A/N: Thank you to Stilwater Rundeepo for your kind review of the last instalment. I always find writing Aurra/Bane dialogue lots of fun.

-o0O0o-

He was going to be devoured alive.

There was a snake coiled around him, its thick sinuous body squeezing tighter and tighter as he struggled to break free. The struggle however was more of a token protest than the panicked squirming of a man fighting for his life. Bane had been having this dream on and off for years, since the day he'd picked up his great uncle's old blaster and bagged his first hit. It no longer frightened him. He knew that there'd be a little more constriction, a few moments of claustrophobic suffocation and then a return to gasping consciousness. Unpleasant, but just a dream.

Still, he couldn't quite bring himself to look into the serpent's gaping maw, he never could; and so he closed his dream eyes and waited to be engulfed.

It didn't happen.

He was there, prone and resigned in the thing's grip and it wasn't doing anything. This wasn't how it was meant to go.
There was a shift in the weight around him and a noise that sounded suspiciously like a woman's sigh. After a few moments he looked... and saw that the snake had vanished, its grip replaced by that of long, pale limbs.

"Aurra?"

It was her all right. There was no question about that; though the slit pupils and forked tongue were an interesting new addition.

She smiled, revealing a set of long pointed fangs.

"Chur not meant to be here. Dis is Hewerno Two." For some reason the imposition irked him. She shouldn't be here... couldn't be here. Hell, she'd probably still been playing with dolls and toy blasters at the time. And he'd sure as hell never told any of his fellow bounty hunter about this job. Some things were personal. Yet here she was in the jungle undergrowth, looking at him like he was lunch.

He tried to push her away, but like the snake her grip got tighter the more he resisted.

"Don't you want me?" There was a distinct hiss to the words.

"Not like dis?"

There was a pout, followed by a wide and decidedly evil grin.

"You will."

The fangs didn't hurt as she bit down into his exposed shoulder, but he could feel his body grow warm as the venom flowed into his bloodstream.

Funny, I thought dat stuff was supposed to chill you to da bone.

-0-

He awoke to mild hangover and a bored looking Togruta in his bed. In the murky green-tinged light of the Nar Shaddaa dawn she seemed even more tired and drawn than she had looked the night before. He could see now the sores and patches of mottling on her orange skin; telltale signs of an addiction to one of the cheaper, nastier forms of spice the Smuggler's Moon had to offer.

He sat up and regarded her for a few moments, before nodding towards the small puddle of sequins and sheer fabric that lay on one side of the bed. She stared at him balefully for a second and then got up and started to dress. Bane reached for his duster, which he'd slung over the rickety bedside chair the previous night and took two twenty credit chips from the inside pocket. He watched as she finished pulling on her dress. It had, like the girl, seen better days. From the length of her montrails he guessed that she was about twenty or so, but lines on her face were those of a woman twice that age.

I sure know how to pick 'em, he thought, as he handed over the credits. Then with a grunt, he dismissed her.

She left without a backward glance, shuffling away in five inch heels that she'd clearly never quite got the hang of walking in: a lacklustre finish to a dull, perfunctory liaison. Feeling no particular urge to get up from the lumpy mattress just yet, he reached again for his duster and took out a packet of tabac sticks and lit one with the complimentary lighter the proprietors of the decidedly low rent hotel had seen fit to leave on the nightstand. As usual the first drag made his stomach churn, but next three soothed his gut and started to clear his head.

Should've offered one to Aurra last night, might've woken up with something more interestin' in de bed dis mornin'. The thought immediately made him chuckle to himself. Ludicrous to think that a woman whose sexual favours couldn't be bought with the contents of a merchant's jewel house could be swayed by a few smokes... Then again, she hadn't been attracted to the unctuous Devaronian, and Bane was almost certain that she was attracted to him, if only just a little. He'd started to notice the cues a couple of years ago on that job with her and Parasitti: the appraising looks, the wetting of the lips, the faint tang of pheromones that filled the air when circumstance brought them into direct physical contact. It wasn't anything he'd ever expect her to actually acknowledge, but the thought still gave him a kick.

He was half-way through his smoke when his musings were interrupted by insistent beeping sound coming from the direction of his discarded pants. Stubbing out the tabac stick on the side of the nightstand he extracted a small communications device and hit the 'audio only' button.

"Bane!"

He identified the speaker immediately. The grating tones were hard to miss. What was not immediately apparent was how the Neimoidian had found out about this particular channel. It was the line he and Embo had been using during that last job for the Aturi Merchants' Guild and he was pretty sure that the Kyuzo wouldn't be careless enough to pass on the details.

"What d'you want, Gunray?" he demanded, careful to keep any sign of surprise out of his voice.

"I have a job for you."

"What sort of job?"

"I need you to send a message to somebody."

The automatic presumption that Bane would take it, no questions asked rankled him, but the there was a hint of rising panic in Gunray's voice that also intruiged. "I ain't chur errand boy."

"Oh, but this will be a very fatal message."

"Go on."

"There's a Rodian smuggler."

"Der always is."

"He's been providing the Republic with certain information. I need you to dissuade him from this unprofitable course of action."

So that was why Gunray wasn't using the usual Separatist com channels. He'd been buying intel from a guy playing both sides of the track and didn't want his master and compatriots to find out just how careless he'd been.

"So you want dis one alive but scared?"

"He has certain expendable associates."

"And who would dey be?"

"Underworld types on Coruscant: Revy Ti-Dups, Drygee Guberg, Thatrecap the Blue. If they were out of the picture I'm sure he'd... reconsider where his interests lie."

And chur so frightened of bein' found out dat choo've just asked de Galaxy's best hunter to do a job a street urchin with a knife could accomplish.

"Dey ain't exactly names to be scared of." Unless, of course, you were one of the sad, helpless beings who lived under their rule in one the unofficial little fiefdoms that you found scattered around the Lower Levels... but nobody who was anybody counted themas anything but set dressing.

For a moment Gunray said nothing. Then he cleared his throat, a less than pleasant sound. "This job needs a certain amount of discretion."

"Choo want it to look like a local job to everyone but chur Rodian."

"Yes, that's it." He sounded pleased that Bane had cottoned on so quickly. "And you'll be richly rewarded."

"You know my usual fee... and I want an extra four-hundred thousand for keepin' all dis quiet. I'm assumin' choo don't want Dooku to hear anythin' about it."

There was a spluttering sound from the other side of the comlink, followed by several seconds of barely audible muttering. Bane smirked, pleased at how hard Gunray seemed to be fighting the urge to tell him to go to hell.

"Fine, fine." The pretend hospitality in the Neimoidian's voice had evaporated. "But I expect your complete silence on the matter afterwards."

And you'll have it... unless someone else makes a better offer. "Sure, sure. You know de procedure. Half up front, half on completion."

There was a sound that managed to combine acquiescence and extreme annoyance and Gunray hit the end call.

Mood lifted, Bane reached for his hat and put it on his head. This was going to be the easiest money he'd earned in years. It was certainly not anything he needed an accomplice for, yet... Yet an idea was already forming in his mind. One driven less by a desire for easy money and more by a desire for long, pale limbs...

Since when did I stop thinkin' with my brain. He shook his head. Besides, der are plenty of Clawdites out der who could play de part for half an hour, an' most of dem charge under three hundred credits.

The truth, he knew (but preferred not to acknowledge), was that the long pale limbs were only part of the attraction. The rest... well, that was less easy to define. But the possibility of a venomous bite to the shoulder from a woman who wouldn't just lie back and take it did hold a certain excitement.

Telling himself that he was merely opening the door for a profitable renegotiation of the offer he'd turned down the previous evening, he entered the code for a new secure channel into the com device and waited for a response.

Half a second to detect de bleep.

One second to identify de caller.

Five seconds because she doesn't want to look like she doesn't have better things to do than answer chur call.

Five more seconds because it's me and she doesn't want to look desperate.

"What do you want, Bane?"

He smiled at the heaviness in her voice. So, she'd been drinking, probably alone... and she wasn't quite sober yet.

"I've been thinkin' about dat job you mentioned last night."

"Oh." Drunk or not, the forced boredom in her voice was almost convincing. She was good. Not as good as she thought she was, but good nonetheless.

"Well, de way I see it, if choo do something for me, I'll do something for choo."

There was a pause of three seconds. He could almost hear her counting it out. Dat's right, never let on how much choo want it.

"Go on."

"Meet me at the Red Sector Amphitheatre in two hours."

She snorted. "You've got a nerve."

"And choo've got a date."

He ended the call before she had chance to utter whatever coldly seething respond she was summoning. She'd show up, even if it was just to punch him in the face, and then... Well, let it not be said that Cad Bane couldn't put on the charm when he wanted to.