The Coin..

Only a subtle balance of power protected them from her wrath.

There were the new lords, the marionettes that she had created, whose whole focus was on interpreting her every move and word. They lived to please her and maintain their position in the ever anxious court. They were her creation.

Her slaves who maintained their estate by careful maneuvering and courtly intrigue.

They all bowed as she sat sedately on her throne, genuflected and looked down as her gaze roved the hall. She owned them all, she was goddess on earth and arbitrary demoness, the woman who made men flinch, die in agony and fill her capacious bed for nights of erotic nightmare.

A small movement of the hand.

Flanked by her maids of honor, her sluts in silk and pearls, she allowed the audience to begin.

First the emissaries of the Kahzars. Dressed in fur and red linen they were the outliers to the south of her domain. Known now as the Kozzaki, Cossacks of the plains. They approached the throne bearing the gifts of their lands, salt and bread, earth of supplication. All three of them were proud and tall, but they bowed at every step as they came forward to lay the gifts at her jeweled feet.

Catherine made a small, almost impatient gesture and pouted her lips.

The habitants of her court could read her mood like they could feel the water when it rained or sense the chill of approaching winter in the late summer.

Catherine was dissatisfied.

Already they knew that her last lover, the Margrave of Novgorod had displeased her last night. The rumor had already made the rounds of the court that he had cried out once too often under the jeweled whip that she ruled her bed with. Now Ivan Illich Vassily lay in the cells under her rooms with the knowledge that his privileges were at an end. All his power and hopes were now confined to the cell where he was given time to realize how he had failed to quench the insatiable desires of his Empress.

The audience continued.

Justice was dispensed.

Boyar Krillich was rewarded with estates in Poland whilst three rebellious Nobles from the south were consigned to hard labor in Ekaterinaburg.

After an hour of displaying her Majesty for all the attendants of her court, Catherine signaled that the audience was at an end. Concealed behind her white makeup she did not betray the sudden feeling of lust that was sweeping over her body like a red tide.

Her hand strayed again to that coin.

Her body was trembling with suppressed hunger for satiation. Not the satiation of power that she had, with a flick of the hand, condemned seven to the attentions of her executioners. Nor was it the giving of estates and gifts to her favorites that satisfied her so often.

This was the tingling, the prickling of desire that heralded days of aching lust. She knew the feeling well. It came and went as her cunt craved gratification. Her breasts needed pampering and her body needed a strong prick to fill her to the hilt.

There was no denying this yearning except to gather her maids and minions and explore the nether worlds of her fevered creativity.

A gesture and a word was all it took.

The throne room emptied in a respectful bowing of fearful courtiers, women and attendants and Catherine was alone with her maids.

"We need a day of rest," she announced to the remaining few.

It was the clear signal that the Empress was hungry for gratification.

She stood in a rustle of stiff silk.

The chains of pearls that adorned her dress clicked and the gold of the chains around her neck sounded like falling riches in a treasury. With small steps, and slowly, she led her harpy maids to the apartments that no man hoped to see.

The place where favor lasted as long as a rose took to rot. Where the bed was a playing field for games that had no rules but those that Catherine the Great invented on a whim and changed without warning.

The corridors of the Kremlin echoed with her footsteps, the diamonds on the soles of her shoes clacked on the pavement of marble as she went through the wide doors of the throne room. A few guards, matchlocks at the ready, halberds dipped to the ground in respect, stood like statues as she went to the inner depths of that porphyry palace.

Part II

--------

Bed is too small a word for the playground that Catherine allowed to dominate the high ceilinged room where she acted out her games. Massive bog-oak, from the Pripet Marshes and a deep layer of raw silk in linen coverlet that offered sweet repose for Catherine. Soft and beckoning it seemed to her but it was a place where only the Empress gained gratification.

For all others who participated it was by turn heaven and hell.

Gold chains and fetters hung ready for use and bejeweled whips hung by phallic handles, ready to hand for her milk skinned hands.

A man lay stretched out on this field of combat. Pinned to her bed like an insect ready for preservation he sweated with fear as the ladies of the court entered the room and took position around his fettered form.

His body was marked with the stripes of a casual whipping that he had sustained, stripes of bruised flesh staccatoed with small cuts that the sharp gems woven into the braids of the whips had traced on his vulnerable flesh. A velvet bag with silken purple drawstrings lay by his head and a discarded flogger twisted amongst the gold woven sheets.

Catherine swept into the room and smiled like the lioness that has caught a buck.

Here was her entertainment for the night!

Here was the man that would yield his all to Empress.

Not willingly, but nevertheless eager to please her body.

She noted with approval that one of her maids stood at every corner of the bed to tighten the gold chains should she call for it. Three others were prepared to divest her of her robes when she required it. Not always did she assuage her lust in the nude. Oft times she allowed no single peek as she took her due from her chosen victim.

But, this time, this night, was one of the full moon. A feeling of lust overcame her at the powerlessness of her prostrated victim, the stripes of punishment left her gasping for more and the proud erect prick beckoned her to swallow him whole.

For a moment she circled the bed, deciding whether to continue the flogging of the previous night or to follow a new course of action.

A discrete motion and her maids came to her.

Carefully avoiding touching her naked flesh they disrobed their mistress with practiced movements. Layers of silk and stiff corset fell from her like an autumn tree shedding leaves, until her full body was presented to all.

Not perfect!

But responsive!

Already her nipples stood like puckered mounds, awaiting their contact and the slit of her sex was parting like an opening flower. A carnivorous rose surrounded by the stiff thorns of her pubic hair. The parted lips exposed a slick cavern that would swallow any man and spit him out after consuming his manhood.

A word of command and a long tailed whip was placed in her right hand.

The left was clutched around her talisman, the gold coin of Irene.

Part III

---------

Dmitry cried out as the first strike of the whip curled around his chest and neck. It left a roadmap of pain on his flesh and scored the delicate skin of his neck with a line of ruby pearls of blood.

A slight splatter of that blood caught her breasts and nipples as she pulled the whip with a jerk to put the heavy leather band behind her back.

Catherine laughed in joy.

Dmitry had betrayed her with one of her maids. Now he was less to her than a serf on a distant estate.

Less than a rabid dog on the lonely plains.

Her laugh was not the pleasant ripple of laughter and enjoyment of a pleasant bon mot, but the giggle of a woman who is taking pleasure in the downfall of a rival or enemy. For that was who he was, her enemy. His name was forgotten by her in this moment of indulgence, but he deserved this punishment and he would deserve the fall of the headsman's sword after she had reduced him to suffering meat.

The coin in her hand imparted its hate, encouraging her to excess and sexual frenzy as she lined up the next evil sting of the long whip that she wielded with such dexterity.

One of her maids moaned in sympathy with the Empress.

A sound of misplaced passion that urged her mistress to further overindulgence.

The atmosphere was tense.

Would Catherine splatter herself with the blood of her victim until he was but raw meat, or would she extract her just portion of lust from his sweating form?

The whip cracked over his head with a snap that made him jump for fright and then the Empress was upon his stricken form. Her thighs closed over his face, forcing him to pleasure her as the maids pulled on the chains to allow him no chance to struggle.

Catherine groaned with her lust as he serviced her from front to back, from ass to clitoris and then that tunnel that would consume him in a fury of desire. Her trembling form rode his face and mouth as she worked herself over him until he became faint with lack of breath.

Finally she climaxed and once again struck him with the whip.

This time it scored the inside of his legs with bitter fury at the moment that she fulfilled herself on his struggling form. But, his struggles were in vain. A line on his erection marked the passing of the braid and a single drop of blood perched halfway up his cock to balance in deep red uncertainty, before trickling to his thigh.

This was the opening chorus of her need.

Catherine dismounted and took up the silken bag.

With a small gesture she tossed it to the maid who had previously climaxed at the sight and sound of the whip. The maid caught it deftly and waited until the Empress had dismounted from her captive ride.

A quick pull and the bag was over his head and the drawstrings were pulled tight to trap him in a velvet prison of sound and darkness.

Now at last Catherine could fuck him.

The prick went deep inside her on the first move.

Her hips opened and her hands spread to allow a maid to support her as she slid over the throbbing prick and down to his very groin went her thighs.

A whispered word and a maid passed the knout.

An evil short weighted braided whip that normally took the lives of the serfs who had tried to escape their masters.

She kissed its leather braids and passed it to her maid to use on the man who had thought that the maid was his lover.

Blessed and approved.

The Empress Catherine relaxed, waiting for the performance to begin, waiting for the first strike, waiting to start the dance that would bring her to orgasm.

The first blow was almost gentle, it created the first tick of the metronome that was a fuck to end all fucks. Catherine closed her eyes and slid up the prick until it almost left her body before the second blow left a savage stripe across Dmitry's strong chest.

No cut, just a red weal that crossed from nipple to nipple, joining them by a line of agony.

Every blow of the knout made him buck. Every blow came as she pulled almost free of the rigid cock. Every blow cost him a portion of his life but he could not but help himself. His prick strained to reach into her soft tunnel as his body was ripped by the lead weighted whip.

On the fifth blow she opened her eyes to feast them on her unwilling and willing lover.

Unwilling through the agony of their love making, willing as he strained to satisfy and climax.

He strained to come and deliver an end to this parody of sex.

Finally, at the tenth stroke he came in a surge and thrust deep into his Empress. Splashed and splattered by his blood she finally orgasmed, the stimulation of her hands, the agony of her lover and the supremacy that she was exercising, all combined in a rush of excess and satisfaction.

For a moment she looked at his exhausted form. The features covered by velvet, the muscles of the neck constricted by the silken rope and the cuts and bruises that disfigured his muscular frame.

Then she opened her left hand and beheld the coin that she gripped with an intense grasp.

A gold coin slick with blood and sweat.

Dmitry would be disposed of after her maids had had their pleasure. They were harpies, demon sluts, feeders on the sexual scraps that she threw from her table of plenty.

History would not repeat her excesses to historians. They would be concealed from view as the curtain of time closed. She would be known as the Empress who fucked like a man and ruled like a man. Founded orphanages and extended the rule of Mother Russia to east and west.

Her nighttime hobbies would be forgotten by history.

She was the Empress.

Empress of Russia.

Empress of pain.

Act III

Revolutionary Russia 1919 AD Lubyanka Square in Moscow.

Part I

-------

'Everything changes. Even my own name!'

That was the thought that ran through the mind of Illona Petrayovitch Ekaterinova Romanov as she stared at the yellow brick front of the All-Russia Insurance Company in Lubyanka Square.

It was certainly worth watching!

Pure hate, untainted destruction and authentic show!

A sudden smash of glass, and a desk arced out of the fifth story window to land with a crash and an explosion of splintering wood on the cobbles almost at Illona's feet.

Not that she flinched.

No, the woman formerly known as Illona Petrayovitch Ekaterinova Romanov, occasionally 'the Baroness' and now as just plain Illona Khotliykova was not one to flinch at anything, let alone a little personal risk.

She had never flinched at pain, blood or death.

Never!

Of course the surname 'Romanov' was more than inadvisable in the present political climate. What, with a polemical and dialectical tension between the growing power of the Soviets and the supporters of the idea of a Duma with representative powers; now was not the time to stick the head above the parapet with a name like 'Romanov'!

In Odessa she had been known as 'the Baroness'. A member of the Ohkrana, the brutal instrument of the Emperor of all Russias.

But the Ohkrana had failed.

It was a broken hope and its officers had joined in the orgy of destruction that was the red terror and mostly tried to change sides.

But, changing sides in the turmoil of polemical political suppression and violence that knew no limits was not easy. Unless of course you had an brief and torrid affair with an representative of the Red Army political commissars at the right moment.

So Illona Petrayovitch Ekaterinova Romanov, decendant of both Ivan the Second and Catherine the Great gave up the family name and joined the revolutionaries of the red revolution. She became simple Illona Khotliykova, a Polish-Ukrainian girl cast into the seas of history being made in Russia.

The theory of dialectical materialism was in ascension and the violent uprising of the proletariat was going to sweep all before it in an incoming red tide, a tide of blood.

Surfing this tide was Illona as she made her way to Moscow, the centre of the turmoil, the centre of the violence and the centre of opportunity.

Now she stood, one hand on her hip and the other fingering the last heirloom of her past, the coin of Irene and Constantine, the Byzantine Empress and Emperor. Illona watched the All Russia Insurance building in Lubyanka Square being cleared of its capitalistic clutter to be prepared as the new head quarters of the Cheka.

Under her new boss, Feliks Dzierzynski, she was to supervise the conversion of the cellars and underground rooms, a job for which she was more than prepared and willing.

When the building had been stripped it was to become the hub for a Republic wide apparatus that would be designed to penetrate every corner of the society that was giving birth to a communist dictatorship.

Feliks had vision.

Illona could see where all of this was going to lead. It would lead to the cells of the Lubyanka prison overflowing within weeks as comrades Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin filled the new facility with the victims of their wrath.

Another table was thrown from a window onto the cobbles of the square!

Why?

Because it was decorated with gold leaf.

Because it had been used by capitalists.

Because it was enjoyable to destroy and difficult to create!

'When I have finished with the cellars the occupants of my cells will curse the day that they entered my private vision of hell,' she thought.

In Odessa she had been feared as 'the Baroness', here she would be more than feared, she would become a nightmare of dread in the darkness of the cells below this newly organised prison.

She would satisfy lust for power and pleasure with the connivance of the state. She knew what real torment was. It stemmed from betrayed love and perverted sex.

Part II

--------

Illona surveyed her office and contemplated the files that lay on her broad desk. Now ensconced in the depths of the Lubyanka prison she had become one of the trusted servants of Feliks Dzierzynski as she worked to put his dream of social terror into practical effect.

In charge of some of the rooms of 'special purpose', she organised the interrogation of miscreants, political and criminal, who resisted the new polemical ascendancy of the victory of the proletariat.

Not that she agreed with all the philosophical claptrap that was now being spouted by the newly powerful cadres who used words, more words and violence to assert their superiority! But it allowed her passions free reign and it permitted her to indulge her whims in a way that even her position in the Ohkrana never had.

She enjoyed the fear in their eyes when they were brought down to the cells. The shameful cringing as they were brought for questioning. The cries as the former overlords of Russia were crushed at her command. It was this control over others that thrilled her and made her tingle with the delicious feeling that she was the arbiter of life and death, of pleasure and suffering.

But, it was dangerous here in this grey prison.

Others strived to show themselves as faithful to the cause and in doing so they endangered and betrayed those around them.

In the end Illona's security depended on her casual but intense affair with her ultimate superior, Feliks Dzierzynski. His need to submit to her ruthless dominance was inverted in his need to destroy others and make them pay for his weakness.

So she flicked through the files with a dispassionate eye, picking victims and likely subjects from the mass of files with less concern for political correctness than finding those who would offer gratification and amusement.

Her legs stretched out under the huge oaken plank of the desk as she looked at the three candidates that she had selected for treatment. This was a joy, to decide her victims and have a whole apparatus of oppression to make whatever decision she made not only valid, but just and correct.

Pure pleasure!

Each file was a buff folder with reams of badly typed accusations and 'evidence' tucked inside. All three were doomed to never see the sun again because of their connections with the old regime.

Now she had to choose her victim!

First off there was Kirill Romovich Shapko. Idly she flicked through the pages and enjoyed browsing through the life that she was empowered to end. Ukrainian and an officer of the feeble White Russian army that was on the run from one end of Russia to the other.

The front page of the document listed his age and education so it was clear that he did not meet the criteria that she had set herself. He was basically just too old, ill educated and just not interestingly attractive.

Taking a stamp she marked the file as 'complete' on the cover and signed over the red ink with a flourish. This was a part of her satisfaction, this cold bureaucratic ending of life, a stamp followed by a signature that ended a life as surely as a bullet.