Page 87 of Craving Venom (The Venomous Beauty Trilogy #1)

Then I glance at her, and I don’t even try to hide the smirk curling up my mouth.

“Actually… make it four.”

I’m definitely fucking her tonight.

She rolls her eyes and looks away, but I catch the way her thighs tingle. Terry groans and hangs up without another word.

“How do you keep escaping prison?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked me sooner.”

“Your grandfather built that prison.” Her eyes glide to my jaw, to my hands, then back up. “You’re a Valehart. It’s not impossible to believe you’ve got connections or guards in your pocket.”

She’s not wrong. She’s just not right, either.

“My grandfather cut ties with me years ago, and my last name has nothing to do with how I get out.”

“So what, you just charm your way out and enter my room while I’m sleeping?”

A grin pulls at my mouth. “Didn’t hear you complaining.”

She shoots me a glare, but her lips twitch right after, betraying the smile she’s trying to swallow.

I keep one hand on the wheel, the other resting lazily on my thigh. “Charm doesn’t get you far in a cell built for monsters. Not unless charm comes with blood and blueprints.”

She doesn’t say anything, so I give her what she really wants.

“In the heart of the prison, there’s a corridor most people don’t even know exists. The floor plan hides it behind solitary, masked by identical wall panels that only shift under timed pressure. You step on the wrong tile, nothing happens. You get the sequence right, and the wall slides open.”

“How do you know that pattern?”

“Remember when you said my grandfather built this prison?”

She nods slowly, suspicion creeping across her face.

“Well… when he started working on the layout, I was six. I used to sit in his study while he drafted the blueprints. Sometimes he’d hum.

Other times he’d talk to himself, ramble about structural weaknesses, pressure points, emergency exits.

I didn’t understand half of it. But I watched.

I listened. Every line he drew, every revision he cursed over, it stuck. ”

Her eyes narrow further. “And you remember all that?”

“I have a photographic memory.”

“Okay, and what does that even mean? Like… you glance at something once and it just stays in your head forever?”

“Not forever,” I say, stretching my legs out a little. “But long enough. It’s called eidetic recall. I don’t just remember words, I remember angles, handwriting, stains on paper. If I saw the blueprint once, I still see it. Every line. Every measurement. Every fault.”

Her mouth parts slightly, and I can tell she’s trying to decide if that’s terrifying or impressive.

“Think of it this way,” I add, “you read a book and remember the story. I remember the number of words on each page, the way the ink looked when it smudged, and how many times the writer scratched something out before getting it right.”

She snorts. “Right. That’s cute. Sounds fake, but okay.”

I raise a brow, pretending to be offended. “You think I’m bullshitting?”

“I think you’re a manipulative bastard who’d say anything to make himself sound smarter than he is.”

“Alright,” I say, turning in my seat just enough to face her. “Pop quiz, good girl. How many moles do you have?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

She scoffs. “Fifty.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Try again.”

“Okay, eighty.”

I shake my head. “One hundred and seventy-seven.”

“You’re making that up. Pretty sure I know my own body.”

“There’s one tiny dot beneath your left eyebrow. Two small ones just under your jawline. Five scattered over your collarbones like faint stars. Three tucked under your right breast, so pale they vanish unless I look for them.”

She blinks slowly.

“Six along your abdomen, clustered tight near your hipbones. Eleven on your thighs—four behind your left knee, two where they press together when you sit, three in the inner crease, and two more that only show when your legs are open under the light.”

A blush begins to bloom along her cheekbones.

“Eight down the curve of your spine. One tucked behind your right ear. Four more up the back of your neck. Two hidden in the soft edge of your hairline. Nine across the tops of your shoulder blades. Four more riding just along your waist, above the dip of your ass. Five more scattered low on your back.”

Her lips part, but I keep going.

“Your left arm has five—one near your shoulder, another on your tricep, one above the elbow, and two that run along your forearm where the sun hits when you drive. Your right arm has eight in total. Three up top, one near the back of your underarm, one behind your elbow, and three near your wrist.”

Her eyes flick to her arms now, and she starts actually counting, like she doesn’t believe me but I don’t slow down.

“There are thirteen across both your inner forearms. Little ones that show up when you’re stretched out under soft light. One just beside that faint vein on your left. Two trail it down. One near your watch strap, one on the base of your thumb.”

She’s falling behind, already lost in the numbers.

“Three tucked near your ribcage. One under your left armpit. Four curve beneath your breasts. Two tiny ones on the underside of each—so faint you forget they’re even there. But I don’t.”

Her mouth opens to say something, but nothing comes out.

“Ten more scattered across your stomach and along your sides, rising and falling with your breath. Seventeen trace down your calves—back, sides, even one right where your tendon tightens when you tiptoe. Six behind your knees, two on the front of your shins. Nine total along your ankles.”

She shifts again, her fingers twitching in her lap.

“There are fifteen on your feet and toes. And three on your heels.”

My voice drops lower.

“There are five on your fingers. One on your knuckle I kissed once without you noticing. Two along the backs of your hands. Four more on your palms.”

Her breath catches.

“Six just above the curve of your butt. Seven on your hips, right where I grip when you try to wriggle away. And one…”

I let the silence hang.

“…is tucked inside your pussy.”

“I don’t have a mole there.”

I chuckle.

“You do. It is tucked on the left side. Barely the size of a freckle. I almost missed it the first time.”

Her jaw drops. “Okay, nope. Stop.”

“What?” I chuckle.

“That’s not even real.”

“Want me to prove it?”

She glares, but her a blush creeps on her cheeks. “Keep going with your little prison escape story before I throw you out of the car.”

“Fine. Where was I?”

“The secret corridor,” she mutters.

“That corridor runs beneath admin wing. There’s a hollowed-out access duct behind the electrical room which wasn’t part of the original structure. My grandfather’s design ended with sealed steel. But the contractors extended the space to install backup cooling systems. It left a void.”

“And nobody knows?”

“Not unless they helped build it. And most of those men are dead or retired. The rest… don’t talk.”

I continue. “That duct leads to the sub-basement, a place even the guards avoid. It’s unstable.

They sealed it decades ago after a fire.

Only problem is, it’s not actually sealed.

They used temporary blast doors during the investigation and never replaced them.

Every few months, I loosen the bolts on one side.

Takes time. Patience. But eventually, it swings. ”

Her mouth parts just slightly.

“Once I’m in the sub-basement, I wait for lock reset.

The prison security system runs a fifteen-minute offline refresh between 3:17 and 3:32 every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday.

During that gap, cameras reset, and two gates are powered down.

From there, it’s about timing. The last cleaning crew exits through Gate 6 at 3:15.

Two minutes later, I move into the ventilation shaft directly beneath their route.

The vent spans thirteen meters and lands in the secondary waste disposal unit, which no one’s used since ‘04 because the plumbing’s been rerouted.

The sensor on that room has a blind spot.

You can move through it if you keep your back low and your body slow. ”

I glance over. She’s listening so hard her body forgets to blink. I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, each beat synced with the engine’s low purr beneath us.

“There’s a dead zone just past that door.

There are no cameras. No alarms. Nothing but old wiring and dust. From there, the only obstacle is the west guard booth.

But that guard, Steven, is asleep 90% of the time.

And if he’s not asleep, Terry distracts him with a fake radio call about a med emergency in Block C. ”

She slides one leg across the other again. Her heel scrapes against the floor mat.

“The moment he leaves the room, I cross the hall. There’s a mop closet beside the emergency exit.

It’s never locked. Inside is a duffel with fresh clothes, gloves, wipes, and a phone.

I change in sixty seconds, cover my tattoos, wipe the floor down, and walk out the back door.

Terry handles the setup, he feeds me the details, and I move on instinct. ”

I reach down and adjust the AC, even though I don’t feel the cold. My blood’s too hot. She’s still watching me.

“And sometimes, when I’m really lucky… I end up in your room.”

She stares at me, dumbfounded. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out at first. It’s the first time I’ve seen her look truly stunned, and fuck, it’s a sight. Her legs are still, her purse forgotten in her lap. She doesn’t even react to my last comment.

“What about guards? Cameras? Prison officials? You’re telling me no one notices a prisoner going Houdini every other week?”

I grin, pulling my eyes back on the road. “That’s the part you’ll like.”

“Each guard station in the west wing runs on a four-hour rotation. But the sleep quarters are directly connected to the admin hall. Between 3:10 and 3:30, two of the three posted officers are off duty. That leaves one man watching ten feeds, half of which are looping because Terry triggers a false diagnostic from the external panel. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, you’ll never catch it.

It loops footage of me asleep in my cell. ”

She finally blinks.

“The exit sensor logs a maintenance ID number. One that expired five years ago. Terry hacked it back into the system and buried it behind six layers of junk code. To anyone checking the logs, it looks like routine cleaning staff leaving at a routine time. And by the time they realize there’s no real employee with that badge number, I’m already five miles out. ”

I adjust the rearview, and ease into the next turn.

“And as for official logs?” I snort. “There’s a digital trail for everything.

But the admin server sits inside the superintendent’s office.

It is an old hardline system that hasn’t been updated in seven years.

I plug in a flash drive with ghost software once a week during library duty.

A quick wipe of outgoing entries, just enough to erase timestamps, reroute my ID tag, make it look like a clerical error. ”

I glance at her again, slower this time. “If I leave for two hours, the system thinks I never left.”

“And the guards?”

“Some are smart. Some are scared. All of them know better than to ask questions. You think they want to admit an inmate walked right past them? That he’s done it more than once?

” I shake my head. “No one wants to be the one who missed it. So they keep their mouths shut, report nothing, and pray they’re not the next one to slip. ”

She doesn’t answer.

Not because she doesn’t have anything to say.

But because now she’s wondering what kind of man turns a fortress into a fucking revolving door and uses it to hunt monsters.

Her eyes hold the windshield, watching the road, but she’s not really seeing it. I know that look. She’s processing. Running every word I said through that sharp little mind of hers.

“What if you get caught?”

I grin, not even pretending to hide it. My heart flutters at the thought of her worrying. Her picturing me cornered. Cuffed. Maybe dead.

“Then I’ll just use a different escape plan,” I say.

“How many of those do you have?”

I glance at her with that same grin. “Three hundred and sixty-five.”

I’m pretty sure she’s trying to find the line between sarcasm and sociopathy, and is finally realizing I don’t have one.

“Oh, and my plans have backup plans,” I say, slow enough for it to land. “Also, my backup plans?” I glance at her again and flash my teeth as my grip tightens on the wheel. “They’ve got backup plans too.”

Then she lets out a breathy, disbelieving laugh. “You’re insane.”

“I told you,” I say with a smug grin. “I don’t just break out. I walk out.”

And no one ever stops me.

She’s quiet again, but not for long.

“So if your backup plans have backup plans,” she says, shifting in her seat, “why are you still in prison? Why haven’t you escaped for good? Wouldn’t that be convenient?”

That smile of hers is sharp enough to cut, but I can tell she wants to know. Not just the logistics. The why.

I don’t answer right away.

Instead, I roll the car to a stop. We’re here. The compound looms ahead, dark and polished and rotten on the inside. It looks clean, almost holy, like the kind of place people go to be saved.

They don’t leave that way.

I stare at it for a second.

Then I turn to her.

“Guess I’ll have to answer that later, baby,” I say, not wanting to complicate things.

We both reach for our masks. Mine stretches over my jaw. Hers hugs the delicate curves of her cheekbones. She steps out first and pauses at the edge of the lot.

“You said it was a cult.”

I smirk beneath my mask. “What were you expecting, good girl? A forest clearing, a bonfire, tribal freaks in deer skulls and face paint? Maybe a couple wolves howling in the background?”

She shrugs, walking towards the entrance. “Maybe.”