Barney winked at me from across the table. I felt a blush rise to my cheeks. I gasped to feign righteous indignation and hoped that everyone just assumed that my cheeks were pink with fury, not with girlish delight. I reminded myself that I was married to Marshall and dug my nails into my thighs to stop myself from leaping across the table and ravishing Barney right then and there in a way even kinkier than even he could imagine. I told myself that these fantasies about a man whose treatment of women disgusted me were just due to the monotony of marriage and that if Marshall and I just spiced it up a little, this new sexual depravity I was experiencing would die down. In the back of my mind, I knew that there was something more to this. Before I further explore this thought, I slammed it back down like I was playing a particularly violent version of Whack-a-Mole. No matter how restless I was getting, I had to remember that I was a married woman and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I had an affair, either physical or emotional. To try to wrench myself back into the moment, I turned to Marshall and started frenching him like nobody's business. Unfortunately, this didn't do the trick because in my mind's eye, it wasn't Marshall I was imagining, but Barney.
"Oooo, a bit voyeuristic, are we Lilly?" Barney smirked at me and waggled his eyebrows. I rolled my eyes.
"I don't need your skeevy stories to turn me on Barney, I have as much heat as I can handle, right next to me." I lied as I smiled up at my husband. I knew that Barney was right, and I feared for my marriage.

I didn't drink that night, which was unusual for me, but I was worried that if I didn't keep my head clear, I might do something that I would regret. No one made my new sobriety into a big deal, aside from a couple questions about whether I was pregnant again. I laughed this off and assured everyone that I just wasn't drinking because I wanted to be a sensible mother for my first child, not because another baby was on the way. I immediately regretted saying this after Marshall guiltily pushed his beer away from him. For some reason, this annoyed me, I appreciated that he was trying to be responsible, but god, no girl wants responsible, she wants dangerous, and complicated. She wants a man who presents a bad-boy facade to the world, but shows his inner kindness solely to her. A girl wants a guy who is a puzzle. Marshall is an open book.

I held Robin up while she staggered into a cab, then got in with her to make sure that she got home okay since was so drunk that she could barely walk. Barney got in to help me support her dead weight, but pretended that it was because Robin was hilarious when she was drunk. There wasn't enough room for Marshall to get in with us, so he rode in a separate cab with Ted. I sighed, hoping that we wouldn't run into any red lights so that I could get away from the object of my desire and get back home to Marshall. Even Robin's presence in the cab with us wouldn't be much help since she had just passed out on my lap. I saw Barney try to look up her extremely short skirt and I whacked him in the arm.

"God, Barney! Could you not be a total pervert for at least five seconds! Robin's not some random bimbo, she's one of your best friends, a friend you used to be in love with, so treat her like a person, not a sex object that exists solely for your sexual entertainment! Someday, you won't be able to draw women in with your looks and your money and your dumb pickup lines, and when that happens, you are going to be alone, truly alone and you won't be able to keep the loneliness at bay by banging some insecure girl you met in a bar! You'll just be some old man who still thinks he's sixteen, all alone in your big house without a single friend and no one to blame but yourself!" I was breathing hard, my face red from my long rant. Barney leaned in to defend himself, but I never found out what he would have said, because the moment he opened his mouth, I closed the space between us and kissed him, I kissed him long and hard. I bit his lip and dug my nails into his back and moaned with pleasure, then I ran my fingers through his beautiful, silky blond hair. Kissing him was so different from kissing Marshall. Where Marshall's kisses were soft and sweet and full of love, Barney's were hard, and desperate, full of fire and lust. I pulled myself away with a herculean effort. Somehow the wrongness of what I was doing made it even more sexually arousing. That kiss with Barney was better than any sex I'd had with Marshall, even better than that time in college when we had experimented with bondage before Marshall realized that it was too kinky for his tastes. After being with only one man for over a decade, and then having a taste of what I had been missing all of those years, something had been awakened in me, and after that taste of being bad, I was ravenous for more.

When I got home, I took a really long, really cold shower to get rid of the residual horniness that I felt after my kiss with Barney. I had to get this under control before I ruined my marriage and what was left of my self-worth.

"Want some company?" I felt Marshall's arms wrap around me and I just about jumped out of my skin. "Oooh, It's cold, been fantasizing about someone? Because I know a much better way to work out your frustrations." Marshall started kissing my neck. He moved lower and then we had some more fun in the shower before we moved it to the bedroom. It was fun, but something was missing. After my night with Barney, anything else felt tame and unexciting. I couldn't fall sleep that night, so I called Barney.

"Barney, can I meet you at your house in about ten minutes?"

"Ready for round two already? Lily, your sex drive is almost as powerful as mine!" I could hear the smirk in Barney's voice.

"Get your mind out of the gutter Barney! I just want to talk to you about how we can avoid a repeat performance of the Lily-Barney extreme cardio workout."

"Whatever you say Lily. I just hope you're sure that you'll be able to keep your hands off of me once you get here."

I sighed. "I'll see you in ten minutes." I put my coat and shoes on but didn't bother to get dressed, I wouldn't be at Barney's apartment long, and I hoped that the unattractiveness that I felt whenever I wore flannel pajamas would prevent me from cheating on Marshall for a second time tonight. I took a cab, because I wanted to spend the smallest amount of time possible out of the house so that it would be less likely that Marshall would wake up and wonder where I'd gone. After a moment's hesitation, I knocked on Barney's door. He opened the door for me and I walked in.

"Barney, I can't continue to have an affair with you. It's wrong and it's not fair to either Marshall or Robin. She's still in love with you and I can't do this to my best friend and my husband. I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

"Lily. Listen to me, Robin's not still in love with me, she's with Ted right now, so you're not betraying her by having an affair with me, and as for not being able to live with yourself after cheating on Marshall. Believe me, you won't care about that after awhile. I've done this with other women, and at first, they're wracked with guilt over cheating on their husbands, but eventually, they realize that if they hadn't started having an affair, they would've come to resent their husbands for preventing them from having a relationship with anyone else. You don't need to worry, Lily. You're not a bad person."

"Yes, Barney, I am. What we did in that cab was wrong, and no matter how much I might want to do it again, I can't, WE can't. So please help me figure out how to prevent our affair from continuing."

Barney smiled. "You don't want to stop having an affair."

"Yes I do!"

"No, you don't Lily. If you had, you wouldn't have come over here. You know that I'm not the person to talk to when trying to convince yourself to act morally. At best, I could play devil's advocate, but you know that I would never try to talk you out of an affair. You came over here because you wanted to continue and you wanted me to help you feel less guilty about it."

"What?! No! I thought like we could talk like reasonable adults and try to figure this out and stop cheating with each other. Clearly, I was wrong." I started walking towards the door. Then something struck me. "Why do you care whether we have an affair or not anyway? There are tons of girls who would be happy to bed you. Do you want me because of the challenge? Because I can't imagine what else it would be."

I saw some unplaceable emotion flicker over Barney's face."Yeah." He said. "It's the challenge. I've gotten a little bored lately, and I thought that if I could get the one woman in the world who has been able resist me on a regular basis, that would be the ultimate affirmation and that it would be fun, and I was right."

I glared at Barney. "You are such a terrible person! You've known Marshall for years! You get bored, so you decide to try and have an affair with his wife?! How can you look at yourself in the mirror?" I angrily pulled the door open, but Barney grabbed my arm and shut the door behind me.

"Don't! You! Touch! Me!" I spat at Barney. He spun me around and started kissing me. All other thoughts fled from my mind as I unbuttoned his pajamas and lowered myself to the floor. We undressed each other and started doing it on his floor. With anyone else, it would have been cold and uncomfortable, but with Barney, I didn't notice anything besides how amazing he was. After three rounds, I was so worn out that there was only one word to describe the incredible experience I'd just had.

"Barney. That, was legendary."