(Excerpt from Mission Rock)

...Claudia gathered up her reins and began to look about to see what it was that might have frightened the horse.

Peter—lying on a huge, flat rock taking the sun. Peter—wearing only bathing trunks, the crinkly hairs on his arms and legs and chest shining in the sun.

This particular rock—a boulder, probably—was called Mission Rock. It had always seemed to Claudia a ridiculous name. To Claudia, a mission was like her school, a thick-walled, brown-beamed place with rusted iron bells and the faint, eerie echo of liturgical chant. Why had the rock been so named? No one, not even Claudia’s mother or her father or the parents of her friends, could tell her.

She dismounted, tied her horse in a stand of mesquite, and crept near. Peter was asleep, she reckoned. Asleep and totally unaware of her. She was glad of it, glad to be able to look him over carefully and completely, everywhere, including the bulge his penis made. How close could she get? She pulled her boots off as quietly as she could so he wouldn’t be able to hear her approach.

He made a sound and squirmed. Immediately, she felt foolish. She attempted to pull her boots on again, but while one went on smoothly, the other seemed to have shrunken. She would need boot pulls, or at least to brace herself more securely in order to get it back on.

He made that sound again, a demi-groan, and turned onto his side. She had a sudden urge to curl up in the hollow that his body made. And another urge, immediately upon its heels, to touch his skin with her hand.

She had never felt this way before, or acted this way either. What was she doing there? What if he awakened and found her, one boot on, one boot off, mooning after him?

Horny, indeed.

He turned again, onto his back once more. His hand fell absently over that bulge. Stroke, stroke. Beneath the shimmering fabric, the bulge grew.