Thantophobia, noun
The phobia of losing someone you love.
I winked at the girl and clicked a button next to the window.
The electric blinds came down in a flash, shielding us from any unwanted, prying eyes.
I shifted my attention to the beauty on my floor and kneeled down next to her, my fingers gentle as I tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
She looked up at me, those dark eyes filled with nothing but adoration and the desperate need to please.
“Did I do g-good?” she stuttered, her full bottom lip jutting out, her eyes begging me to answer in the affirmative. “P-please tell me I was a good girl for you, Miles… P-please, I need to hear it.”
I took her chin in my fingers and gently lifted it, staring into her eyes. They looked endless in the dimly-lit room, the chocolate brown of her irises almost black in this light.
“I need you to cry,” I told her plainly. “Cry some more for me, you pretty little thing. I want to taste your beautiful tears.”
She blinked against the tears brimming in her eyes, and a single, fat drop of salty liquid slid down her cheek. I leaned closer to her, my mouth parting and my tongue dipping out between my lips, licking at her cheeks and tasting her. Desperation and fear mixed with lust in a delicious cocktail I just couldn’t resist.
She looked back up at me as I smiled down at her.
“Will you do it now?” she whispered. “Will you do it, Miles? Please, you promised you’d do it if I cried…”
I let her stew, waiting to answer until she was so damn desperate a soft little whimper escaped her lips. I loved torturing them this way. Loved seeing them so desperate for me they would do anything in the world for my approval.
The girl in front of me was fucking ripe for it.
She would do anything, and gladly fucking so.
“Come with me,” I said, offering her my hand. “Let me capture it.”
She raised a shaky hand into mine and I helped her to her feet, slowly leading her trembling body out of the room. I admired the sway of her full hips, the way her tiny body was still so feminine despite its petiteness. She was a fucking stunner, and now, with my cum dripping down her thighs, she was finally ready.
I led her into a perfectly plain room with white furniture. A simple white bed, a white chair, and a white dresser.
“Where do you want me?” she asked shakily, turning to face me.
“On the chair,” I said, walking to the dresser and rummaging in its drawers.
She seemed disappointed, but I didn’t have time to think about that. All I could imagine was how the stark contrast of her dark skin would look against the white room. I wanted it immortalized. I wanted her, in this moment, forever.
I already knew which picture I was going to pair her with.
An image of candles burning bright in a church my mother used to go to. Her innocence, her wishful eyes, would be the perfect pairing for the whispered prayers spoken when the candles were lit and placed at the altar. Today’s girl was demure naïveté mixed with an almost palpable need to please.
She wasn’t a girl who enjoyed pain.
She was a woman who loved to please, and in her desire to do so, she’d gotten me off so fucking good my balls felt drained.
But the beautiful girl in front of me wasn’t the reason my dick was still twitching.
No, my mind was firmly on the girl next door, the silhouette in the window across the street.
I’d never seen her that clearly before.
Glimpses here and there, when I glanced out the window, remembering there was a life outside of my four walls. I knew she was a woman, and I knew she lived alone. But I’d never seen her this clearly. The streetlights had illuminated her body more than I think she realized, and in the moonlight, she looked like a dream.
She got me curious. The memory of her fingers dipping into wet panties made me twitch as I took my camera out of the dresser and pointed it at the girl I’d filled up not moments ago.
She tried to smile for me, and I sighed in exasperation.
“Don’t smile,” I told her, and her expression faltered. So easily hurt. So perfectly timid. “Just look at me. Remember what I did to you. Let me see you open up like your pussy just did. Let me see you pull back the curtain, just like you did your knees, sweetheart.”
She gasped and I took the shot.
I didn’t need to look at it to know it was fucking perfection.
The first ones often were.
I took a few more to calm her nerves, and once she was done, immortalized on my camera, I set it aside.
“Thank you for playing with me,” I told her, offering her my hand.
Now came the hard part.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for choosing me.”
I kissed the top of her head and she shivered beneath my touch.
“I’ll call a cab,” I said gently, and she stiffened under my fingertips.
I pulled back and reached for my phone, knowing it would be the first and last night I ever touched her.
The girl had left in a mess of tears and whispered promises I didn’t want her to keep.
I didn’t remember her name by the time she was gone. I didn’t need to, knowing I’d remember her, the night we’d spent together, by looking at her photograph. It was enough for me, even though it wasn’t enough for her.
I remembered her whispered words, telling me how much she’d admired my work for years beforehand. How she’d dreamed of being my muse before she was even fucking legal.
But if she really knew of my work, she must’ve been aware that my subjects changed daily.
She was one of many, a number in a long line of women at my door, a muse for an hour, a fuck for a night.
It didn’t mean I didn’t give a shit. I did, for as long as she was in my arms. For a few hours that night, the girl had been my world, my everything. I saw the possibilities of a relationship, of a future, of waking up with her in my bed, her eager lips on mine.
But I put it all into a photograph, and then added her to my portfolio like so many girls before.
I wasn’t capable of more.
Never had been.
Never would be.
After getting her in the cab, I pulled my gray Henley off, pushing my tracksuit down my hips. I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror that took up the whole wall. I had to work hard to look the way I did. I had a fully equipped gym on the second floor, making sure I was in the best shape, even though I never left my apartment.
My muscles were toned and defined, my skin covered in ink that told my story. I let my hands glide over it, down over my stomach and locking their grip around my thick cock, throbbing at the thought of her.
My mystery neighbor, the shadow behind the curtain, the girl who fucked her pussy at the sight of me ravaging another woman.
She intrigued me, the veil of mystery around her making me want to break my own rules.
I never saw the girls I fucked beyond the night they spent bouncing on my cock.
If I fucked this one, she’d be right across the street—forever.
And I didn’t even know what she really looked like; her face had been shrouded in darkness.
I stepped into my shower, the marble cool beneath my feet and the cold water beating down my back. It felt fucking good.
I washed the girl’s cunt off my cock, off my fingers. I cleaned my body expertly, washing and scrubbing and taking extra care to remove every trace of her off me. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I could still smell her. I needed to be clean. Pristine. Scrubbed raw before I laid down to sleep.
Fingers… dipping into wet panties.
The shine of a silver sequin, almost blinding in the night.
The way she put her palm on the window, as if she was trying to touch me.
Her body silhouetted.
A stranger.
My fist wrapped around my cock and I tugged on the tip.
I was hard. Painfully fucking hard, my dick throbbing desperately, begging me to relieve it of another load of hot cum, squeeze it out, dump it all over the Italian marble, drain myself of the filthy thoughts that seemed to reside inside my head permanently.
I worked my cock with fast, mechanic motions. I let my mind wander, never to the shy girl I’d made cry, always back to the mysterious girl next door, who’d been so eager to pleasure herself at the sight of me.
I thought of my life beyond the apartment.
The fact my name was getting bigger and bigger.
My photography, the words critics used in their reviews feeling nasty and cheap when I thought of them, even though they were meant as praise.
The way I took my photos, joining two images in one using double exposure, coupling stunning naked women in their most vulnerable state with the item, the scene that reminded me of them the most. Today’s girl had gotten candles, her wishful thinking coupled perfectly with the candles’ glow. My agent would be pleased.
In my fucked-up head, riddled with thoughts of keeping things in order, with ways to rid my skin of the scent of the shy girl, my neighbor didn’t have a picture I wanted to couple her with.
She wasn’t a pairing, she was a silhouette, nothing but a shadow, a stark dark cutout on white paper.
It felt oddly calming. Strangely clean. It calmed me down, and it got me so worked up I placed my palm against the shower wall and exhaled roughly, my palm working, pulling, tugging, getting ready to blow another load all over the glass and marble.
Fuck her, I wanted to fuck her. Right here, in the sterile shower where a woman had never been, push her against the stone and take her pussy with my fingers first, my cock second, and my mouth third. I wanted to know what she tasted like with me inside her. I wanted to know how sweet that cunt was after I’d forced orgasm after orgasm out of it.
I jerked faster. My cock felt impossibly hard, throbbing in my fist, desperate to unload. Desperate for my mystery girl.
Her pussy.
Her mouth.
Her tight little ass.
My doctor always told me not to focus on these little obsessions. That I should let them go. That they weren’t healthy.
But god-fucking-damnit, they made me feel alive.
The thought of her. Shit, the thought of her playing in her bed, hoping I’d open the blinds again, taunt her, dare her again.
She could’ve been anyone, I wouldn’t have cared. I wanted that tight cunt wrapped around my dick.
And then I was coming.
Coming for her.
Hot cum mixed with the cold water beating off my chest as I groaned my release and palmed my dick into a fucking frenzy.
She used her dainty little fingers to fuck that pussy.
I was going to use a whole damn fist.
After I was done, I cleaned myself off meticulously. I didn’t use bleach that night. I didn’t feel like I had to.
As I lay in my bed, the pristine Egyptian cotton sheets atop my skin, I let myself think about her.
Don’t obsess.
Don’t get attached.
Don’t think you need her.
Don’t make it into a problem.
By the time dawn rolled around, I knew it was too late for any of that crap.
Mystery girl was now firmly rooted in my mind, my heart, and my fucking dick.
And I wouldn’t rest until I’d had a taste.