Chapter 4
They were all sprawled around the patio, in chairs or on the grass, with beer cans in their hands, when she came out of the house through the back door. Their talk stopped and they stared in silence as she walked toward them across the lawn.
"Jesus," she heard Andy say, and saw him drain his beer can.
"The way I figure it," she said, "I'm sort of your den mother for this party, and you'll just have to make the best of it."
"Some den mother," she heard the blond boy named Walter say. He had a good profile view of the pert, incredibly pouting roundness of her rear, and his staring was pinpointed, concentrated, to the exclusion of the rest of her. Apparently, for Walter, her ass eclipsed all else in his world.
She sat down, cross-legged, on the grass. Walter looked bereaved.
"I don't know any girls your age in the neighborhood," she said. "The babysitters I had for Bob are all grown up now, naturally. So you're stuck with me."
No one spoke. The staring was getting awkward.
"The fire will be ready to put the steak on in about fifteen minutes," Peter said, finally. Andy unfolded his length and started toward the house, for another beer, Jackie presumed.
"Can you make me a Martini, Andy?" she asked him. "Real dry?" Greater faith had no woman.
"Sure," Andy said. "I make them for my folks when they can't get out of the chair any more."
"You'll find gin and vermouth on the first shelf over the ice bucket on the kitchen counter."
Her faith was justified. Andy made her an excellent Martini, and while she was having a second one when she made a salad, she put him and Peter in charge of broiling the steaks. They did a superb job.
Afterwards, as they sat around in the gathering darkness, smoking and drinking coffee-she thought cocoa would have been more appropriate, but had better sense than to suggest it-she insisted over their objections that she would do the dishes herself. She was the only one, she told them, who knew where things went, and she didn't want to spend the rest of the summer looking for some dish she wanted.
She relented, however, after she stood up and saw Walter straining his eyes in the gloom to feast his gaze on the delicious contours of her ass.
"All right, Walter," she said. "You can help me with the drying."
He was on his feet before she finished.
In the lighted kitchen, she faced him and smiled.
"Would you like to touch it, Walter?" she asked. She stood sideways, letting her ass stick out pertly. They couldn't be seen from out back. The shades were drawn.
Walter's face turned the same bright red as the round ripeness he couldn't take his eyes from, but he reached out one hand and patted her tenderly on the outermost curve. She relaxed all her muscles, and let her ass go soft and yielding. "Go ahead and stroke it, Walter," she said. "Grab a handful. You've been wanting to all day."
He came closer to her then, stood in front of her and reached around and stroked and kneaded the soft mounds with both hands. He moaned, softly.
"It's beautiful," he said. "It feels even better than it looks."
"Don't those pants get in the way?" she asked him softly. "Wouldn't you like to feel it bare?"
He looked at her in numb wonder.
"Come here," she said. 'Well have to be quick."
She led him into the pantry and closed the door behind them, turned on the light by the refrigerator, and unsnapped her slacks at the waist; then she zipped down the zipper, turned away from him, and slid the pants down over the swelling white globes.
He began to move his hands slowly over the smooth softness of each cheek, letting his little finger dwell in the intimacy of the crack between her cheeks. She put one hand against the leg of his pants. His cock felt like a long stick of wood.
She unzipped his pants and helped to release it. It stood up at an angle, the vermilion head pointing toward a corner of the ceiling. It was very long, and its surprising slenderness made it seem even longer. It seemed no thicker than an ordinary candle, and she ran her hand gently up and down the slim stiff shaft, making the velvety skin slide.
"Oh, God," Walter said. One hand had stopped stroking the soft skin of her ass and had found its way underneath. His middle finger had found the soft yielding folds at the bottom edge of her cunt.
"Not now, Walter," she said, fiercely. "Not now." She increased the speed of her hand on his cock, and jerked him off gently but deftly into a paper towel.
"Later, maybe," she whispered, as he was spurting into the paper. "Maybe later we can be alone and I'll let you put it between the cheeks. Maybe all the way in my ass. Would you like to fuck me up the ass, Walter?"
Walter didn't answer. He just looked at her. She kissed him on the ear, he slipped his prick back into his pants, and they went back into the kitchen and did the dishes. Just in time, too. Peter had become curious when he couldn't see their shadows against the lighted window, and had come in to investigate.
When he saw them at the sink, he went to the refrigerator and got himself a beer and went on outside without saying anything.
What would she do about him? Jackie wondered. She couldn't stand jealous men, but she knew how to handle them. But a jealous boy was something else again. You couldn't tell how he'd behave.
Later, they sat around the living room, listening to records and talking, but none of the boys seemed to listen very closely to the music, and every conversation ended lamely or trailed off into nothing.
It was the stretch pants and the tight sweater, Jackie knew. Every one of the boys had the same thing on his mind, and showed the same symptoms. Den mother, she thought, for the eagerest bunch of cubs yet. Her Hard-On Patrol.
It was true, too. Every time she moved, or walked across the room, or bent to change the records, they shifted around uncomfortably wherever they sat, trying to keep their stiff shafts inconspicuous.
And it excited Jackie. She couldn't help herself. At one point she dug deep in the record cabinet and found some old dance records, but not one of the boys would stand up and dance with her, and she knew why. They couldn't stand straight and let her see those stiff probes straining against their trouser legs.
The atmosphere became more charged as the evening wore on, and the strain on Jackie was as great as it was on the boys. Then, as Jackie was changing a record, she looked down and saw a damp stain beginning to show dark in the crotch of her stretch pants. Something had to be done. Right away.
"I'm going upstairs and get into something more comfortable," she said inanely, and for an answer got nothing but a look of mute agony from the boys.
In her room, she got out of the sweater and peeled off the stretch pants. Her heart was pounding as she unsnapped the bra. What would she do now? This was awful. Her son's good friends, Bob's own buddies, and every one of them wanted to fuck his mother. What was worse, his mother wanted to fuck them. All of them. One at a time or all together. She wanted those stiff eager young staffs sliding, pumping into her, squirting, up into her cunt, yes, into her mouth. She'd love to suck them off, every one of them, and in her mind she could see the look of straining ecstasy on their faces as she did it, licking, sucking, draining them dry.
God, how she wanted all that hard young male flesh. But it was too risky. You couldn't trust a grown man not to talk, much less a boy.
Or could you? She thought hard, rationalizing swiftly in harmony with her running juices. Boys did have a strongly developed sense of honor, she'd read somewhere. They were idealistic, she told herself, much more so than a man. She touched her warm pussy with a finger, briefly, and her debate was over.
She could trust them not to talk. She had no choice, at this point. She had to.
Now that she had made up her mind, she felt calm, relaxed. She was in no hurry at all. Deliberately, she took a short, filmy wisp of a nightgown from a drawer, and put it on over her head. It stopped halfway between hip and knee, and what there was of it concealed nothing at all. The pink of her nipples showed through. So did the dark shadow of her pussy. So did every smooth curving line of her body.
Over the nightgown, she wrapped a plain, light blue silk robe, exquisitely cut to outline her body. It was simple, demure-and stopped at the knee, showing her lower legs to best possible advantage. She stepped into high-heeled pumps and went downstairs, humming, to the kitchen, where she made herself a tall Scotch and water, with a lot of Scotch and a lot of ice, and carried it with her into the living room.
Once again, conversation stopped. She sat on a hassock, facing the boys, and crossed her legs. They watched her. Hungrily. There was no other word for all that raw young lust.
"As a den mother," she said, "it looks as though I'm a complete failure."
Four of the boys shifted uneasily, but Andy, the tall, older one, seemed to relax, all at once.
"Let's face it, Mrs. Rankin..."
"Jackie."
"Let's face it, Jackie," Andy said. "You just weren't cut out to be a den mother."
"You're right, Andy, and I guess there's no use fighting it." She re-crossed her legs, and the robe fell away from her knees. "Anyway, I'm a lover, not a fighter."
That's the happiest thought I've heard in a long tune," Andy said. Jackie saw Peter looking over at the older boy.
"Well, anyway," she said, "so far my party's a total failure. And do you know why?" Nobody answered.
"It's because we're not being honest with each other. Nobody's saying what's on his mind. For instance-what were you just thinking about, Steve?" She swung her knees toward the blond boy sitting at one end of the couch, and looked squarely into his face.
"I was thinking about the softball team, back at camp," Steve said smoothly. You had to hand it to these lads, she thought. They didn't lose their cool very often.
"Sure you were," she said. "How about you, Walter?"
"I can't tell you," he said, uncomfortably. At least he was honest.
"What have you been thinking about, Peter?" she asked, turning to where he sat on the piano bench.
"You know what I've been thinking about," he said, defiantly.
"I sure do," she said, "because I've been thinking about the same thing. How about you, Hank?" She looked at the redhead.
He grinned, innocently.
"I've been thinking you're the most gorgeous human being I've ever seen up close," he said. She had to laugh.
That's what's known as a half-truth," she said. "But thank you, Hank."
She turned to face Andy, at the far end of the couch, uncrossed her legs, and let the knees stay a few inches apart From where he sat, she knew, he could see directly up between her thighs, to the shadow where the whiteness terminated. He was looking, hard, but she was pretty sure he couldn't tell whether she was wearing black pants or no pants.
"What have you been thinking, Andy?"
"I've been thinking," Andy said slowly, "how much I'd like to get into bed with you."
"Now we're getting an honest answer," she said. She let her knees drift further apart, and put her cunt on display. "But you can talk plainer than that."
"I've been thinking," he said, "how much I'd like to fuck you. So have all the other guys."
"Now we're getting somewhere," she said, and stood up and took off the robe, letting it drop to the floor. She pirouetted once in the short filmy gown, letting the skirt flare out around her hips, showing them a flash of dark cunt. "I've been thinking the very same thing, about all of you."
She saw Peter standing by the piano, a look of utter bewilderment on his face.
"I want you all to know," she said, "that Peter is my one true love. You can all fuck me, but Peter is my very own."
The look of bewilderment on his face passed away. It was replaced by naked lust. Walter had gotten up and was standing beside her, his hand under the back of her short gown, caressing the tempting white mounds of her buttocks.
"Later, Walter," she said, and reached down to give his slender stiff cock an affectionate squeeze. She raised the front of her gown a few inches, suggestively.
"Shall we show them, Peter?" she said. She could see his hard prick straining to get at her. "Here?" Peter said. "In front of everybody."
"Why not?" she said. Then she realized what might be bothering him. Everybody in the room was fully clothed.
"Why don't you all get undressed?" she said. "While I lock all the doors." She flipped her gown up as she left the room, and wiggled her delicious white ass at them.
When she got back, they were all standing. Their cocks stood out, stiff and quivering, in varying sizes, in varying angles. The sight excited Jackie, almost uncontrollably.
She stepped up and sat on the piano, facing them, and raised her knees and waved them lazily, opening her thighs for them to give them a better look at what they'd be getting into. Impulsively, Peter bent and kissed her full on the cunt, licking and sucking it hungrily. She squeezed his head between her thighs. The other boys stood around the piano-like for an evening of carol singing, Jackie thought-quivering with lust and impatience. They watched Peter's head bobbing, his tongue licking, eagerly, swiftly, with long, firm strokes, between the pink open lips of her cunt, and she saw the boys moving their tongues involuntarily between their lips, in sympathetic accord with Peter's. It felt so good, that mouth on her, but she opened her legs and touched Peter on the forehead.
"You're being selfish, Peter," she said. "Aren't you going to give the other boys a lick of your ice cream cone?" Peter sat back, his wet mouth gleaming, and slid off the piano bench. Andy took his place, not wasting a second.
"They laughed when I saw down at the piano," he said, leaning forward. They were the only words he spoke for quite a while.
He was very good at what he was doing, Jackie noticed right away. He reached his arms up around the outside of her thighs, and with his fingers carefully spread the outer lips of her cunt, exposing the soft, moist pink little hills and valleys of quivering, expectant, sensitive membrane. When he began to lick he did it gently, at first, keeping his tongue soft. Then, gradually, as he stiffened his tongue, he increased the pressure, paying special attention to the stiff little bud of her clitoris. The pleasure she felt was almost unbearable, but she wanted it to go on forever, and by force of will, kept herself from building toward a climax. Her hips were thrusting, writhing, and her legs, in the air in back of Andy's head, never stopped waving. Then she became slowly aware of wanting something more, something deeper inside her.
"That's enough, Andy," she said. "Let's all go upstairs to my room, where we can be comfortable, and give the other boys a chance."
Andy took his mouth away and stood up, reluctantly. His red and swollen cock, she noticed, had subsided to a semi-erect state, about halfway up, as if his lust had transferred itself partially to his tongue. Jackie got down to the floor, noting with some surprise that she was still wearing her high-heeled pumps. She drew the hem of her translucent gown down as far as it would go, modestly, and crooked her finger at the fevered faces turned toward her.
"Let's go, Beaver Patrol," she said. "Upstairs." She led the way, with Walter directly behind her, stroking her ass at every step on the way up the stairs. She stopped at the open door to her room.
"Steve," she said, "are you still thinking about the baseball team?"
"Softball," Steve said, moving close to her, touching her left nipple with the back of his hand. "I never was thinking about softball. Not after the first time you walked into the room."
"I wondered. You've been so quiet." She felt the eager tip of his prick just barely touching her stomach.
I'll never think about softball again," he said. He sounded as if he meant it.
"Would you like to be first? The meek, you know, shall inherit the-what's the word the boys used to use? The quim."
That's me," Steve said, and went into the bedroom. "Inheritor of quim."
"Why don't the rest of you wait in Bob's room until I call you? " she said. She laughed. 'You probably won't have to wait long, judging from the state Steve is in." They turned, reluctantly, their young bodies tense, and moved toward Bob's room. She stepped into her own room and closed the door behind her.
Steve was standing by the bed, watching her. In one swift motion she drew the short nightgown over her head and dropped it to the floor. Steve took a deep breath and drank her in, from her smiling, parted red lips, down past her firm, gently jutting, rose-tipped breasts, along the smooth curving whiteness of her belly and hips, past the gleaming blackness at her mound, the blossoming pinkness of her cunt, down the magnificent proud swell of her thighs, the incurving neatness of her perfect knees, the delight of her lower legs, the delicate slimness of her ankles. She kicked off her pumps and walked over and sat down at the side of the bed.
She had chosen Steven to fuck her first because he had the smallest cock Not that it was small, by most standards. Not one of the boys, she'd noticed, had been short-changed. But there was a delicacy, an innocence, about Steven's young prick that made it seem smaller than the others. It stood up and out from his body with a rigidity and stiffness that made her think she could hang things on it. Heavy things.
She leaned forward and took it in her mouth, wetting the head, letting her tongue slide gently along the lower length of it. Then she drew her mouth away and looked up at him.
"Are you ready, Steven?" she asked. "Tm ready right now." The excitement of Andy's tongue was still with her, keeping her moist.
Steven didn't answer, but got on his knees on the bed as she lay back and spread her legs. She reached out to guide the head of his cock into her waiting cunt, but he didn't need any help or guidance. His cock penetrated her, all on its own, in one eager thrust.
But he was too eager, Jackie knew, much too eager. He was breathing fast, almost panting, but his pumping thrusts into her came much faster than his breath. There was no way to slow him down.
Jackie wrapped her legs around his hips, clung to him with her arms, and let him pound away, raising her hips lazily to meet every third or fourth thrust of noisily shuttling cock.
There was something contagious in his uncontrolled excitement, and she found that her hips were moving faster of their own accord, her cunt rising and pushing to meet every stroke. But then, as her excitement began to build beyond control, she felt him speed up to a trembling, erratic rhythm she could not meet, and she knew the end was only seconds away, for him. Too soon, for her. Much too soon.
"Call Hank," she said, squeezing out the words. "Please."
But Steven was groaning now, deep in his throat. Either he didn't hear her or he couldn't call out if he wanted to.
"Hank," she tried to call out, but it was only a hoarse whisper. Then she got her voice back. Steven had it all the way up inside her, squirting.
"Hank!" she called, distinctly. Steven was lying still now, with her legs clutching him tightly. He was still spurting.
The door opened and closed, quickly, quietly, and the redheaded boy was standing beside the bed. His cock, Jackie noticed, was standing too. It was a deep solid vivid red, redder than his hair. It was longer than Steven's, thicker than Peter's. It was exactly what she needed. Right away. Right this second.
Anticipating her need, Steven rolled away from her, his slackening prick making a soft plopping sound as it slid out from between her greedy cunt-lips.
In a second, without being told, Hank was mounted between her legs, and his stiff shaft slid in easily to take the place of Steven's. She rose to meet it, hardly missing a stroke after Steven's frantic fucking.
Hank's cock felt much bigger than Steven's, inside her. It reached deeper, opened the slippery walls of pleasure wider. She gave Hank the fucking of his red-headed lifetime, holding herself at a plateau of ecstasy, keeping herself away from the peak of her climax, sliding and clutching and pumping the wet warm dream of her cunt around the rock-hard reality of his young cock.
Then, suddenly, Hank was coming-pushing, straining, spurting into the depths of her pit of joy. She wanted to cry. She wanted to call for Andy, but she couldn't make a sound above a moan.
Then, miraculously, Andy was standing there, beside the bed. His prick looked enormous, the head a deep violet in shade, the rigid broad shaft a seasoned brown, as if it had been out in the sun all summer.
"Are you ready for me?" Andy asked, teasing. Hank rolled away, to the other side of the bed. Steven had left, but she hadn't been aware of his leaving.
"Yes, Andy," she said. "Now. Bight away. Quick."
He got to his knees between her open legs, and lodged the head of his massive tool between her wet welcoming cunt-lips. It was the size and shape of a lemon, she thought. Only the color and texture were different.
She spread her legs wider and rose to meet his entering thrust. He worked it in slowly, an inch at a time, until she was distended and full, all the way up, deep inside. She could feel her inner lips and cunt muscles squeezing and contracting spasmodically about the thick shaft.
Andy withdrew the entire length of it, slowly, until only the head remained inside her, and held himself poised, the head just spreading the inner lips. Jackie quivered, and tried to suppress it, but Andy knewhe knew that she was just at the very edge. He thrust his great cock forward then, in one deep plunge, to the hilt, and held it that way stiff inside her, probing, filling her whole consciousness with blinding sensation.
Then she was coming, writhing, squirming as if to take in more of that huge rigid shaft, moaning deep in her throat. Still Andy held himself arched over her, letting her gorge herself on his immobile pole.
As her spasms subsided, slowly, Jackie became aware of Andy watching her face, smiling faintly. His huge cock, rigid and still inside her, was the beginning and end of her every sensation, the concentrated center of her being. He began to stir his hips slowly, grinding the base of his pelvic area against her tender mound.
"Now that you've gotten over all that girlish excitement, Jackie," he said, grinning now, "why don't you relax a while and really enjoy it?"
She was in no mood and no condition to argue. She lay still, feeling his seemingly endless, wrist-thick shaft sliding out of her, almost to the end, then slowly plunging back in, filling her with cock and contentment. She felt her hips starting to respond, slowly at first, rising almost imperceptibly to meet each long, deliberate stroke. She had thought she was finished with all sensation for a while, but she felt the feeling building inside her again, a much deeper, warmer, rounder, fuller pleasure than before. It reached to the very roots, not just the ends, of every responsive nerve inside her.
Without being conscious of it, she moved her legs to hook her heels inside Andy's, giving her the leverage she needed to pursue the dedication she was formed for. The exquisitely tuned and oiled machinery of her hips began to move in earnest then, complementing the slow, deliciously shuttling motion of Andy's own enormously accomplished machine.
They fucked slowly, deliberately, sensuously, for a long, long time, and Jackie lost track of everything except the delicately demanding suck of her cunt around Andy's in-sliding pole of smooth hard gristle.
Gradually, very gradually, in perfect accord, the rhythm of their strokes increased in tempo, and soon she heard herself gasping, unable to control the sound issuing from her throat. She was only dimly aware of the gasping words that formed themselves on her writhing lips.
"Drive it deep, Andy," she could hear herself saying. "Push that big cock all the way up to my throat Fuck me hard, Andy. Fuck me harder."
He drove the great shaft into her with renewed fury, faster, and deeper, it seemed to her, with every stroke. Then she was blind with sensation for a long second, and she had reached the point of no return. He held it still, deep inside her, as she writhed in her own exquisite agony, and then he came with her, pumping and squirting deep into her, bathing her secret fires.
Later, they lay very still, propped up against the pillows, sharing a cigarette. To Jackie, it was an unseemly intimacy, sharing a cigarette with this gangling nineteen-year-old she scarcely knew, but she had better sense than to mention it. Some things were difficult to explain, to young people. Anyway, all she wanted to do was sleep. She was very tired. Contented, deeply, but tired. Then she had a thought
"Oh my God," she said, and stamped out the cigarette in an ashtray on the bed stand.
"What's the matter?"
"The rest of the Beaver Patrol."
"Don't worry about them. They can wait a while."
"Not from the looks of them, the last time I saw them."
"Continence," Andy said. "It's a good thing for the character. Remember, they're growing boys."
"So're you."
"You've been peeking."
Andy was lying on his back, and his long, inert cock, hanging down limp between his legs, had started to come awake. It lifted slowly and lay on its side, then rose sideways and fell back, then rose again, like a drunk trying to get to his feet. Jackie watched it, fascinated. Then she made herself look away.
"Forget it, Andy," she said, but she couldn't keep herself from looking again. It was semi-erect, struggling to stand tall, to come to attention. Trying to throw its shoulders back, she thought.
"I can't forget it," Andy said.
"It's sort of at half mast," she said, fascinated again, "like the flag when a President dies."
"Nothing's dying," he said. "Look now."
She was looking. She couldn't help herself. His prick was fully erect now, enormous, redder than before, and she was excited again, despite herself.
"All right, you win," she said. "We both win." She raised the knee closest to him.
"Put it in sideways this time," she said.
He didn't have to be told twice.
It was a long, slow, comfortable fuck this time, delicious from beginning to end. There was none of the frantic urgency to mark their climax, as there had been last time, and this time Jackie was not tired when it was over. Sated, relaxed, but not tired.
"I'm going to take a shower," she said, heading for the door. She had looked down and found that her inner thighs were glistening wet. "Finish your cigarette and tell Walter to come in. If he wants to," she added.
She showered and douched, leisurely, lazily, and when she got back to her room Walter was lying on his back, completely nude, in the middle of the bed. His little pecker hung limp and shriveled from the sparse growth of blond bush, looking like a much-used, chewed broken red pencil. But it began to stir and swell and elongate itself even as she walked across the room to the bed.
"Get tired of waiting, Walter?" she asked him. She turned sideways to the bed to place her pert rounded rear end in clear profile.
"Not tired," he said. "Not tired at all." He sat up on the edge of the bed, stroking the white cheeks of her ass, and when she turned to face him she leaned over. Kneading the softness of her buttocks with both hands, he sucked her nipples in turn until they both stood out stiff, winking pinkly at him.
Jackie looked down. His slender young shaft stood straight up, the head pointing, begging, beseeching.
"Do you still want to?"
"Want to?" Walter asked, looking surprised.
"You know," she said. "Fuck me up the ass."
"Oh," Walter said. "Will you let me do that?"
"I'd love it," she said. She meant it. In her hand she held a tiny tube of petroleum jelly she'd brought with her from the medicine chest in the bathroom. She unscrewed the top, squeezed out a little of the colorless lubricant on her fingers, and gently anointed the head of Walter's throbbing cock.
"That should make things easier for both of us," she said, and climbed onto the bed and got onto her hands and knees, her round white ass elevated, tempting.
Walter got on his knees behind her and slid the head of his throbbing slim stabber up and down in the open crack between her cheeks. When he'd found the tiny opening, he pushed, tentatively. She felt it penetrate part way, and pushed back toward him. She felt the head go in all the way, her eager little orifice squeezing tightly around the collar of his shaft.
"Go ahead, Walter," she said. "Sink it in."
Slowly, gently, the boy urged his yearning young cock into the innermost reaches, until the white yielding cheeks of her ass were pressed flat against his hipbones.
"Fuck me hard now, Walter," Jackie said, through clenched teeth. "Fuck me hard, all the way up my ass."
Walter didn't have to be told. He pumped his long, slender, stiff wand in and out again, swiftly, furiously, groaning all the while. His balls made tiny slapping sounds against the soft lower expanse of her exposed cunt. She heard herself groaning, in unison with Walter, as she pushed backwards to meet every eager stroke.
And then Walter, in an ecstasy of pumping and groaning, was coming, and it almost seemed to Jackie that she was coming with him. She knew she couldn't be, but she felt a great excitement along with the intrusion. A sympathetic orgasm, she told herself later.
And now she was really tired, exhausted, completely spent, both emotionally and physically. There was a dull ache in her hospitable anus-not unpleasant, a lingering, nostalgic pain-a stretched and fulfilled feeling between her legs, and a weightless sort of giddiness in her head.
"Send Peter in, please," she said drowsily, as Walter went toward the door.
She was asleep when Peter came into the room. He closed the door and locked it from the inside, and slid into the big bed beside her, quietly, without waking her.