“Now, that’s the spirit,” Liu said, showing Lucas a forced smile. “So, you gonna hook up with the horny bondage fox or not?”

Lucas immediately rejected her idea. “Still not,” he answered. Even if he knew that Liu was right on an intellectual level, that he needed to move on with his life, it didn’t make it any easier to do so. Whether he wanted to or not, he knew that was what he needed to do. He was going to have to move slowly, and he was going to have to do his best not to beat himself up. “This still isn’t right, you know?”

“What? Being happy?” Liu asked.

“No, you’re being here. Naked, specifically.” The shock of the conversation had worn off, and Lucas’s body and mind were now once more at war: the familiar sight of his beloved wife, back from the grave and sitting in front of him while baring all in one of the most romantic settings imaginable, was causing all sorts of reactions in his body, but something in him was screaming about how wrong it all was.

“Sorry.” Liu’s expression mirrored Lucas’s own concern for a moment. “But it’s a shame if you’re really against her.”

“Why?” Lucas asked.

“Because I already paid her ten gold pieces to give you a neck massage while we ate. She said she had to make a stupid outfit first, but she’ll be in soon,” Liu said, snickering a little.

What the hell? Lucas grumbled. “You didn’t really, did you?”

Liu just gave him a smile and shrugged. “I’d have gotten someone to give me one too, but I didn’t think you’d want to see another guy touching this body. Seemed like you might kill everyone in the manor if that happened.”

I don’t even like seeing you in that body, Lucas thought, still annoyed with the situation. “Liu, tell me you didn’t really pay some girl to come in here and massage me.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Liu answered. “Who knows if I went out of my way to spend my hard-earned and cheat-code-generated in-game gold to pay some money-grubbing hussy to give you a spa experience? Time will tell,” she said, grabbing the third bottle of beer.

Lucas was going to ask her about it again, but before he could, he noticed the door open. Bonnie walked in, placed a folded-up outfit on a marble-topped table near the door, and then started walking around the tub over to Lucas.

“What? Bonnie, you don’t need to—”

“You can pay me twice as much as she did to stop, and I really will, boss, but until then, other boss paid good money for my services,” she said. She then grabbed Lucas’s shoulders and pushed down so hard that she almost dunked him underneath the water in the extravagantly large tub. “Now, relax and enjoy the service, boss. I promise next time you’ll request it yourself.”