Chapter 1

The first time that Meg heard the term “Malicious Intent”, she was sitting at the defendant’s table concentrating on looking innocent for the jury in a way that looked sincere and not fake like some Hollywood actress going for a screen test. Her handsome hunk of a defense counsel had forcefully stressed with his strong arm wrapped deliciously around her shoulders that it was probably the most important thing she could possibly do in the face of all the forensic evidence they had accumulated against her.

Meg was never really overly concerned about the outcome of her trial because she was totally innocent of all charges and she had absolute faith in the American jurisprudence system.

Her father had been a judge and she knew that judges were always in the corner of innocent people everywhere. It was a cornerstone of her private personal beliefs and she didn’t really see the need to hiring and paying these legal people so much money when no jury with any common sense at all could possibly consider her guilty of such a devious and mean-spirited crime. This judge happened to be a female and she looked like she was a thousand years old with a hair style that went out of style shortly after the end of the last Great War. Meg had never actually seen her smile or shown any sense of humor at some of the ridiculous fabrications the attorneys floated about like trial balloons to persuade the jury into their way of looking at the evidence.

She wanted to ask the third chair, the humorless Charlie exactly what the hell, “Malicious Intent” meant because it sounded so terrible that she wished the judge and the prosecutor were not looking straight at her when they uttered those ominous words. It seemed particularly unfair because she was arguably the least malicious person to ever graduate from Saint Bernadette’s Academy for Young Women. She never said anything mean about any other girl no matter how silly or ignorant their actions. Her grandmother had cautioned her when she was still in that period before her periods that if she couldn’t say anything nice, just to keep her mouth shut and listen without making any comments.

Meg would be the first to admit that she had smoked the funny cigarettes with her new friends at the actor’s studio but it seemed all normal and ordinary to her in the spirit of the times. The simple fact was that all of her friends and most of the people she was acquainted with for one reason or another did it almost without thinking about it, like it was a matter of second nature and quite acceptable in decent society.

In fact, she hadn’t heard a single student ever voice any objection to the secondary smoke situation despite the fact that she constantly heard most of the young people’s adamant procrastinations about the evils of tobacco smoking. Regular cigarettes were absolutely forbidden on government property and recently most buildings even discouraged outside smoking areas in the off chance that someone might walk within inhaling distance of a lighted cigarette. In retrospect, she had to admit the contradiction of total war against smoking cigarettes or any kind of legal tobacco set against the placid acceptance of smoking “dope” was an out and out conundrum for which she had no words of wisdom to offer an explanation.

Sometimes, Meg filled her supposed “fix” with regular tobacco from her grandmother’s stash of Marlboro lights and pretended she was getting in a good mood from the fine “weed” of choice. She just had to be sure not to share with anyone because they would discover her addiction to the dirty habit of smoking cigarettes. She didn’t miss the formerly illegal drugs now used by most of the general public for “medicinal” purposes because they made her far too compliant in allowing undeserving boys to get into her pants and dulled her senses when it came time to experience the “tingle” she loved so very much at the conclusion of physical intercourse.

She knew that the “entered into evidence” butts found at the crime scene with her DNA and special brand of lipstick all over them were an absolute illegal plant but she couldn’t explain that convincingly to her defense counsel without confessing her terrible secret of filthy cigarette smoking against all norms of accepted behavior. The person that had planted the evidence must have not been one of her close friends because he or she didn’t know her weakness for Marlboro Lights vs ordinary weed of choice.

Meg considered passing this revelation on to Charlie, the previously mentioned third chair, but decided against it because sometimes the truth might work to set you free but it could also work against her to reveal the depth of her deceptive nature. She felt that her protestations of innocence would fall on deaf ears if she showed her feet were made of clay just like every other sinful human being.

(Six months earlier) Meg and her “best friend forever” Heather with the hazel eyes were sunning their recently-turned-twenty bikini-clad bodies on the gleaming super-clean white decks of her Uncle Tony’s over-sized sailboat hoping the watchers on the shoreline were getting a thrill from seeing their bare curves stretched out in artistic splendor as close to being truly naked as the day they were born. In all honesty, Meg had to agree that Heather had the sexier body because she was a true natural “double D” young lady with a bonus posterior package exposed by her skimpy bikini that would inspire any male within viewing distance to absolute stiffened resolve for even the remotest possibility of carnal relations. Meg would be the first to admit that her less impressive petite budding breasts were a bit boyish unless she assumed an “on all fours” position and the sheer force of gravity helped shape her offerings into a satisfactory handful for male sensory pleasure.

Of course, Meg seldom took up that most exciting of positions except in those instances when she was driven to a state of submission totally alien to her persona. Generally it was due to the animal magnetism of her male partner or her shamelessly sensuous appetite when whetted by some aphrodisiac of an unknown nature. She had encountered a few such compounds that robbed her of her normal reluctance to engage in such foolishness and turned her into a slab of incoherent meat ready for serious pounding and complete loss of feminine dignity. For that reason, she never drank any suspicious drink unless she was the one that removed the cap personally and she never took any tidbit offered but selected one randomly without any guidance.

In retrospect, she realized that her caution was probably the reason why she was the one being tried for murder instead of Heather, her BFF. Of course, that would mean it was her resting on the metal table in the coroner’s office and not her closest friend in the whole wide world.

Heather was notoriously loose in matters of nocturnal fun and games, but that was not considered a negative feature in today’s hedonistic world of carnal bliss. Meg knew her friend had scored a considerable higher number of attractive males on her list of satisfactory “happy endings”, but she was not in the least bit envious because she prided her self-enforced ability to be selectively assured of high standards for her mating game of horizontal pleasures when the time was ripe for a nice tumble behind a closed door.

The pair of them had attended Julian Winters gallery exhibition wearing the very latest of European fashions and in Meg’s case, she dressed in “commando” style underneath to eliminate any panty-line to detract from the gown’s perfect fit. Heather had giggled at her adventurous attitude and she ran her finger all over her backside to see if her best friend would flinch at the touch.

The exhibition was a huge success for the bearded Julian.

Meg was happy for him and she remembered him in happier days when his beard had tickled the insides of her quivering legs as he licked her into joyful acceptance of everything that was sure to follow as night studiously follows day with casual certainty. She was not particularly fond of Julian for either lengthy conversation or discussions that required minimal intelligence, but she liked the feel of his beard under her skirts and the fact that he was gentle even when he tested her anal ability to stretch magically for his explorations. It was nice to have a real gentleman putting her through her paces and she did her best to meet his expectations of feminine submission like some silly schoolgirl in awe of his creative abilities. In fact, she even managed to come before he did and that was a first for her even if she was at the beginning chapters of her sexual life and still had a lot to learn about the needs and desires of the opposite sex.