Not wanting some anonymous cab driver, Barney calls for the town car and the discretion of Ranjit; it will cost him a pretty penny at this hour, but the man is loyal.

Once he has her locked safely in the backseat, Barney breathes a sigh of relief that he managed to contain a hopped-up-on-God-knows-what Robin from running wild through Manhattan doing all manner of things she'd regret in the morning.

He thinks maybe there's a part of Robin that senses it too, as after a few minutes she tells him, "I'm glad you were the one here with me tonight, Barney."

Robin means it with every fiber of her being. Because they get each other on this whole other level, and to be sharing this wonderful, incredible night with him makes it even more magical. It wouldn't have been the same with anyone else; it needed to be him. "You really are my best friend. I know your secrets and you know mine. Maybe not all of them, but more than anyone ever has." With everything they've been through together, it's like they're bonded forever. She's never understood that until tonight, but it's there and it's strong. "I feel so close to you," she enthuses, hugging his arm between both of hers.

Barney knows it's the drugs talking, making her feel euphoric, like she loves everything and everyone. He's just the person nearby and, therefore, taking the brunt of it. But it doesn't stop him – perhaps inspires him; she'll never remember this in the morning – from answering truthfully, "Well, we are."

She skims her hand down to where his sits against the leather, noticing there isn't a sliver of space between them on the seat. It makes her laugh, just now getting Barney's joke. "I didn't mean close on the bench."

"Neither did I," he smiles. "We are very close friends. Maybe a little too close by a lot of people's standards."

Robin shakes her head. "There's no such thing as too close. I like being with you. So why shouldn't I be? I get to be myself with you, do whatever I want…" With a sultry giggle, she adds, "Well, almost."

She walks two fingers up the shiny silver of his shirt to the open neck where she can touch warm bare skin, and Barney groans at the unfairness of it. "Why couldn't you have been this way before? Do you have any idea the fun we could have had ?"

"That's what I mean. I want to have fun! The night is just starting. Are you sure we can't go back to the club?"

"I'm sure we can't," he says firmly. But her insistence on going back for more fun does highlight a new problem: he doesn't dare leave her at her apartment by herself. Lord only knows what she'd do, or if she'd even stay there. "But I don't think you should be alone tonight."

Robin pins him with bedroom eyes. "Me either."

"I'll take you back to the apartment," Barney clarifies. "To Ted."

"No," she insists, suddenly no longer happy and flirty but genuinely upset at the idea. He even witnesses a flash of dread pass over her features. "Not to Ted. He wouldn't…he won't understand. He thinks you're a bad influence on me."

That knowledge stings a bit, though he can't say he's surprised. "Then I don't know – "

"Take me home with you."

"That's…" The best and worst proposition he's ever had. There was a time Barney would have killed for an opening like this – so he could get into her opening. And the crazy thing is there were no plays. There was no seduction even needed. The play ran itself. This really is a once in a lifetime scenario straight out of his Penthouse dreams, and from a woman he's spent months wanting to bone. But there are rules about situations like this, and with Robin in particular his conscious won't let him break them. "…probably not such a good idea."

"It's a great idea. You take me home….and I'll sleep with you."

That has Barney's keen interest. Though he can't take her up on it, he still wants to know, "You really would?"

"I have to," Robin smirks. "You only have one bed!" She laughs copiously at her own joke. When she finally recovers, Robin twists on the seat to face him, beaming. "Whatever that girl gave me, this is some gooood stuff. I feel incredible; I've never felt so incredible. You should feel this way too," she says in a rush. "Everyone should feel this way all the time. Here." Reaching out, she takes his hand and presses it to her chest. "Can you feel the way my heart beats? Like magic and love and life." She moves her free hand up, placing her open palm over the left side of his chest. "I feel your heartbeat…." After a few seconds, she gasps in wide-eyed wonder, realizing, "Our hearts are beating the same. It's like the same beat. Connected. Do you feel that?"

She kneads his pec rhythmically and his fingers answer in kind, involuntarily squeezing her breast that's still beneath his hand. "I feel it alright," he whimpers – because the struggle is very real – and withdraws his hand.

"I don't know what it is, but I feel like I'm on fire," Robin pants, hastily shedding her jacket.

"I can crack a window," Barney offers, but then she's rubbing her hands up her neck and into her hair, and he understands before she even corrects him.

"Not the temperature. Like when my dogs were in heat."

She drops her head back against the seat to expose more of her neck for caressing, breathy at her own touch, and for her sake Barney leans over to close the partition. She's going to be upset enough that he's witnessed all this. Ranjit would be overkill.

"Don't you feel that too?" Robin murmurs. "Your body on fire?" Grabbing his hand, she places it on her upper thigh. "We should put each other out."

"Robin," he warns, pulling his hand away again. Women always talk about how grabby men are, but she's like an octopus! "You've got to stop making me touch you."

"But you're Barney Stinson," she objects, at a loss. "You love touching women, any chance you get."

"Not you," he shoots back adamantly. She flinches and blinks three times quickly before looking up at him with lingering hurt she's unsuccessful at masking in her current state. It makes him soften his tone as he discloses quite honestly, "Robin…I would love to touch you, I spent months telling you that. But not now. Now I can't. And you can't keep touching me, either."

"It feels so good though," shepouts with such aching frustration at being denied.

"I know. I know it does, baby, but you can't." He catches her hand as it drifts low over his abs. "I'm serious, or I'll go sit up front with Ranjit."

"Fine," she frowns. "But you're no fun."

He'd like to be all kinds of fun, only he's not allowed to be and it's killing him.

After that, Robin tries her best to do as Barney asked. 'No touching', he'd said….But she can't help herself! His skin feels amazing – and his body against hers at the club, the pressure, the friction, it was better than the best orgasm she's ever had.

Riding in silence now in the dark, she scoots back over on the bench until she's close enough to brush her bare arm along his. The feeling is incredible. She needs more of it. Everywhere. But especially here, she thinks, arching her back to run the side of her breast against his arm.

Barney's eyes fall closed and he takes a long, steading breath. "Robin, what did I say?"

"I'm not touching you."

"Parts of you are," he counters wryly, but she persists in rubbing against him. "Okay, look, Sch – " He's about to call her 'Scherbatsky', but in light of what she said earlier he quickly switches it to " – Robin. You have got to stop that. You don't know what you're doing."

"Mm-mm, not gonna stop," she sighs, continuing to rub the soft mound of her breast against him in slow circles, and it is absolutely undoing him. "I like it too much….feels too good to stop."

Barney is torn over what to do. A part of him – large and fully awakened – wants to let her continue rubbing anything of hers on anything of his. The better part of him thinks of fleeing to the front seat, but they're currently going forty-five down the road. Then she says something that halts his internal debate in its tracks: "I haven't had sex in over a month."

"What?" He looks at her studyingly. "Really?" Doing a rapid calculation in his head, he realizes that means she hasn't had sex the entire time he's been back from LA. "But…Ted."

"Ted and I like different things."

"In bed?"

She shrugs. "That too."

"Wow…." This puts things in a whole new light….Meanwhile, she's still rubbing against him like a cat who's begging to be petted. Barney shakes himself out of it. "Still, I – you can't keep doing that," he maintains, gently setting her away from him.

"But I need it," Robin conveys, full of yearning. "I need it so much, Barney, you don't even know. We're bros, can't you just…you know, throw me one?"

Barney is caught between amusement, desire that's fated to be as frustrated as hers, and a moral need not to give in and give her what they both want. "Scherbatsky, I would love nothing more than to throw you one, and in any other sit– "

"Just give me your hand," she cuts him off impatiently, grabbing it and dragging it down her neck. She moans softly when he gets to her cleavage and even manages to start pushing his fingers down her top before he can wrench his hand away.

"Robin, we can't. Listen to me, I can't."

She looks devastated in the second he can see her before she slumps her head down and her hair flops over her features like a silken brown sheet of rain.

"Hey." Barney reaches up and sweeps her hair back away from her face, letting his fingertips graze her check in the process. While she isn't likely to remember any of this in the morning, looking into her needy, glistening eyes, he can't bear to have her feeling rejected yet again tonight. "Never think it's because I don't want to," he tells her, softly brushing her hair behind her shoulder. "Believe me, I have never wanted anything more in my life. I just can't. You know I can't."

Robin nods acceptingly. "Because of Ted."

Barney considers the answer to that and realizes that Ted is not the real reason, not reason enough. That's not what's actually stopping him. "Because you're not yourself right not." If she were doing all this sober, even with how strongly he believes in The Bro Code, he can't positively say he'd be able to resist.

When they arrive at his building, Barney knows he's about to be put to the true test. Alone at his place is a minefield of temptation, and he rushes as quickly as possible to get them to the safety of separate rooms where Robin can sleep it off. "Alright," he says, guiding her straight into the bedroom. "Time to get you to bed."

"Yes," she nods eagerly.

"To sleep," he firmly clarifies.

Not at all approving of the plan, Robin huffs out a breath. She isn't even tired…but she does have other things in mind. With a coy smile, she unbuttons her jeans, has the zipper down and open to her panties by the time Barney can protest.

"Wait – what are you doing?"

"I have to if I'm going to sleep," she reasons. "I can't wear jeans to bed. Besides, you're always talking about the highest thread count in the world. I want to feel your silk sheets against my skin."

Right now, Robin is the bro Barney's most concerned with doing right by – A bro does not take advantage of another bro when said bro is too high to know what is happening – but when she eases her jeans over her hips and down her legs, dammit, even as her bro he can't peel his eyes away.

She's wearing those cheeky boy shorts where the bottom of her ass spills out – not just the bottom; most of it, honestly – and Barney wants nothing more, he would literally give anything to be able to have her right now, bang her into oblivion the way she wants him to. Which is likely exactly what she's hoping by stripping down in front of him this way.

She goes for the hem of her shirt, beneath which her earlier near-flashing led him to believe she's not wearing a bra, and Barney bursts out a panicked, "No!" He's only human, after all, and has a short fuse at that. He has his limits where even The Bro Code can't save him. "That stays on."

"Fine," she grumbles, relenting, and he hurries to pull back the sheets for her; the sooner he gets her body covered the better.

Robin slinks down onto the mattress obligingly enough, but doesn't pull the quilt back over herself. Instead she just glides her hands and legs over the mattress, enjoying the cool smoothness of the sheets against her skin, the tactile, sensual pleasure of it.

But it's not him.

She wants it to be him. "Don't go to the couch. Sleep here with me. Take your clothes off too. Let's be naked together."

"You're not naked," he's quick to point out. He's already planning to use that in his defense.

"I could be," she offers readily. "Do you want me to be?"

Yes. "No."

"Bar-ney," she pouts. "I can't be alone, remember? If you come to bed with me, we don't have to actually – what if we just – we could just…touch each other," Robin bargains temptingly, crossing her arms above her head and arching her back invitingly. "It feels so good to touch…and be touched."

Turning her head on his pillow, she licks the inside of her wrist, moaning because the sensation is so amazing along both her tongue and her arm. Even her saliva drying on her skin is phenomenal; she can feel it through every nerve ending. She drops her hand down to her abdomen, fingers sliding up beneath her shirt. "Come lick me, Barney."

"Good god." Barney swallows heavily and turns away from the bed, feeling himself reaching a breaking point. He knows he can't have sex with her, that's out of the question. But would it truly be so bad if he just got her off? Just touched her the way she's begging him to? Lord knows he's had dream after dream of watching her come, being the one who gives her that pleasure.

Debating, he turns back toward Robin and she's all but writhing on the bed. He can see she needs it badly. She'll never rest in this state.

Their eyes meet, and she divulges enticingly, "I want to lick you."

Something inside him short-circuits at that. She can't be the one doing the licking, he's well aware. But if he keeps it all for her, if he just makes her climax would that really be against The Bro Code? How wrong could it really be if he's not getting anything out of it?

His body takes a step towards the bed of its own volition.

But then an inner conscience he wasn't even sure he still possessed kicks in. Dude, she's your best friend's girlfriend. And you're already getting something out of it; that's why you want to do it so badly….If you let her undress the rest of the way, if you touch her while she's like this – and still dating Ted – your friendship will never come back from that.

Barney abruptly stops himself. Thinking fast, he throws her the spare pillow instead. "Here."

It lands against Robin's side. "What's this for?" she whines, plucking it off her in irritation. "I want you to come lay with me, not some pillow."

He wants that too, but he's gone through trial by fire here and discovered in the past thirty seconds that, as hard as she is to resist, he values her far more than he values just getting busy – even when she's begging for it. And this pillow idea was ingenious, a way to help her out now without doing anything that will damage their relationship in the future. "Put it between your knees," he instructs.

"That's dumb, and the bed keeps spinning. I need you to hold it down. Please… Robin turns onto her side facing him, curled up in a sort of fetal position in an effort to ease the desperate, throbbing ache. Back at the club when they were dancing, she felt Barney's erection. When she thinks about it now, imagines it pulsing inside her, filling her up, the heat gathered low intensifies until she feels like she'll burst from it. "Please," she whimpers, squirming. "I just need – "

"I know what you need," Barney cuts her off, pushing his fingers up into his hair and scratching at the crown of his head distractedly, his every molecule straining with the effort to hold himself together, stop himself from climbing onto the bed and giving her what she needs, what they both need at this point. "Try the pillow, Scherbatsky." At least it will help one of the two of them out.

When she opens her mouth to object, he flat out lies to her. "It's a special kind that helps hold the bed still."

"But I want you."

"Just try it." He takes the pillow from her hand and lifts her knee.

"I don't see how – oh!" she gasps as he shoves it between her legs, the pressure there exquisite. She rubs against it experimentally. "Oooh…." Robin sighs, her mouth falling open in ecstasy. Losing focus to sensation, she starts full-on humping the pillow.

Barney's groin tightens further in response. He would love to at least stay here and watch, but his better impulses take over. He knows if she were in her right mind she wouldn't want him witnessing this.

Rolling over onto it, Robin groans out, "This is a special pillow!"

"Have fun," Barney smirks. "Sleep afterwards. You'll need it; you're gonna feel awful in the morning."