Nina Alexandrova was not sure what she would find in Saint Petersburg when the letter arrived summoning her the capital. As a young serf who toiled in the far inward reaches of the Empire she and her father had suffered greatly under the brutish local lord. Illiterate and unable to send a formal complaint herself, she chanced upon the charity of a clerk who took great personal risk translating her grievances to the written word and passed them along the channels available to petitioners such as she. Remarkably, her plea reached all the way to the ears of the Tsarina's court. Naively, she had thought justice or at least some form of redress may be possible, as rumors of the recently coronated Empress Catherine's generosity had suggested.
Instead, she was ushered from an antechamber, which dwarfed the hovel she had dwelt in her entire life several times over, into a bedroom where where a woman was astride a man, her hips working up and down in a frenzy, as she rode the man with abandon. Maids suckled at each of her breasts groping and fondling in turn while the woman rutted like some beast atop him. With the door closed behind her, she could only watch in shock as the orgy proceeded until, at last, the woman at the center of it all took notice of her and clambered free from her entangled lovers. More scandalous, illicit rumors had filtered to even Nina's remote village that the Tsarina was an irrepressible harlot who sought out every manner of debauchery in order to sate her carnal desires. To think that they were true!
Nina could hardly believe that she stood before the Tsarina herself. This woman, a diaphanous silk robe clinging to her body, her pale skin covered in sweat and her hair disheveled, could not be further from the stately monarch, the pillar of Christendom and bulwark against the heathen Turks that the name of the Tsarina conjured when the nobles invoked it to their serfs. Catherine was beautiful and Nina could feel herself withering as those wide German eyes lingered across the peasant girl's body.
"Parlez-vous français?" Catherine said. After a moment of confusion and embarrassment for the serf girl, Catherine spoke to her again, "You can learn. There is much to teach you," The Tsarina said. Even through her broken Russian, the sultry character of her voice carried, and the salacious curve of her smile conveyed what her words could not.
"My lady… I do not understand."
Catherine laughed, saying something in French to one of the naked women who filled the four-poster bed who all laughed in turn. "I was impressed. It was bold of you, to write directly to me."
Nina's blushing deepened, her skin turning nearly as crimson as the bed canopy as she tried her hardest not to stare at her Empress's bare breasts or at the pile of leering sirens and the coarse-haired Cossack behind her. The empress shifted her weight, accentuating the curves of her form, "Would you care to impress me again?"
***
The Empress showered Nina in gifts, the finest clothing, succulent meals, even a luxurious private apartment within the palace, opulence and decadence she could scarcely have dreamed of. In turn, she also demanded Nina take to bed whatever man was Catherine's fancy at the time, and lie with him repeatedly and report back to the Empress about his performance and physical condition. If he was satisfactory, the man would progress to the Empress's own chambers for further pleasure.
Catherine bade Nina to sleep with dozens of men, even several at once; women as well. The Empress never seemed to tire of sex, and when she became bored of one lover, she immediately sought out another, which forced Nina to match her voracious appetites. Her duties as the L'éprouveuse were not to be taken lightly - it was more than simply having sex; Nina had to provide Catherine detailed accounts of her activities and report their fitness. Meeting the Tsarina's ever more wanton and depraved was exhausting, at times bizarre, work, and an endless parade of men that left her feeling like a whore, dirty and used up.
The excesses Catherine imposed on Nina mounted, and the formerly innocent peasant girl could now scarcely remember waking without the taste of a stranger's semen upon her teeth, the smell of a man's sweat, or noblewomen's perfume on her skin. At times, Catherine insisted that Nina sleep with several men at once while she sat in the room, watching and directing each stroke and thrust.
The Empress had opened a vast gulf between the world Nina had lived in, of dirt and thoughts of the next harvest, and replaced it with silverware, broaches, ballgowns, corsets, and petticoats of fine silk alongside unfathomable perversion; endless and constant cavorting according to Catherine's whims.
The escalation continued, the carnal whirlwind of being Catherine's favored plaything until, one day, Nina found herself summoned to Catherine's bedchamber to find most of the room taken up by a stallion. It was a magnificent muscular animal.
"Your Majesty… what is this?" asked Nina.
"My next candidate, of course. But naturally, I shall require you to make your customary examinations.
"Your Majesty… "
Catherine simply smiled. Nina knew what lay behind that and stopped protesting, hesitantly taking a position beneath the animal. She felt the heat radiating from the beast, her eyes going wide as she looked at its immense flared erection, a shaft nearly as long and wide as her whole upper body, above veined testicles each larger than her head. How could any woman expect to mount such an enormous organ?