Reasonable Bounds
Copyright© 2013 by Spacer X
Chapter 9
Humor Sex Story: Chapter 9 - This story is similar to my other epic-length story Six Times a Day in that there is one main male character who gets involved with a number of women. It also has a similar over the top style. The main difference is that the primary character is happily married, and a father instead of a son.
Caution: This Humor Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Consensual Romantic Slavery Lesbian Heterosexual Humor Incest Father Daughter DomSub MaleDom Spanking Humiliation Harem Polygamy/Polyamory White Couple White Male White Female First Oral Sex Anal Sex Exhibitionism Big Breasts
My plan to have a private shower with Sue Ellen didn’t exactly work out as I’d intended. When I got to my bedroom on the way to my bathroom, I realized that the huge bed that Mindy had used for Sue Ellen’s initiation ceremony last night was still leaning up against the wall. Clearly, we had to do some bed moving before Nicky arrived, and it made sense to do that before everyone took showers instead of after.
So I went back downstairs and further roused my exhausted ladies, then got everyone to put on clothes. We had no choice with that because the only place to put my old bed was in a short shed in our side yard, and that meant we had to go outside.
Once that annoying task was done, we were sweaty and fully awake. So we all needed to shower. Somehow, I got talked into sharing my shower with not only Sue Ellen, but Cindy, Michelle, and Ruby too! Mindy would have wanted to join in as well, and there was just enough room for it if the rest of us packed together even tighter. However, she volunteered to be the one to use the other shower instead. She said, “I don’t want all that woman-on-woman contact anyway.”
The way she said that, one would never suspect that she’d just spent a good long time playing with Ruby’s pussy and clit, and then Michelle’s, while she and Sue Ellen fondled and kissed each other! Obviously, she was singing a different tune now that she wasn’t so horny.
However, it wasn’t like she ever became completely “normal,” because she stayed and watched the rest of us shower for a little while. As she did that, she commented, “Hmmm. It looks like we’re going to need a bigger shower stall. It would be good to fit at least two more women in here.”
I stood in the middle of a tangle of bodies. We’d had to break out some new bars of soap, because Michelle, Ruby, Cindy, and Sue Ellen ALL had insisted on soaping me up. I’d never gotten so clean in my life! Anyway, as I stood there with tits and legs and arms and hands brushing against me from every angle, I asked, “TWO women? I don’t think we need to enlarge the shower at all. But if we did, we’d only need to fit in one more woman - you.”
“That’s what YOU think.” I assumed she was smirking in her usual way, but I couldn’t tell because I was surrounded by beautiful naked women who were pressing into me and blocking my view on every side. She added, “I’m not saying that you’re going to find yourself with more cock slaves, but isn’t it better to be safe than sorry? In fact, now that I think about it, we should make the shower even bigger than that. For instance, what if we have an orgy party, and some of the hotties like Nina and Anjali want to join in the group shower afterwards?”
I growled, “Miiiiindy!”
After the epic double sexy spanking, I didn’t think that my dick would be able to revive for quite a long while. And I considered that a very good thing, given that Nicky was coming home shortly. But in addition to using no less than four bars of soap, someone had opened a bottle of bubble bath liquid and used up the entire thing. Plus, after we’d all gotten thoroughly wet, the water coming out of the shower head had been turned down to a trickle. So we were covered everywhere with slippery suds, and it was all just too arousing to resist.
I looked down at my crotch and noticed that BOTH Ruby and Cindy were jacking me off. A mother and daughter team! Their sudsy hands were sliding up and down my stiff shaft in perfect unison.
So, needless to say, I already was very aroused when my naked wife continued to stare into the shower stall and tell us her erotic thoughts. “Hubby, what’s the problem? As much as you’re enjoying yourself now, wouldn’t it be even BETTER if we had room for Jane Corlin too? Can you imagine her rubbing her sudsy, naked body all over you, with all the others? Why, she’s so stacked, her tits should count as a second person!”
I groaned, loudly. She knew I had a thing for the very foxy and sultry Jane, and she was using that knowledge against me. I wasn’t able to complain though, because Michelle took that moment to start French kissing me.
Mindy continued to muse, “Besides, imagine in the future what things’ll be like after the girls’ sex bomb friends find out that you’re the master of a harem. I’m not saying they’d all HAVE to become your cock slaves too, but certainly you’d want to fuck at least some of them from time to time, right? Imagine for instance if Lisa, Nina, and Anjali came over to join in some nude sunbathing. Those are definitely the most fuck-worthy friends, and I happen to know they have crushes on you. Afterwards they’re going to want to take a shower, especially if they’re tired out from getting royally fucked by the King and helping to keep your cock constantly hard and happy in general.”
I really wanted to complain and get her to shut up, but my shower mates had pushed my back up against a wall. Michelle apparently was very inspired by Mindy’s words, because she was kissing me like her life depended on it, even as Ruby and Cindy continued to stroke me. I could barely breathe, much less talk!
I thought all the soapy suds would prevent any oral action on my privates, at least until we were washed clean, because no one would want to taste the bitter soapy residue. But somebody had the bright idea of using the shower hose to wash just my crotch clean of soap, and then my cockhead quickly wound up inside a very eager mouth. It was both frustrating and arousing to realize that, not counting Michelle, I had no idea which one of them was doing that! Other hands continued to fondle the rest of my shaft and my balls.
Mindy continued, with growing excitement in her voice, “So, needless to say, we could find ourselves in a situation where Ruby, Michelle, Sue Ellen, Cindy, Lisa, Nina, Anjali, AND I all want to fondle, kiss, and pamper you in the shower at the same time. Oops, I mean we want to ‘get clean together.’” I still couldn’t really see my wife through the press of bodies, but I was certain she was making air quotes and snickering as she said that.
She further mused, “And who’s to say that someone like our busty friend Jane wouldn’t want to sunbathe in the nude with the others? Just because she’s older than the girls, is that any reason not to invite her? And you have to admit that she has a fantastic tan. What if she has no tan lines, at all? I’ll bet she doesn’t. She’s probably been preparing her body to be perfect for you! Although she’s seriously STACKED, she knows she has to compete with the younger generation to be just as cock slave worthy as say, our very busty friend Anjali.”
She was panting hard by the time she said, “Given that you have so many other slaves already, she’s going to have to redouble her efforts to be the ULTIMATE, PERFECT busty and beautiful sex slave, totally devoted to serving you and your huge teen-cherry-busting cock! You know how gorgeous her face is? Imagine that, but with a collar around her neck and cum splattered all over her!”
I finally managed to raise a hand up and break the kiss by pushing Michelle’s chin back. I gasped for air, and then complained, “Miiiiindy! Stop! You promised no more women! You’re reining in your cucquean excesses, remember?”
“Oh, drat! You’re no fun. Can’t a woman dream?” She was panting hard.
When I didn’t reply to that (because Michelle was tongue dueling with me some more!), Mindy continued, “Fine. I’ll shut up. But I just want to point out that IF that situation were to happen, we might need as many as ten people to fit in the shower at once. And we can barely manage five as it is. But then again, how can we enlarge the shower at all? Where would the extra room for it come from? Hmmm. That’s a big problem.”
Needless to say, my plans for a shower with just Sue Ellen did not go as planned!
Somehow, I managed to get out of the shower without blowing my load down some mystery throat. (Actually, that should be “mystery throats” - I eventually figured out that Ruby and Sue Ellen took turns bobbing on me.) Chances are very good that we all would have kept on showering until we were all fully sexually satiated. However, I was getting extremely antsy about Nicky arriving, so I cut things short.
I can’t stop thinking of the heart attack my older daughter would have if she let herself in the house, heard the commotion coming from the upper floor, and walked into the bathroom to discover her father being sucked, kissed, and soaped up by no less than FOUR women, and none of them her mother!
Good grief! Things are getting far too crazy. How on Earth will we make it through Nicky’s visit, even with my limited hangout idea?
As it was, it turned out we wound up with some time to spare. After we dried up and put clothes on again, we turned our attention to making the house presentable. One concern I had was making sure there was no obvious sex smell anywhere, so I decided a thorough cleaning was in order, especially in the recently used living room.
However, that was exactly what the ladies had done most of the morning. Everything already was about as clean as possible, with the exception of the living room. But with all of us working together, we fixed that fairly quickly.
At one point, I crossed paths with Ruby. I couldn’t resist saying to her, “By the way, Red, I couldn’t help but notice that you were sucking me off in the shower. How does that jibe with your sex boycott?”
Ruby blushed. She was fully dressed and calmed down, so she tried to wiggle out of it. “Are you sure that wasn’t Sue Ellen? I definitely remember her going to town on the King for most of the shower.”
I responded, “It was you AND her. Don’t try to deny it. I couldn’t see much with Shelle all over me like an octopus, but each of you have a unique sucking style.”
Her face turned redder still. “Um, well ... mistakes were made. That can’t be denied. Uh ... however, with Nicky set to arrive shortly, we’re starting with a blank slate, right? Besides, we needed to fully drain your balls before she got here, since you’ll be severely undersexed for the next 24 hours. I had to take one for the team, as it were.”
I rolled my eyes and said sarcastically, “How noble of you.” For once, I was the one doing all the smirking. However, I let her go after that.
I was left anxiously waiting for Nicky, with nothing to do. She was going to college in the San Francisco Bay area, which wasn’t so far away. It wasn’t even in another state. But she hadn’t come home for Easter or any other time since Christmas. It had been a full six months since I’d seen her. In the autumn, by contrast, we’d taken her to her college orientation and helped her settle in to her dorm, and then we’d gone back a month later for a special parental visit weekend the university had. Then she’d come home for Thanksgiving, AND her Christmas vacation was over a month long.
So this was the longest she’d ever been away from us, by far. I couldn’t wait to see her again!
I was just sitting in the living room getting increasingly anxious when Mindy came up to me and suggested the two of us take a little walk in the backyard.
Recall that we have a relatively big backyard. Our house is on top of a round hill. Beyond the pool area, the property starts to slope down towards the ocean. Our wooden deck is beyond some trees, and the deck almost seems to hang out into the air, because the slope turns nearly into a cliff right below it. The view of the ocean between the trees is simply fantastic. (I’m a lucky, lucky man!)
Needless to say, I was happy to take up Mindy’s offer. True, it’s only about two hundred feet from the house to the deck, and that’s not exactly a lot of exercise. But staring out towards the ocean and feeling the sun and wind always relaxes me. (There are some lines of houses and the Pacific Coast Highway a couple hundred feet below, between us and the ocean, but it’s easy to forget they’re there.)
As soon as we were out of the house and walking around the pool, Mindy pressed herself into me with an arm around my waist, and said in a lowered voice, “There are some things I want to talk to you about before Nicky gets here.”
“Like what?”
“Most importantly, the need for total secrecy. I’ve talked to the others about this, but I haven’t had a chance with you yet because you’ve either been sleeping all morning or getting your cock sucked by an endless parade of seriously stacked and sexy cock slaves.” She smiled widely at that. “Not that I, as your cucquean wife, have any problem with that whatsoever!”
“Stay focused,” I chided.
“Right. Sorry. What I told the others and what I’m now telling you is that we need to be ULTRA-careful and HYPER-vigilant. It’s not enough to be careful about what we say and do around her. We need to be careful about what we say and do if there’s even the SLIGHTEST chance she could overhear or somehow find out what was said. I could easily see a situation where, for instance, a couple of your cock slaves are in a room talking to each other about how frustrated they are they can’t constantly serve your cock with Nicky around, thinking that they have total privacy to speak freely. But then Nicky walks by and hears them through the door, or something like that. That could be a total disaster!”
“That’s a good point,” I said. My anxiousness was growing. “Having Nicky come home snuck up on us somehow, I guess because we were all so distracted with our playing around. I haven’t had time to think through all of the security concerns. I feel like I’m not ready. We’re not ready. Disaster is looming!”
Mindy shook her head in agreement. “I know! I feel the same. But I think that ultimately it will be okay because we all want to keep our secrets so very badly. I figure we have to err on the side of caution. Try not to say ANYTHING that you wouldn’t want Nicky to overhear, unless maybe you’re completely out of the house.”
She looked all around. We had already reached the deck, since the distance wasn’t far. “Even here, there’s no telling. What if someone was right on the other side of those trees there? And in our house, there’s no such thing as total privacy anywhere! You and I could be in our bed late at night making love, and someone might come to the door, and even put an ear to the door. Nicky is only going to be here a short time, so let’s just stay mum until she’s gone. Agreed?”
I nodded. “Agreed. However ... about what you said with ears to the door ... Is that still a problem?! I was told about the girls spying on me through a peephole, but you covered it up a couple of weeks ago. You even showed me your patch job. Still, can we be sure? Maybe they drilled another hole? Have you heard anything about that recently?”
She looked me in the eyes in an obvious attempt to show how sincere she was. “I’m not aware of any existing peephole to stare through. The Gruesome Twosome feel that the ends justifies the means when it comes to implementing their Plan. I guess now we could call it the ‘cock slave plan.’ They don’t fully trust me with their plans anymore, and we’ve seen when they’ve lied blatantly to your face. So that’s one reason why I’m saying that, for now, we have to assume that privacy simply doesn’t exist. Once Nicky is gone, we’ll have to tackle this spying issue head on. But obviously we can’t be hunting for peepholes and the like when Nicky’s due any minute.”
I sighed as I stared out over the ocean. I keep getting distracted with too much sexual fun. I’ve neglected a lot of issues, such as this spying stuff. Now that Min mentions it, I’m almost certain that they ARE still somehow spying on me. They haven’t let little things such as ethics or promises slow them down yet. Plus, she seems evasive with the exact wording of her denial. This is the exact kind of thing that shows that even though they are my cock slaves, they still need to be brought to heel!
I have half a mind to search every last inch of my bedroom for any kind of peephole as soon as I’m done speaking to Min here. Okay, maybe not right now, but soon. Maybe even before Nicky leaves. The thing is, the Hellions are all about their own sexual pleasure. Even if they have no good “intel” reason to spy on me, they’d probably do it just the same because they find it arousing. I’m lucky that what they find arousing is what I usually find arousing too. Dominance and submission fit together like a hand in a glove. But there are times, such as with this spying business, when our interests collide in a big way!
I looked over at Mindy standing next to me with her hands on the rails at the outer edge of the deck. She looked more beautiful than ever with the breeze blowing through her hair and the sun on her face. I tenderly caressed her cheek. “Thank you for being such a good wife. I know you’ve been pulled strongly in a certain way by your cucquean urges, but the fact that you’ve stuck by my side in this ongoing tug of war with the Gruesome Twosome means the world to me. I know I have at least one person I can trust completely.”
We shared a tender kiss.
But then, as she pulled away, she looked off to the ocean with embarrassment. “I don’t know if you could say ‘trust completely.’ Let’s face it: total honesty is impossible for anyone. Did you know, for instance, that the average person tells over ten white lies a day? It’s true; I saw that on the news a while back. Sometimes I still tell some white lies or lies of omission to you, such as keeping the purchase of all the new furniture from you. But ultimately that’s because I feel that I’m doing it for you, for YOUR benefit. Like with the furniture. You have to admit that I played that pretty well, don’t you?”
I sighed again. “Yes. I realize now that I would have put up a big stink and not let you buy half that stuff. And our house looks better, and there are all of those sexual advantages you pointed out too. But this brings up all kinds of issues in my mind, and this may not be the time to discuss them with Nicky on our minds. Still, I’m making a mental note, and we’ll pick this up later. I lie sometimes too. Everyone does. But white lies and such only work if there’s a bedrock of trust there, and lately that trust has been shaken.”
She nodded. “I know. And I’m sorry.” She caressed my face too. “But you’re right, this isn’t the time to really get into this. However, there is one other thing I wanted to make sure to say before Nicky comes and I lose my chance.”
She looked away in obvious embarrassment. She let go of the rails and wrung her hands together nervously. “I just want you to be completely clear that what I did to Ruby and Michelle during the sexy spanking earlier ... Well, and what happened with Sue Ellen too ... I just ... Well ... I didn’t enjoy that. I did that because you told me to, not because I wanted to.”
I could tell that Mindy was lying, but not to me - to herself! She was having great difficulty coming to grips with her “lesbian” desires.
Gathering steam, she continued, “After all, you said you need a ‘right hand man’ to help with the spankings sometimes, right? And daily spankings are important because they’re one of the few ways we have any control whatsoever over the Gruesome Twosome, right? So it’s not like I have any choice! I’m your wife. Of course I’m the one who has to help out with that kind of thing. Just because I touch another woman’s pussy, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I mean, like you said, I touched Michelle’s vagina and ass when she was a baby and I changed her diapers. It’s just ... We do ... We touch each other sometimes. Right? It’s part of life! Right!”
She’d been staring off to sea the entire time, and acting nervously, but now she looked to me with hope for some validation.
This was a tricky situation for me. I knew she had a serious hang-up on this issue. I was thinking that it was time for me to help her start coming to grips with her true feelings, but if I pushed her too far, it might backfire.
Stepping into a minefield, I said, “I understand, Sweetheart. I put you in a difficult spot, and I’m sorry about that. The thing is, you really DON’T have a choice on this matter. Nobody else can help me with certain things but you. It’s true that I’m the only master here, but you’re my wife, not a cock slave. Nobody else has the status to help me with a spanking, and I’m figuring out that status is very important in a harem. I wish that it wasn’t that way, but it seems that it is.”
Mindy smiled and visibly relaxed, thinking that I completely agreed with her. She said, “That’s true. Status is vital. We can’t have your slaves all constantly battling with each other, jockeying for position. You need to draw clear lines and not tolerate any messing around.”
I nodded. “That’s why only you can do certain things. For instance, if one of the girls were to spank you, that would throw everything into confusion. That said, though, since you’re already obliged to engage in some intimacy with them anyway, there’s no reason why you can’t enjoy it.”
Her face fell, and then she clenched her jaw with worry. “No! I couldn’t do that. Never!”
“Why not?” I took her in my arms and gave her a supportive hug. “Look. Biology is biology. A woman kissing feels just the same as a man kissing, for instance. If it weren’t for some minor subtle clues, in some cases you might not even know for sure if it was me or one of the cock slaves kissing you.”
She squirmed unhappily in my arms. She protested feebly, “That’s not true.”
“It is, and you know it. Ditto with, say, getting your pussy fingered. Fingers are fingers. If someone fingerbangs you for a while and they know what they’re doing, you’re going to get really horny, and you’re going to cum eventually. It just happens! It’s basic human anatomy. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re bisexual. It means you’re a human being, that’s all. You can’t help it!”
She was upset, but she clung to that last comment. “I can’t help it!”
“That’s right.” I hugged her tighter. “If you happen to get sexual pleasure out of some of the stuff with other women, that doesn’t make you a bad person. In fact, it can make you a very GOOD person! Take what happened with Sue Ellen’s initiation last night. You got quite intimate with her at some points during that.”
I felt her stiffen up unhappily in my arms from being reminded about that.
I went on, “But that just shows what a wonderful person you are. You were determined to do whatever it took to make her have the greatest night of her life! If that meant kissing her lips, licking her nipples, playing with her clitoris, or even licking her pussy lips while they were stretched around my cock, you were willing to do that. Heck, you did a lot more with her last night than anything you did during the sexy spanking today.”
I quickly added, “But that’s okay, because you had no choice! You knew that, as the master’s wife, there are certain duties and responsibilities that only you can fulfill. That includes making sure that a cock slave initiation is a grand success. If you had refused to intimately participate, that would have cast a shadow over the whole thing. You had no choice!”
She looked up into my eyes hopefully. “That’s right. I had no choice, did I?”
“NO choice. Not if you want this harem to be a big success. And this is how it goes with harems. It’s not like I have any experience with them, but I can look ahead and I can tell that this kind of situation is going to happen a lot. Harems have a lot of naked women touching and kissing each other. There’s no getting around that. For instance, you could have easily squeezed in with us in the shower, and everyone would have loved it if you did. Again, if you happen to get aroused in a situation like that, don’t worry about it. That’s simply how the human body works. It’s not your fault.”
I stopped talking and just held her, letting her absorb all that. I knew that she would grab hold of my “it’s not your fault” logic and hang onto that for dear life. I hoped such a fig leaf would help her ease into greater intimacy with other women.
Finally, she shyly asked me, “If I do kind of enjoy it a little from time to time, you won’t hold that against me?”
“HA! Why would I do that? Au contraire! I would think, ‘Now, that is a great and loving wife, who is willing to go to any lengths to keep her husband happy, and keep the whole harem happy.’ If it was very important that I had to do something intimate with another guy to help you somehow, I don’t know if I could do it, to be honest. So you’re a much better spouse than I am.”
She slapped my shoulder lightly. “That’s not true. It’s different with men. Men are a lot more hard-wired about that kind of thing.”
“Maybe so. But the bottom line is, I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be married to you, and that’s the truth!”
We kissed again. As we did so, I could feel some of the tension leaving her body.
After the kiss, the two of us just stood there in the embrace and looked out over the water. We each had a lot to think about.
We were still standing there and simply silently enjoying each other’s company when I heard Sue Ellen shouting from the pool area through the trees to us, “Nicky’s home!”
My wife and I could feel each other tense up in our embrace. Both of us relaxed again and then chuckled about it.
I kissed her nose playfully. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. Besides, aren’t you glad to see her again?”
“Are you kidding me? I can’t wait! In fact, why are we still standing here? Let’s go!”
We rushed back into the house. Sure enough, Nicky was standing just inside the door. I couldn’t see much of her at first, because she was being completely smothered in hugs and kisses by both Ruby and Michelle. I did make out her brown hair though.
I heard her say, “I love how loving this family is!”
I heard Ruby mutter, “You don’t know the half of it!”
I thought, Uh-oh! That’s the kind of cryptic comment that could get us in trouble. As much as I love to see my “long lost” daughter again, I won’t be able to breathe easy until she’s gone again!
Mindy and I stood close by and waited for our turns.
Finally, Nicky noticed us and her eyes shone with delight. “Mom! Dad!” She broke away from the death grip hug Ruby and Michelle had her in.
To my mild chagrin, she went for Mindy first and wrapped her arms around her. But within seconds she reached out and pulled me into a three-way hug. “I’ve missed you guys so much!” she exclaimed.
The three-way hug quickly turned into a five-way one with Michelle and Ruby piling on. Only Sue Ellen and Cindy stood by and watched.
Mindy cried, “I’ve missed you too!” And when I say cry, I mean cry. I was surprised to discover that my wife was practically bawling like a baby. She hadn’t done that when Nicky had come home for Christmas. But then again, we’d seen her a month before at Thanksgiving, and this time it had been a whole six months.
There was a lot more kissing and hugging, and emotional declarations, and crying. I must admit that I shed a few tears myself. I know that’s not a manly thing to do, but screw it! I heard my voice crack with emotion as I said, “Nicky, you were gone too long!”
It really warmed my heart to see this demonstration of just what a loving family we are. We’re not just a sex-mad bunch. If you take the sex away, there’s a strong bedrock of love there, much stronger than most families. That made me feel that I’d been a success as a parent, because in my opinion love is the most important thing in life.
Finally, things settled down enough for Cindy and Sue Ellen to get involved. As the group hug broke up, I held an arm out in the direction of Cindy, who was standing by next to Sue Ellen. “Here’s Cindy...”
“Of course! Cindyyyyy!” Nicky rushed over to Cindy and gave her a hug.
Because Cindy had been a friend of family since basically forever, Nicky and Cindy knew each other quite well. In truth, due to the fact that Cindy was the mother of Ruby, Nicky probably knew Cindy even better than I did. Way back when, Ruby, Michelle, and Nicky used to be thick as thieves and do everything together, and that included spending time at the McGrath house. It was only in the mid-teens when Nicky went her own way from the other two somewhat, due to the fact that she was in an older grade and found herself increasingly in a different social circle.
I was about to introduce Nicky to Sue Ellen, but when Nicky ended the hug with Cindy, she looked around and said, “Sue Ellen?! What are you doing here?!”
Despite the confusion of the situation, the two of them hugged each other too. As the hug came to an end, Sue Ellen said shyly, “It’s a long story.”
Michelle walked up and hugged them. “I disagree. It’s a simple story. Ruby and I got to be friends with her since you left last time, and we’ve just grown closer and closer all the time. She’s practically like another sister to us now. We’ve even made her an official breastest friend.”
Nicky raised her eyebrow in surprise. “Really? Wow! That’s great.” Then she pouted, “But why didn’t you tell me about that in any of our phone calls or e-mails?”
Michelle appeared to be stumped by that for a second, but then she smiled and said, “I wanted it to be a surprise, since I knew you two were friends in high school. We’ve got a lot to catch up on!”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.