Monday morning, 7 am, I was at the early morning lane swim as I do three times a week. The usual group of swimmers were there. Some of them had been regulars for years and a few had just been coming recently. One had caught my attention from her first appearance.

It’s not easy for women to look good in a pool, what with wearing a bathing cap, no makeup and the regulation one-piece suit, but she was the exception. She was a woman just entering the time of life when the tolls of life were beginning to show. She was stretching the limits of her bathing suit in a sexy way. I am not saying this in any judgmental or derogatory way. I actually find older women’s bodies very appealing, far more so than the perfect women so common in porn. Full disclosure, I am in a similar stage. My abs and ass are not as taut and firm as they were ten years ago and the hint of some padding on my hips is getting hard to deny.

Lane swim is a friendly place. Over the past couple of weeks, I’d said hello a few times and she answered with a brief nod. Sometimes she seemed not to have heard or noticed me, as if lost in her own thoughts. This morning she was leaning against the wall and adjusting her goggles. I stopped and asked how she was doing, thinking she would say fine, and I would push off and keep up my rhythm.

“I wish my whole life would be different,” she said to my surprise.

“Ah, now that is a big ask,” I said. “Especially on a Monday morning.”

She did not say anything more, so I pushed off from the wall and continued to work towards completing my daily goal of 80 lengths.

When I returned to the shallow end she was still standing there and I got the impression she was waiting for me.

“You asked how I am,” she said. “And I gave you an honest answer. You have nothing more to say?”

Picking up on the irritation in her voice, I searched for a more serious response. I wondered what I could say that might offer some solace.

“If you can’t change everything, what one thing would you like to be different?”

“The one thing that would really make a difference is the one thing that I cannot change. So, no use in thinking along those lines.”

She did not give me a chance to respond, rather she dove in and headed down the pool. I dove in after her and followed. She was a strong swimmer and I had to work hard to keep up. I could see her ahead, her slender, long legs that ended at the dark strip where her suit covered her lady garden and then the “V” shape as her suit ran up over her cheeks. We both swam the breaststroke, which allowed me to keep that view every time I put my head below the surface.

After a few more laps, she climbed out of the pool and I stood watching her as she walked to the change room door. She paused and took off her bathing cap and shook out her hair, which was dark and fell around her shoulders. She paused for a moment and then disappeared into the change room.

The whole episode was over in a flash but the impression on me was fierce and I immediately felt my cock getting hard, trapped down the leg of my bathing suit. I needed to do a few more laps before I could get out, and besides I needed ten more to complete my work-out. I turned, pushed off from the wall and headed to the other end. Swimming laps is a highly regimented and often monotonous activity!

I went into the change room, entered one of the shower stalls and slipped out of my suit. I absentmindedly went through my morning routine… shampooed my hair and rinsed and then rubbed in some conditioner. I pumped some bodywash into my hand and massaged it all over my body and then rinsed off completely.

I felt an ache just behind my balls, which is the first sign I am horny and I thought of her swimming ahead of me. I pumped some more body wash into my hand and spread it all over my cock and balls and in the crack of my ass. Using the soap as a lubricant, it wasn’t long before I was completely hard.

 I slowly stroked my cock, pulling back the foreskin with each stroke. I cupped my balls with my other hand and pressed my finger onto the sensitive spot between my balls and my dark star. I stroked slowly while rolling my balls between my fingers. The soap made everything so slippery and the surrounding steam added to the mood. I closed my eyes and remembered the sight of her sexy body in the pool and the noticeable mound between her legs covered by her suit. I could feel the initial signs of orgasm and so I slowed down and loosened my grip, so as to prolong the pleasure I was feeling and delay orgasm. I switched my hand to making a “cage” with my fingers and thumb and caressed just the head by squeezing it as I pulled up. With the warm, wet soap, it simulated being sucked. I revelled in the feeling of getting close but not going over the edge. I slid my finger over the slit at the end of my cock as a tongue would during fellatio. It all felt so good and my whole body tingled with pleasure.

As I age, the drive to orgasm has been somewhat replaced by wanting to linger in the pleasure that leads to orgasm. There was a time when I could cum 3 or 4 times in a day but I was in a different stage as I approached fifty!

I stopped touching myself and let my cock slowly return to its flaccid state. I let the warm water rinse away the soap, lifting my sac so it ran between my legs. I turned around with my back to the shower nozzle and let the hard spray massage my back and stood so it focussed on the top of my ass crack. I spread my cheeks and felt the water run down my crack and tease my hole.

Then I dried off, got dressed, packed my bag and headed to the exit.

A car was parked near the entrance and as I made to walk in front of it, the passenger window rolled down and she was looking out at me. I walked over and bent into the open window.

“I think I was a little rude in there. Can I buy you a coffee and maybe we can chat?”

“Yeah, sure. I’d like that.” I threw my bag into the back and buckled up. I thought she would start driving but she didn’t put the car in drive. Instead, she looked at me and I mean she looked at me.

“I am being very serious right now,” she said. “I have been given some really tough news and I hope that a conversation with you could be helpful. You look to me to be a mature and compassionate man and I don’t have someone in my life like that right now and I need it.”

I felt a little anxious hearing the intensity with which she just spoke but how was I going to say, “No thanks,” sitting in her car. So, I said what I thought she wanted to hear.

“I hope I can be helpful. I want to try.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Maybe we could go to my place. I don’t live far away and it would be quieter and more private. Is that OK with you?”

I nodded.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she said as she went into the kitchen to make coffee.

You can learn a lot about a person by being in their home. Hers was very tastefully decorated and comfortable. There were large, striking pictures on her walls and a magnificent view of the lake in the distance through the big windows that ran the full length of the room. Her living room furniture was three couches arranged around a large coffee table. There were Persian style pillows and throws carelessly placed on the couches and the whole place smelled like jasmine or some other Indian spice.

You can learn a lot more about a person when you learn what they are reading, and amidst the art books strewn across the table were two paperbacks about battling cancer. Her comments all made sense to me now. I picked up one of them just as she came back into the room and I turned to her. She immediately knew that I knew and she too hurriedly placed the tray she was carrying on the table and started filling the cups.

“I am so sorry."

She turned her eyes down and I could see tears running down her cheeks. “I just got the news a few weeks ago and it hasn’t really sunk in, I don’t think.”

She wiped her eyes and looked up. “If I believed in a god, I would say that our meeting this morning was preordained, but I don’t believe and this recent news has just confirmed the reasons why.”

I looked straight at her and quietly said, “You should know that my wife died of cancer two years ago. Not to be arrogant but I think I might know a little of what you are up against.”

She took some time to share with me her personal history of a rough upbringing, two failed marriages and the damage all that had on her self-esteem.

“For the last ten years, I have withdrawn from people and let work take over my life,” she shared. “And now this. Jesus.” Then she shared some details about her diagnoses and the time she was told she had left.

“You know how people say that they have no regrets when they die? Well, that’s not true for me right now. I have many. I was successful in my work and made lots of money, but so what? I shut myself off from people because I feared that they would hurt me. I wouldn’t let anyone get close to me and I regret that. Now there isn’t time.”

I was aware that within an hour we had progressed from a few flippant comments in a swimming pool to being engaged in a deeply intimate conversation about the tragedy of life and death.

“My wife had some similar feelings when she was diagnosed,” I said. “We thought we had wasted some of the best years focussed on our careers and we had both played around with other partners, which caused a lot of heartache and pushed us apart. When she was diagnosed, we had similar feelings of regret. A close friend told us something that made a huge difference for us.”

I looked over at her and waited. “Do you want to know what she said?”

She looked intently at me. She looked so beautiful with her long hair around her face, pink lipstick, and big hoop earrings. She had crows’ feet around her eyes and laugh lines next to her mouth; there were the beginning signs of a double chin and in the light coming through the windows she looked her age, which I guessed was similar to mine. But it all just added to her allure. We live life, it leaves its mark and makes us more interesting. It's hard to relate to perfection. For a moment I forgot about the hard things we were talking about and just got lost in her beauty and the poised way she was sitting.

“Yes, I do,” she said, and I realised she was saying it for the second time.

“Our friend said to my wife, ‘You know something very few people know. You know both when and how you will die!’”

“How did that help her?” she asked.

“Well, our friend suggested to us that we had two choices. We could be angry and regret the past. We could feel short-changed by the diagnosis and let the remaining time be coloured by that, or we had the opportunity to make the time we had left the most intimate and significant of our lives.”

She sat back on the couch and looked over at me. “Wait, let me get this right. You are saying that the best of my life is ahead of me?”

“It could be if you choose to live it intentionally!”

There was a silence between us that at first felt uncomfortable but morphed into something precious and intimate. We continued looking at one another and our gazes were gentle and calming. The light in the room changed as the sun coming out from behind the clouds brightened and warmed the room.

I broke the silence by asking her if I could connect to her sound system and play the best song I knew that captures pain, sorrow and passion at the end of the world.

I suggested she lie back, close her eyes and try and feel the mood of the song and see if it spoke to where she was in her life at this moment.

I pressed play and the room filled with the opening B flat 9th and G minor chords vibrating with reverb that sets up Purple Rain and then Prince’s angelic, raunchy voice began, “I never...”

I opened my eyes when he hit the first note of the solo as his guitar wailed, expressing all the pain and passion he feels when faced with loss and sorrow. I looked across at her and tears were running freely down her cheeks and she looked so beautifully sad.

The song ended and there was a prolonged pause, neither of us moved or said anything. Then she stood up and came to stand right in front of me.

“Please play it again,” she said.

As the first chord rang out again, she raked her hands through her hair and started swaying to the music, her face tilted up with confidence, expressing her decision to be herself and follow her desires.

She unbuttoned her blouse and let it drop and unzipped her skirt and it fell to the floor. She turned and unfastened her bra and let it fall to the floor. Then she sat in my lap and bent her head back and rested it on my shoulder. As Prince reached for the high notes of his fantastic solo, I cupped her breasts and she covered my hands with hers and led me to please her. She licked my fingers and put them back to her nipples and I rolled and pinched them, feeling her back arch away from me. As Prince called out that he wanted to see his ex-lover standing in the purple rain, she guided my hands under her silky panties and opened up her legs. I felt her silky bush. I slid my fingers along each side of her pussy before moving them to her now wet slit. She moved my hand so it perfectly matched her needs and I felt her breath quicken and she began to grind herself into my lap with more intensity.

As I heard Prince’s falsetto voice crying out “whoooo… whoooo... whoooo" each note tumbling down the scale, I felt her body begin to tense up and her urgency intensify. She pressed her hand against my hand harder and cried out as one spasm after another convulsed her body. As the final chords of the song rung out impossibly long, she quieted down and went limp in my lap. I wrapped my arms under her breasts and pulled her tight against me, kissing her hair and letting her know how beautiful and brave she was.

She turned and straddled me and her face was still flushed from the afterglow of her orgasm. Her neck and above her breasts were red and her body was covered in a thin sweat. She kissed me, pulled back and looked at me with a sly smile.

“That was the first intentional act to start the beginning of the end of my life,” she said. “I am going to live every moment with the passion I heard in that song.”

Then she stood up and reaching out her hand she took mine and led me to her bedroom. She sat on the edge of her bed and beckoned me to stand between her legs.

She pushed my t-shirt up and I pulled it over my head. She unbuttoned my jeans, pulled the zipper down and pushed them to my knees. She nuzzled my covered cock and reached behind to cup my ass and pull me closer. She sniffed me, licked me, bit me through the fabric while she slipped her hands under my briefs and felt the bare skin of my buttocks. She pulled my briefs down with her two hands and I stepped out of them and my jeans.

We lay next to one another on her bed, caressing each other, kissing and licking and enjoying the extended foreplay.

She asked me what I knew about Prince and Purple Rain. I suggested she watch the official video of the song so she could witness the passion, the heartache and the joy he expresses when he plays and sings. I told her that he took big risks and he did everything with a 200% commitment.

“He has inspired me to live my life similarly,” I added.

“I want to know more,” she said with a smile, “but not right now!”

Her kisses and licks became more intense and focussed. She cupped my balls and glided her nails up and down my cock. She moved down and swung her kegs around so we were in the 69 position. I reached one arm under her so I could pull her close. She licked and planted sweet kisses all over my cock, balls and upper thighs before taking me in her warm, wet mouth. She greedily sucked me deep, swirling her tongue and playing with my now tight sac. She sucked as she pulled my cock out of her mouth and it was so pleasurable that I let out a long moan.

I was probing her pussy with my tongue, tasting her sweetness and stroking her ass with my hands. I spread her ass cheeks and ran my finger, made wet with her juices, over her rosebud. She responded by sucking harder and pushing herself against me.

We slowed down to prolong the wonderful sensations we were both feeling and she came back up to face me and kissed my lips that glistened with her juices. She searched my face with her hands and kissed my eyes, my cheeks and my lips and chin with such gentleness. I saw a change in her face as it went from arousal to vulnerability.

With a voice that sounded like a little girl's, she whispered, "I want to ask you something."

"OK," I said, "Go ahead."

"I am afraid," she said. "I have been hurt so often and I couldn't bear being rejected now."

"I think I know what you are going to ask," I responded. "So, let me make it easy for you and answer your question so you don't have to ask it."

I wiped the tear from her eye. I stroked the hair back from her face. I kissed her trembling lips and I whispered back, “You don’t have to ask. Yes, I will be here for you as you walk this hard road. I want to do that with you.”

She hugged me tightly and I felt her relax and felt her warm breath on my neck. We lay that way for a time until she turned to lie on her front and asked me to lie on her back.

I wet my hand with my spit and rubbed it over my hard cock and worked it between her legs. I felt her wetness and the opening of her pussy and pushed myself part way into her. She pushed her ass up and back to take more of me and I entered her completely, feeling her clench my cock. Slowly we found a rhythm and she gripped the sheets with her hands and braced herself so I could drive in deeper and harder.

“Do you want me to cum in you or on you?” I asked as I felt my orgasm getting close.

“In me, please... in me. I want that. Cum in me,” she moaned.

As I started cumming, I felt her pussy clench around me and her body shake with her orgasm. I spurted stream after stream of my seed into her each time I pressed down, finally collapsing on top of her and burying my face in her hair. She reached around and drew my head close to her cheek and I felt the wetness of her tears. I kissed her, rolled off and we turned sideways to face one another again.

Her expression was a mixture of being sexually spent, joy, vulnerability and a hint of sadness. Her face expressed her life, such as it was handed to her.

I stroked her face and rubbed my fingers along her lips and she sucked them into her mouth. She kissed me and then snuggled against my chest and pushed her leg between mine and pressed the full length of her body against me.

I thought it important to say again, "I will stay by your side for the time you have left to live. You can count on me."

She squeezed me even tighter. “I am going to name this last part of my life ‘The Prince Years,’ she said and then laughed.

Her laughter was brave and came from a place of being confronted by the hardest of circumstances and not being afraid.