The Polo Prince (Foxworth Stud Ranch Book 4)
Page 1
The Polo Prince
A Steamy Older Man Romance
Mia Madison
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Also by Mia Madison
About the Author
1
Violet
I’m thinking maybe I can do this after all. When it was first suggested that I spend a week at Foxworth Ranch I was against it. Totally and without a doubt. But part of me also has to learn to be accepting of change and open to new experience. In short I need to get out of my fixed ideas. Climb out of the rut before I can move forward. So at our next meeting, the one after Shelly had brought up a stay on a cowboy farm for about the hundredth time, I surprised her by saying I’ll do it.
“That’s excellent news, Violet,” she said in that modulated tone she always uses. I wish she’d been a little more amazed. I wanted her to jump up and down a little to reassure me I was making the right choice.
Three days into my Foxworth stay, all I’ve done is brush this horse, Freesia’s, coat all morning. Then shoveled shit out of the stalls like a convict on a chain gang. Literally, I have to take a pitchfork to the hay and move it around. Mucking out they call it.
Believe it or not I’m starting to quite enjoy it. At first I was freaked by the huge horse towering over me, knowing her power could knock me to the ground.
“Don’t be tentative around her,” Modesty tells me as she leads me into the horse’s stall.
The huge dark brown beast gives me the side eye, much as I was giving her. Modesty strokes along the animal’s gleaming neck and the horse almost seems to purr, or the horse version of a cat’s smug delight.
“She won’t hurt you,” Modesty reassures me. “She’s the most docile loving creature on this entire ranch.”
“Aside from me, you mean,” a rough male voice comes out of nowhere, from the other side of the high stall separator, making me jump
Freesia does a toe dance and rears her head a little, making me draw back a few steps. I want to run right then. The unseen man’s low growl, the huge horse, it was already overwhelming.
Modesty continues to stroke her and soothe her. She gives me a wicked grin.
“You hush your mouth, Rafe Millitant,” she calls out, over the opening above the high wooden wall. “You aren’t even meant to be hovering around right now.”
“You come around this side and sass me like that young lady,” Comes the dude’s immediate response. “You’re about fixing for another spanking about now.”
I feel my eyes stretch wide toward Modesty but she just grins.
“Rafe, I’m with a client right now,” she shouts, then lowers her voice to me, “You didn’t hear that,” she says conspiratorially.
“Shit,” comes the curse from across the barricade.
We listen to the sounds of the man clanking out of the stables, leading a horse by the sounds of it.
“That’s my boyfriend,” Modesty says. “He’s one of the senior men on the ranch but a bit of a hellion. Or he used to be.”
She throws me a significant grin, which I guess indicates she’s tamed him or some such. I like her. She’s younger than me, I’m guessing. She looks really young but there’s a strength to her and a confidence I almost envy. Only because I’d like to have that for myself. I want to ask her how she came by that but it seems too forward.
“You aren’t going to leave me here alone with this huge horse and the cowboys,” I say, my voice shaking noticeably.
She doesn't give me a strange look though. The kind I’m used to whenever I step out into the world. People don’t tolerate weakness well. It’s often easier to stay home and stay safe. Modesty just smiles kindly.
“I’ll be here while you two get used to each other,” she says. “Then once you’re comfortable, I’ll let you have some time together. It’s a chance to bond and also, you know, think a little.”
“Think,” I repeat. “That’s about the last thing I want to do.”
“No rush,” Modesty says. “You might be surprised though, how grooming and mucking gives you the space to go inside yourself.”
The thought makes my heart beat rapidly, almost to the point of pain. The horse shifts around again. Doing a little dance and figure-eighting its head side to side, like it’s saying no. Modesty quiets her again, so easily.
I know I’ll never be able to control the horse like that. She has no idea how hard it is to be inside me.
“I was running for somewhere to hide when I first came here,” she says as though she read my thoughts.
It’s weird enough how the horse seems to know when adrenaline picks up in my body and starts prancing around in her enclosed space. Now Modesty knows what I’m thinking and also responds. She’s not even a therapist either. Shelly, my real therapist back in Fort Lauderdale told me Foxworth farm is unregulated for equine therapy but said she finds that makes for a better experience.
“I guess it’s time to trust,” was all I could say to her.
“I have a place to hide,” I tell Modesty. “The hard part is coming out of it.”
“I get that. But this place has a way of surprising you. It was meeting Rafe again, the last man in the world I ever thought I’d end up living with, that finally gave me what I needed.”
“So I’m just in need of a good spanking?” I ask.
Modesty’s eyes bat up to mine, then she sees I’m joking and we both giggle.
“Don’t underestimate it,” she whispers.
“Oh my god, I could never,” I murmur.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Modesty grins. “My body just took over and led me along with its desire.”
She moves around to the horse’s other flank and doesn’t hear me mutter. “What’s that?”
Desire is a concept I’ve only dreamt about and never really experienced. Which is probably to be expected for a girl that’s lived alone since the age of sixteen.
Modesty hangs with me and shows me how to brush down the horse’s body. She doesn’t chatter away like I’d been expecting but she’s there when I feel like asking her something. Like about the men on the other side of the stable partition wall.
“Don’t worry about the ranch hands,” she says. “They’re totally separated from the equine spa side. Not that they’d ever hurt you either. They’re a bunch of big puppies more docile than the horses.”
“Perhaps I should be grooming one of them,” I quip, surprising myself when Modesty laughs.
“That can prob
ably be arranged if you need it.”
We laugh and it goes like that until she tells me she’s going to slip away for half an hour and leave me to get acquainted. As soon as she strides out out the stable, my heart starts going wild and immediately the horse gets skittish.
Like it knows.
With Modesty gone, I have no choice but to calm Freesia myself. Stroking her hot pulsating neck, I tell her; “It’s going to be okay.”
After a few repetitions she calms and I realize I almost believe the words myself.
We meet eyes and I’m starting to think it’s going to work out when a thundering of hooves comes down the aisle between the stable stalls, throwing up dust and straw clouds. A horse rears to a halt like a Camaro outside a dive bar. A man dismounts almost before the beast has come to a stop. His thick thigh arches high over the beast’s flexing flanks.
Holy crap. My heart goes skittering around in my chest and a pressure starts pushing at my lungs. This is no cowboy. He’s the very opposite, in his skintight white pants and yellow polo shirt with some kind of logo across a very solid pectoral muscle.
“You there,” he shouts in an unusual accent. “Hey, can you hear me or are you deaf?”
I drag my eyes up from the hay bale and realize it’s me he’s addressing.
A shard of something hot spikes through my chest straight to my thighs where it settles into tingles. I have never seen such a gorgeous face in my life. His hair is as glossy as his horse’s coat and flops into his eyes.
Can I speak? I feel struck dumb by a God.
“Me?” I squeak, but I think no sound actually emerges.
My legs are barely maintaining the rest of me in an upright position. If I wasn't hanging onto Freesia, I’d pool into the hay around her hooves.
“Take the Don,” Hunk says, or orders. “She needs a good smoothing down after the workout I put her through.”
His eyes dip to take in my tits. Er, hello. Then he tosses me the reins and strides down the stone passage to exit the stables. I can’t help but watch the tight round butt flex firm in the white pants with every step he takes. My thighs are aching with the desire to cup my palms around the big globes.
If only he weren’t such an arrogant ass.
2
Diego
Christ, what a godforsaken end of the earth backwater this Foxworth ranch is. Not even a real freaking polo field to practice chukkas on. My father must be out of his mind imagining we can ever do business with these hicks.
And not a single beddable woman within a thousand miles. Aside from old Foxworth’s daughter and I can hardly seduce the woman I’m sent here to marry.
I haven't seen Chloe Foxworth since she was a little kid and her father brought her along for a visit to Argentina. I was already in my late teens by then and had forgotten all about her. Now she’s filled out into a real babe but she also made her position very clear to me soon as I arrived.
“One day I’m going to be mistress of Foxworth on my own,” she says. “I’ve got a ton of business plans. And I have zero intention of settling down and handing my legacy to a husband.”
“Suits me just fine,” I tell her when we meet for the first time since childhood over breakfast.
My driver got lost trying to find this disaster area so I’d missed the welcome dinner they rolled out last night. Do I need to make it plain to her that I’m totally content with my playboy lifestyle and not looking to saddle myself with a demanding wife and a bunch of noisy kids?
“Daddy figured you dropped in because your father is looking to fix us up,” she says.
I like a woman that speaks her mind straightforwardly. None of that coy stuff I get with the older married girls I’m used to bedding in Florida and LA or the Hamptons. All trying to act twenty again. Desperate to score a hard agile man after the terminal boredom of the eighty year old geezers they’ve sold themselves to. “He thought you were here intent on uniting our two ranches.”
I have to stifle a laugh not to appear rude.
“It would hardly be a fair deal would it?” I snort.
“Why’s that?” she snips. “We have forty thousand acres at Foxworth Ranch.”
“Exactly.” I resist reminding her that the Della Donna estancia is the largest in Argentina and covers close to a million acres stretching from Buenos Aires across the pampas. “I’m bigger than some American States.”
“So you’re only here to talk horse business?”
“That and I have a favor to ask you,” I say with a smile I know she can’t resist. No woman can.
We’d just gotten through the deal, which Chloe seems to find highly amusing, when we’re interrupted by a new arrival. Fortunately I managed to charm her back over from my earlier gaff at competing with her land mass. Now we’re the best of friends which is great but means that the only available girl for miles is off limits.
“Good morning Abel,” Chloe says to the new guy.
“Mornin’ Ma’am,” the dude gruffs back.
He’s twice her age at least and has trouble looking her in the eye. It’s strange to see some old cowboy in dusty boots clumping into the breakfast room. At home we keep our gauchos in the stables but here they appear to be welcome at the table.
“Stop with the Ma’am stuff,” she tells him. “Diego here is going to bring us some new horses to breed.”
“Like we ain’t got enough of our own?” he says, eyeing me suspiciously.
“These are exceptional horses,” I inform him.
“They’re all exceptional,” he replies.
Okay, this one is looking for a showdown when he belongs at a hoedown.
“We’re going to start breeding professional polo horses here in the States so the della Donnas don’t have to export them from South America.”
“Ah, the new export tariffs,” the big guy says. Clearly he’s not as dumb as he first seems.
“But I will need to show you how we implant the embryos, Baby,” I tell Chloe.
Immediately the cowboy’s jaw stiffens and his fists clench tight around the fork he’s using to chow with. I reach out across the table to take Chloe’s hand in mine and his eyes narrow as he observes my grasp. Then he looks back at his plate.
“Diego just proposed,” she tells him.
He doesn't lift his eyes. “That right?” he grits out. Not a congratulations or any sign of respect for the master.
Now we’re interrupted by something more amusing as the grooms I travel with for polo matches arrive for breakfast, swiftly followed by a gaggle of girls all chattering and laughing. Every one of them is beautiful and curvaceous enough to get my cock twitching. I sense Chloe’s eyes on me as I size each one up in turn.
“Ladies let me introduce you to Diego Della Donna of the Buena Vista estancia, or ranch to us Yankees, in Argentina.”
“Oh my god, I’ve seen you in People Magazine,” the littlest one blurts out. She’s tiny with a cute face and perfect big round tits. “You’re that polo player that hangs out with Prince Harry.”
I lean in to kiss her hand and she laughs. I repeat the courtly process with each of the ladies in turn.
“That’s Modesty, this is Dallyce, she’s about to get married to one of our oldest hands and this is Edie, she owns the bar in town but now works for me. They all work for me so no poaching. Ladies, Diego is a renowned playboy so don’t let down your guard or he’ll have you out of your panties before you know what’s hit you.”
“Please, I never poach another man’s turf unless it’s on the polo field.”
“I’m sure. Okay so Dallyce, you’ll take equine spa duty this morning and then I need Modesty and Edie to help me with the Maldon wedding this weekend. The bridesmaid party will be arriving soon.”
“You’re having a wedding?” I grunt.
“It’s one of my new enterprises,” Chloe says proudly.
The women disappear to their tasks and I’m left with the surly cowboy who pointedly ignores me. His jaw is still clenching and tensing
as though he’d like nothing more than to hogtie me to the bull I saw clawing a hoof outside. Another macho bunch come in, joking and rousting about. They drop their mouths when they see me rise from the table and I feel half a dozen pairs of eyes on my ass as I stride from the room.
“You get a load of those leggings?” one of them says, initiating a round of laughter.
I shut the door on their coarse remarks. I doubt they’ve ever seen such a fine pair of legs although I’m more used to having girls gaze at me.
I head direct to the stables, ready to take Quixote out for some exercise. All the shouting in the world doesn't bring that stable girl running, like I’m accustomed to back home where my peons jump as soon as they see me. I have to saddle her up myself and lead her out to the yard. Then I see the girl sitting in the middle of a field.
All alone, except for the single horse beside her. What the fuck is she doing just lounging around when she should be attending to the master’s needs? I’m about to shout at her to get to it, but instead I lunge up on the stirrup and throw my thigh across my horse’s back.
Hours later, when I come back from riding the Don to a sweat and keeping my arm loose with some chukka practice, the girl is still sitting in the exact same spot. Apparently she hasn’t moved a muscle. Just lazing around when she ought to be running out to take the reins from me.
“You, hey, get over here.”
She startles out of some kind of daydream and looks up at me. Even from a distance I can see she’s a beauty but her languid behavior is annoying as fuck.