we’ve been married. I cheated on him when we were dated and engaged.”

Michelle made a high-pitched gasping noise. “How could you do that?” she asked, as if cheating on Alex before we were married was worse than cheating on him after we were married. “Don’t you feel…guilty afterwards or even during it?”

I decided to be honest. “During? No. I’m too focused on the sex. Afterwards…” I hated thinking about what I was possibly doing to my relationship. “Afterwards… sometimes, yeah. But I try not to think about it.” I sighed. “Something is wrong with me. My sex drive overpowers my good common sense.”

What Michelle said next sobered me up quicker than I wanted. “I wish I could be like that,” she said dreamily.

“You could,” I told her. “Just find a guy and fuck him.”

Michelle burst out laughing. “That’s never going to happen. Who’d want to fuck a mid-30s married woman?”

“You’d be surprised.”

 

“I’m too nervous,” said Michelle as we walked down the hotel’s hallway. It wasn’t the same place where I had fucked Sayre, but after a while all hotel hallways start looking alike. I know that’s somewhat intentional, but wouldn’t a little difference and creativity be nice? “I can’t do this.” She stopped walking and put her hand on the wall as if she were about to faint.

I wasn’t going to put up with that bullshit. It had taken a month of texts and phone calls and conversations to make things work and I wasn’t going to let her back out now. I grabbed her hand and tugged her along. “Don’t give me that. It’s too late to say no.”

She resisted slightly, but then went along with me. We were looking for room 373 and it seemed like we had walked down endless corridors to find it. “But…if Rob finds out, we’ll wind up divorced.”

I barely paid her any mind. “Something like seventy five percent of all marriages deal with infidelity. They don’t all get divorced.”

“That’s not reassuring,” she told me.

“Then don’t tell Rob,” I said and stopped at the door to the room Sayre was waiting. I knocked. I could tell that Michelle wanted to bolt, so I kept a firm grip on her hand. The sound of Michelle’s breathing filled the hallway giving evidence of her nerves. Or maybe it was the sound of my breathing because I was anticipating what was going to happen.

I’m not ashamed to admit my panties were more than a bit moist.

Sayre opened the door and Michelle didn’t run. She was mesmerized by his appearance. It wasn’t that he was beautiful or perfect; it was that he had eyes for her and it was obvious he was ready for sex. His shaggy blond hair had been swept out of his eyes, his smile was crooked, his shirt was slightly open, and his pants were tight enough in the crotch to show off his package. I wanted to fuck him right then and there in the doorway, but he wasn’t there for me.

He was there for Michelle.

“Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”

I gestured and Michelle stepped forward, stumbling slightly. Her skirt wasn’t that tight, so I blamed her nerves. Michelle might have complained about being out of shape and not perfect, but who is? Even so, she filled out the skirt nicely, and the blouse she wore wasn’t that revealing, so I insisted she open one more button before we left the car. I wondered if anyone at the hotel thought we were a pair of escorts going to our date.

It wasn’t far from the truth.

In keeping with the theme of the evening, I had dressed up as well, but it was mostly to relax Michelle. I wasn’t going to be doing anything exciting. Well, anything very exciting. Still, I thought I looked pretty damn good in my black skirt that was just a little too tight but not uncomfortably tight and while I didn’t have big tits like Michelle to show off, a clingy blouse with an inadequate bra made for good viewing.

Michelle was tugging at her skirt and adjusting her blouse, drawing too much attention to her discomfort with the situation. I needed to nip that in the bud right away.

There were no need for preliminaries. “Shall we get started?” I asked them.

“Sure!” Sayre replied enthusiastically.

Michelle was less excited, but still game. “Okay.”

“All you two need to do is take off your clothes, I’ll get things started, and then I’ll give you a little privacy.”

The only way Michelle would agree to go along with the concept of cheating on her husband was to insist that I come along with her. We didn’t discuss details beyond that. In retrospect, that was stupid. Hot, but stupid.

Sayre’s response was to unbutton his shirt. Michelle just stood there. “You’re not going to leave, are you?” she asked nervously, fiddling with her top—or rather mid-chest—button. “Do you want me to watch you having sex?” I asked her bluntly. I hadn’t considered Michelle to have that kink. I’d never seen anyone have sex in person before—porn didn’t count—but it didn’t turn me off, and yet it wasn’t my kink either.

“No, but I don’t want you to leave,” she pleaded. That made Sayre laugh.

“You’ve gotta pick one or the other,” he said. His shirt was off and Michelle was eyeing his chest. He wasn’t incredibly muscular, but he was lean and firm in all the right places. His words and her nervousness gave me an indication that she was ready to bolt, which would have been fine by me. I would have stepped in to her place and fucked Sayre instead. I wasn’t worried about being abandoned and left behind; we had taken my car to the hotel.

The two had conversed briefly on the phone and via text, Michelle always making sure that Sayre knew this was just for sex, nothing else. Maybe she didn’t see herself as a cheater, but she knew what her body wanted. Even I could smell the lust coming off her.

But Michelle just stood in the middle of the room, not moving. I decided to help the process along. “Take off your shirt, Michelle,” I told her. “It’s easy.” And to demonstrate, I unbuttoned my blouse, showing off my fancy pink bra. I know that with my fair skin I look good in black, but I preferred to wear pink.

Maybe she realized that she was passing up the opportunity of a lifetime and Michelle nodded, her fingers mirroring my own. Slowly her shirt came off and she revealed a yellow flowered bra that was doing its utmost to keep her tits contained.

Sayre removed his pants next and I looked away from Michelle to admire his package. He was wearing boxer briefs that, at first, I thought were too tight, but then I realized that he was already hard and that was distorting the picture. This was why Sayre was a good starting model for Michelle, not too big in the crotch, very polite, and a good lover.

I stepped behind Michelle as she gazed silently at him. There was no reaction from her as I found the zipper on her skit and slid it down. When the skirt started slipping off her hips, she grabbed for it, but I gave a little tug and she didn’t fight it. If she hadn’t wanted to fuck, she wouldn’t have been here in the first place, so I was just giving her a little push of encouragement.