Oskar could only stand there with one hand pressed across his face, searching for words and finding none. His irritation had passed beyond anger into exhausted disbelief.
Then Elise broke.
"I am so sorry, Your Highness—please," she sobbed. "I will do anything. Please do not kill me."
She folded herself against the carpet until her forehead touched the floor, her arms rigid at her sides and her small body lowered in instinctive, absolute submission.
"I never meant to harm you," she whispered. "I did not think. I am stupid. I am so terribly sorry."
The chamber fell silent.
Even Patricia said nothing. She stared at the kneeling maid as though Elise had transformed into an entirely different creature before her eyes.
Oskar released a sharp breath.
"God damn it," he muttered. "Why does this sort of madness always happen to me?"
Patricia's silence lasted only another heartbeat.
Then she snapped.
Her eyes moved from Oskar's powerful body above her to Elise, and whatever remained of her aristocratic composure shattered beneath naked fury.
"You."
The word emerged as a hiss.
"You treacherous little bitch."
Elise flinched violently. Her shoulders folded inward as though she might somehow disappear into the carpet.
"I—I am sorry, Princess. I failed you—"
Patricia surged out from beneath Oskar before he could stop her. She sprang from the bed completely naked, her breasts and hips moving with the sudden violence of her motion, and crossed the room like a storm given human form.
She placed herself between Oskar and the maid as though protecting him from contamination.
"You dared," Patricia spat, pointing at Elise's kneeling figure. "You laid your hands upon what belongs to me."
Then she lunged.
Patricia seized a fistful of Elise's honey-blonde hair and dragged her head upward. Elise cried out, her hands rising defensively as Patricia drew back one arm, palm poised to strike.
"I am sorry—please, Princess! I did not—"
The blow never landed.
Oskar moved.
His hand closed around Patricia's wrist in mid-swing, stopping her as though she had struck iron. His other arm wrapped around her waist, and in one clean motion he tore her away from Elise and pulled her against his chest.
Patricia gasped.
Her bare feet left the floor as Oskar lifted her, turned, and hurled her back toward the bed.
She travelled several feet before landing in a rush of pale limbs and disordered hair. The mattress absorbed the impact, tossing her once before she came to rest like a doll returned rather too forcefully to its place.
Oskar immediately stepped between the women.
Patricia lay sprawled across the sheets, chest rising quickly and legs parted without the slightest trace of modesty. Her hair surrounded her face in wild confusion as she slowly turned to glare at him.
Oskar's gaze dropped despite himself.
Her nakedness remained openly displayed, the soft pink folds between her thighs glistening with unmistakable arousal. Near the discarded nightgown upon the floor lay a tiny pair of white panties that had apparently been dragged down with it.
A thong.
Delicate, absurdly small, trimmed with a ribbon and embroidered with the smiling face of a cartoon bear.
Oskar recognized it at once.
AngelWorks.
The design belonged to his sister Louise. He remembered seeing the original sketch while Louise and Tanya laughed over it at a long table in Potsdam. It had been created to appear sweet and innocent while being worn for purposes that were decidedly neither.
And damn it, the ridiculous thing was cute.
Disarmingly so.
Especially when worn by such an outrageously troublesome princess.
What was considerably less innocent was the darkened fabric at its centre—and the evidence of Patricia's excitement now shining between her thighs.
A sharp shudder climbed Oskar's spine.
He neither advanced nor retreated. He simply stood between Patricia sprawled upon the bed and Elise kneeling upon the carpet while the atmosphere hardened around them like a fault line ready to split.
Patricia remained breathless, her expression caught somewhere between the desire to murder Elise and the need to recover from being thrown across the room. Her fingers dug into the sheets, knuckles whitening as though the mattress were the only thing preventing her from flying apart.
Then Oskar's anger returned. Not merely at Patricia, or at Elise, but at himself.
This had gone too far, too quickly, and he had allowed it. He had tolerated the provocations, excused the intrusions and indulged their absurdity because he had been reluctant to create a greater scandal.
Now they were no longer testing boundaries.
They were tearing through them.
He would be leaving Britain within hours, but he could not simply walk away and leave this chaos unresolved.
There had to be a line, a hard one. Something neither woman could pretend not to understand.
Desire did not excuse disorder, and disorder did not erase consequences.
Elise had not moved. She remained kneeling with her head bowed, her breathing shallow and her hands clenched in the fabric of her skirt.
"That is enough," Oskar said. "I have had enough of both of you."
His voice was not loud, it did not need to be. Both women became perfectly still.
"This ends now."
He turned toward Elise.
She recoiled as though his attention alone had struck her.
"You," he said, pointing at her with cold certainty. "You crossed a boundary you do not get to pretend you failed to see."
Elise swallowed.
"Mercy, Your Highness. Please—"
Oskar raised one hand.
"Silence."
She obeyed instantly.
He approached until his shadow fell completely over her. The difference in their size made the balance of power unmistakable: Elise appeared tiny enough to vanish beneath one of his arms.
Oskar reached down, removed her maid's cap and tossed it aside.
Her honey-blonde hair fell loose over her shoulders, stripping away the careful order of palace service in a way that felt more exposing than any shouted accusation.
"Now you will be punished," he said. "And you will remember the lesson."
Patricia pushed herself upright upon the bed, alarm cutting through her anger.
"Oskar—what are you doing?"
He did not look at her.
"Remain where you are."
The command struck Patricia harder than a slap.
She froze with her breath caught halfway through her chest, suddenly unwilling to discover what might happen if she disobeyed again.
Oskar returned his attention to Elise.
She remained on her knees, small and rigid, lifting her eyes only far enough to follow his approach. When he reached for her, a helpless whimper escaped her throat.
His hands closed around her narrow waist. His fingers nearly met around it. Without ceremony or effort, he lifted her from the carpet.
Elise gave a startled squeak but did not struggle. Her pale eyes rose to his, wide and trembling.
"Mercy, Your Highness," she whispered again.
He offered none.
Oskar turned her and placed her stomach-first across the edge of the bed, directly beside Patricia. Elise gasped as he bent her forward, guiding her down until her upper body rested upon the mattress.
The bed was too high for someone so small.
Her chest pressed into the sheets, her arms stretched helplessly before her, and her toes barely reached the floor. The position forced a slight arch into her back while her legs hung almost uselessly beneath her.
She trembled.
Oskar stood behind her, immense and silent, his breathing the only sound within the chamber.
Then he exhaled slowly.
"You have been a very disobedient maid," he said. "Disobedience has consequences."
His hand rose. It descended hard across her backside. The crack echoed from the gilded walls.
Elise cried out, the sound sharp with shock and humiliation.
"I am sorry, Your Highness! I swear I will never—"
The second strike interrupted her.
Harder.
Her body jolted against the mattress. Her legs clenched reflexively, and her apology dissolved into a strained gasp.
Patricia watched from only a few feet away.
She had not moved. Her legs remained parted where she sat, her fingers buried in the sheets while something conflicted and increasingly fascinated moved behind her eyes.
Oskar struck Elise a third time.
The sound snapped through the room. Her cry climbed higher as her back arched and her hands twisted into the bedding.
Then Oskar stopped.
Three strikes, that was enough to teach. Enough to leave no uncertainty. More importantly, enough for him to recognize the point beyond which discipline would become something else.
His raised hand slowly closed into a fist before returning to his side.
Patricia's cheeks had turned scarlet. She continued watching every movement, every breath, as though committing the scene to memory.
Elise remained bent across the bed, breathing rapidly. She turned her head just enough to glance back at Oskar.
There was something in her pale eyes that made him falter. Not resentment, or fear, but anticipation.
Oskar stared at her. Then he looked toward Patricia.
The princess no longer appeared frightened or indignant. She watched him with intense, almost breathless attention, her lips parted and her body completely unashamed. There was no remorse in her expression.
Only expectation.
For one disbelieving moment, Oskar wondered whether both women had gone mad.
His irritation flared again.
He pressed one hand firmly between Elise's shoulders, pushing her more securely against the mattress.
"So," he said, his voice dropping into a rough growl, "you want more. Is that it?"
Elise gave no answer.
She buried her face in the sheets and raised both hands to cover her burning cheeks like a frightened little rabbit retreating into its burrow.
Yet her hips trembled, not with terror. With anticipation.
The air had become thick with desire—raw, unmistakable and pouring from both women too strongly for even Oskar to dismiss.
His breath caught.
Still half convinced that he had misunderstood, he seized the skirt of Elise's uniform and pulled it abruptly to her waist.
The gesture was neither gentle nor playful.
It was forceful, impatient and intended to reveal the truth.
What he found stopped him cold.
White stockings climbed the length of Elise's surprisingly shapely legs. Beneath the lifted dress, her small waist widened into a full, rounded backside trained far more carefully than her innocent appearance suggested.
Stretched across it was another tiny white thong.
The same limited AngelWorks design. The same smiling bear. The same ridiculous thumbs-up.
Beneath it appeared the little embroidered encouragement: You've got this, girl.
Oskar's heart struck hard against his ribs.
The fabric was soaked through at the centre. He could smell her arousal.
Before judgment intervened, two of his large fingers moved across the darkened material. Elise gasped, her hips jerking against his touch as he gathered the dampness like evidence beneath his fingertips.
Oskar hooked the edge of the thong and dragged it down.
The woman exposed beneath it was nothing like the timid, innocent maid she presented to the world. Her body opened eagerly under his hand, wet and trembling, as though every denial her mouth might offer had already been contradicted by the rest of her.
He brushed his fingers between her slick folds.
Elise's spine arched.
A broken sound escaped her as she turned her flushed face toward him. Her lower lip was swollen from biting it, and her pale eyes were bright, daring and unmistakably hungry.
She was not afraid of what he might do next. She wanted it.
Beside her, Patricia released a small, helpless whimper. She had not looked away once. Her legs had spread wider without her appearing to notice. One hand rested against the reddened breast Oskar had gripped during their argument, while the other moved slowly between her own thighs.
Only then did he notice that Patricia's fallen panties bore the same smiling bear.
Two identical limited-edition pieces. Two women watching him with the same hungry expectation.
The realization broke through the heat like cold water.
Oskar stepped back at once, releasing Elise as though the entire scene had burned him.
He looked from the maid to the princess, disbelief sharpening into suspicion.
"You two."
His voice was low.
His eyes moved toward the matching underwear and then back to their faces.
"Why are you both wearing the same limited-edition panties?"
Patricia answered before caution could stop her.
"Because we are friends, of course."
Her voice carried the careless confidence of someone admitting to nothing remarkable.
"We share everything."
Absolute silence followed.
Something clicked into place inside Oskar's mind.
"Friends," he repeated.
His jaw tightened.
"So that is it. I have had a spy inside my room this entire time."
His eyes narrowed.
"It was both of you, was it not? Night after night—testing the handle, trying keys and whispering outside my door. What in God's name did you think you were doing?"
His fists clenched.
Elise pushed herself upright and sat on the edge of the bed, hastily dragging her skirt back into place. Her cheeks remained flushed, and her eyes darted nervously between Oskar and Patricia.
"It was not usually the Princess," she said quickly. "I am sorry if I frightened you, Your Highness, but most nights it was me."
Patricia turned toward her.
"What?"
Elise shrank beneath the princess's stare.
"You were testing his door?"
"Only to check upon him," Elise insisted. "Although you did come with me once."
Patricia looked genuinely scandalized.
"You did that without telling me?"
"I was not trying to cause trouble," Elise continued, speaking faster as the situation worsened. "I wanted to make certain His Highness was safe—and perhaps give you another opportunity to see him."
She twisted her hands together.
"When the door would not open, I worried that something might be wrong. There is very little for a maid to do during the night, and after what happened before, I thought perhaps he might be hard again and require assistance."
Oskar stared at her.
Elise's voice dwindled.
"I understand now that he did not appreciate my service."
Oskar slowly raised one hand to his face.
He pressed his palm against his eyes and remained that way for several seconds while the two women watched him.
When he finally lowered it, his expression had become cold, sharp and utterly exhausted.
"Forget it."
He stepped away from the bed as though both women were unexploded bombs.
"Just forget all of it."
His jaw tightened painfully.
"You are both insane."
He had finally reached his limit.
Oskar stood there for one final heartbeat, chest rising and falling beneath the strain of his restraint. He wore nothing but his undergarments, remained unguarded in a foreign palace and had somehow found himself trapped between a naked princess and a maid who considered unlawful sexual attention part of her professional duties.
Enough.
He would dress.
He would pack.
He would leave this room, this palace and this damned country as quickly as protocol permitted.
Oskar turned away from the bed and the two women upon it.
"I am returning to Germany," he said flatly. "Both of you will leave my chamber immediately and allow me to prepare. That is an order."
The women gasped together.
Their expressions changed with almost comic speed, horror spreading across their faces as though Oskar had just announced the death of a beloved family pet.
This time, however, they understood that his words were not a threat.
They were a decision.
And unless something changed, whatever strange connection had formed between the three of them would end within the hour.