Sebastian surveyed the boy wading in the water. It was suggested that a boat ride could offer a distraction from the heat of a sultry August afternoon. A swimsuit would have been appropriate, but he could not have anticipated Ciel's desire for an impulsive dip.

In truth, the butler had suggested it.

Ciel had a rigid expression, as if there would be no enjoyment in splashing about, but then his enthusiastic strip down had betrayed that sentiment. For that moment he was a child of nature, swinging bare legs over the boat, plopping into the lazy current. His feet couldn't touch the bottom, and he gripped the boat's edge. Sebastian folded the clothes the Earl had tossed aside, watching his charge paddle in the placid lake.

"Come into the water."

Sebastian folded his attire and set it next to Ciel's, then slipped into the stream with ease, hardly disrupting the boat's equilibrium.

"Come here... my arms are getting tired."

Tugging at the man's sinewy arm, Ciel waded close; the water had a way of easing two bodies in adjacent proximity. It could facilitate the pressing of slender chests, for Ciel to wrap his legs around that hard waist.

No warning was given as Sebastian pulled the boy under the surface. Any protest was sealed with lips feeding the boy the air from his lungs. They sank deeper, hands pressing tighter, water heavy over them. Ciel clung to shoulders hard as stone, and Sebastian's breath roared in his popping ears. He squinted to see hair wisp about the demon's eyes wide and red in the murky expanse. Here was a force more ferocious than the clutches of untamed nature. Ciel perceived himself more as artifice of the preternatural, willing to descend with that infernal mystery.

The water would not take him.