Susan, I'm here and at home (baking savarin for Steph, in fact), so send to my profile addy whenever you wish, m'dear.

Sure, Susan, I think I have time. Profile addy's good.

(baking savarin for Steph, in fact)

t happy dance

All right, I'll be brave right before I go to bed so I won't be hitting "Read New" for hours hoping somebody responded.

Summary: The courier's first law is "Don't open the package." Unfortunately, Lena isn't a courier.

I originally wrote "Deliberate Breath" as porn, glorious porn, but there was a serious science fiction story struggling to get out. So I'm reworking it, and I'd love to have some fresh eyeballs on it.

Warning up front: Rated M for mature due to swearing, violence, and lingering sex. I don't pull punches on scenes. And it's science fiction.

Not everybody's cup of tea, so I'll post the first page and a half or so as a teaser.

Someone knocked on her door.

"Shit!"

Lena burst out of her chair, sending it shooting back into one of the two barstools piled high with crystal disks and paper output. The precarious column tipped as she came up short on her tether. She yanked the data plug out of the jack under her left ear and ignored the slithering avalanche to dash into the bedroom. Behind her, the barstool went over with a thud.

"What should I tell him?" Nigel, her PDA, asked by way of the apartment's ambient speakers as she hurdled the futon in her bedroom. Lena jerked her closet doors open and pulled off her three-day-old T-shirt.

"Tell him I was asleep," she answered, throwing it in the clothes hamper. A few spritzes of fresh deoderant improved her. From a drawer she grabbed a fresh corset, pulled it on and zipped it up the front, then fussed at the shoulder strap that had come loose in the wash. A button-down men's shirt went on over it. "Tell him I'll be a minute. It is him, right?"

"He has the password that Sugar Daddy sent," Nigel confirmed as Lena buttoned. "Searching files. It's Reyn. You've done a few washes on his folio for Recon before."

"Reyn, Reyn," she muttered, combing her fingers through her hair. "Might ring a bell. Why'd they have to send him here? Daddy couldn't give me a little more warning? A minute to clean up a bit?" She shouted, "Hang a minute, I'll be right there!"

Lena grimaced at the mess as she strode back into her living room. Her chair usually nestled in a crescent of naked wires, industrial racks of quantum processors, and dancing status lights; a professional codehead and whitewasher, she'd built her computer from scratch as a point of pride and it wasn't intended to be pretty. The half-empty cups of caffeinated chocolate and desiccated crusts of sandwiches were her own personal touch. Her work filled half the room, thanks to the hardware and the small fusion generator that powered it all, and left only enough room for an elbow-high counter that ran in front of the cooking console. It served as the dining table and sheltered the multiwasher and cupboard space underneath. One barstool stood near the cooler unit beside the counter, still stacked with crystal lattice disks. The other lay on top of its spill. Her two ferns and the ivy hung in their pots from the ceiling, out of the reach of chaos, the only touches of life in her small, windowless apartment.

"Any idea where Reyn's coming from, Nigel?" She stood the stool up and shoved the chair back into its spot, then started raking up paper and disks with both hands.

Her PDA paused a moment. "It would seem that he arrived on the shuttle that docked half an hour ago. Security was called to the gates for undisclosed reasons and there was some delay in unloading passengers. They're still delayed, in fact. The shuttle set out from Atlas ten days ago."

"Atlas?"

"One of the stations being constructed in orbit over Titan."

"What's Recon got a chuck out at Saturn for?" Lena frowned. She dumped the armload onto her chair.

Sugar Daddy was Lena's contact at Interplanetary Reconnaissance, a one of several colonial agencies that served many masters. He had told her, only a few minutes ago, that he was sending over an agent that they expected her to help in the course of his mission. God knew what he needed, it could be information, a whitewashing of his folio, or just a place to hide. Daddy hadn't seen fit to tell her. She'd been in the middle of customizing PDAs for security duty, but as long as Recon held the leashes on the colonial district attorneys that had labeled her a 'counterfeiter' and an 'abetter of criminals,' she'd drop everything and do what Sugar Daddy told her.

"What am I, a bed and breakfast? They never said anything about playing safe house. Shit," she muttered. She stuffed the old sandwiches in the disposer, paper plates and all. The empty water bottles went too. She didn't clean often because she didn't have guests in the apartment often. If she wanted to see people in the flesh, away from the coding and surfing and researching, she went out. Not that she'd had much time for socializing lately - Lena's services were in demand. If she'd only gotten some warning, she could have been ready for, even looking forward to, a distraction.

Her guest knocked again.

(Insent, erika, deb, Ms. Havisham)

I think it's a good beginning, Ms. H. Good mix of starting with action, yet quickly putting in enough background to bring people up to speed on the setting. My only quibble is I think Reyn needs to knock again somewhere toward the middle of the scene instead of waiting till the end, just because while reading it I was thinking, "Huh. And this guy is just standing there all this time?" But otherwise, I like.

I'd love to read the whole thing, Ms. H. Profile addy's good. I won't get to it until tomorrow. I'm baby wrasslin' and hoping to go to bed soon.

It reads good. Maybe instead of knocking again in the middle, Lena could look at a clock and realize that X minutes and XX seconds have passed since he knocked the first time. (You'll probably have to time out her actions to that point with a stopwatch, but hell, it's writing research, right?)

Actually, that is the middle of the scene - just thought it was a good place to end the sample.

Thanks, Deena. I'll send it tonight.