Kirby Quinlan, author of All That You Can’t Leave Behind, is here today on Love Bytes for his blog tour.

Welcome, Kirby!

Title: All That You Can’t Leave Behind

Author: Kirby Quinlan

Publisher: KQ Press

Cover Artist: Kirby Quinlan

Length: 50,000 words

Release Date: October 12, 2015

Blurb: Let go of the past. Live in the moment. The future will take care of itself.

Tailor Sway is a professional organizer on the brink of divorce. When he is hired to appear on a reality TV show called “Hoarded Houses”, he has three days to help a collector of Christmas decorations clean up her property before it’s condemned by local authorities.

Everything is going according to Tailor’s carefully laid plans. That is, until Brayzen Mapleridge, a mega-famous pop singer known for his wild, daredevil antics, shows up.

Forced to pay for a recent stunt which has turned into a serious legal matter, Brayzen is given the opportunity to avoid jail time by doing some hard labor in front of the cameras. But, it’s not an easy thing to do while being chased by all who trail in the wake of a major celebrity. Is Brayzen sincere about helping, or is it all just part of a well-crafted publicity campaign?

Despite some initial clashes between Tailor’s uptight determination and Brayzen’s carefree attitude, the two develop an unlikely partnership that quickly blossoms into a sizzling attraction.

But, Tailor’s unresolved conflict with his husband, Grant, an emotionally scarred veteran of the Iraq War, still looms in the background amidst a whirlwind of TV cameras, relentless paparazzi, eager fans, and scathing headlines. Despite all these complications, will it be Brayzen’s own meddling mother who puts the brakes on their steamy love affair for good?

At times sexy, laugh-out-loud funny, and tragically heartbreaking; this erotic tale of love, loss and letting go promises to give you a front-row seat on Tailor and Brayzen’s crazy, romantic rollercoaster ride. Strap yourself in!

The room is L-shaped, so I can’t see the door from where I’m sitting. The wall of the bathroom blocks the view, but I hear the door open. “Oh…uh, hello,” I hear her say. “Yeah, he’s here. I was just leaving actually. Uh, Tailor, you have a visitor.”

Turning off the TV, I set my laptop on the bed and get up as she walks back in. Her frantic eyes are the size of dinner plates. “Who is it?” I whisper to her. She can only manage to point and nod her head toward the door.

I take a peek from behind the wall.

It’s Brayzen Mapleridge.

Pulling back, I direct a WTF look at Bridgette. She acts like she doesn’t know what’s going on. I take a deep breath, making sure my shirt is tucked in. She urges me forward and I walk around the corner.

As I approach, I see he’s showered and changed from earlier. He’s wearing a tight black T-shirt, jeans and sunglasses and he’s leaning casually against the door frame like he’s posing for a Calvin Klein ad.

Involuntarily, I look down at the bulge in his jeans. After you’ve seen a guy’s naked penis on YouTube and then he walks in the room, trust me, it’s the first place your eyes go.

He catches me looking and tilts his sunglasses down to the tip of his nose, scanning me up and down.

“You wouldn’t believe who I had to bribe to get your room number.” He smiles.

I don’t smile back.

He’s alone. No security, backup dancers, or mean Asian lady this time. The familiar smell of his cologne mingles in the air with faint wafts of alcohol. We both look at Bridgette as she squeezes past us, her things gathered up in her arms, rubbing up against Brayzen as much as she can on her way out.

“Well, I gotta go. It’s getting late and we’ve got an early morning.”

“I’ll get those VIP tickets to you tomorrow,” Brayzen says with a slight slur as we watch her scamper to her room a few doors down the hallway.

“Tickets?” she asks. “What tickets? I don’t know anything about tickets. G‘night!” Her door slams shut.

I look back at him. “So — what are you doing here?”

“I needed to see you.” He’s trying his best to act suave, but he talks like a person who’s extremely tired, and his clear lack of balance makes him look a little tipsy.

“For what?”

“I was hoping you’d have a drink with me.” He lurches forward, but I’m able to catch him in mid-air.

“Whoa there. Looks like you’ve had enough already.” Holding him up is all I can do to keep him from dropping. I stumble back against the wall, breathing in his sweet scent, feeling the firmness of his chest press against mine.

On its own, the front door swings shut with a loud click, leaving us alone together in the silence. I hold him there for a minute, leaning back against the wall, not really sure what to do. My mind goes clear of everything except for the sensation of holding him.

I feel his breath on my neck. His steady heartbeat.

He’s warm.

His upper arms — the skin is so soft on my fingers.

It’s an odd feeling. His body sends little sparks of energy through me wherever our skin touches.

My pulse quickens.

A familiar tingle stirs near the zipper of my jeans, quickly becoming a vibration, which will soon mushroom into a throbbing hardness I don’t want him to feel.

Trying to reposition myself causes his sunglasses to fall off his nose. I catch them and fold them into my hand, still fighting to hold him up. Who wears sunglasses at night, anyway?

This guy.

He lifts his head and looks at me with his big, half-glossed-over eyes. He struggles to form words with his pouty, pink lips. The words come out slow and heavy. “I waited for you at the bar in the lobby — staring at the front door — for hours. But, you never walked in.”

“Sorry, buddy. We parked in back. Come on; let’s get you into the chair over here.” I push him away from the wall, slinging one of his arms over my shoulder and around my neck, and I try to guide him into the room.

“I just wanted to tell you — I’m sorry.” He trips over the luggage rack, hurtling us both into the standing lamp. The lamp hits the wall, busting the light bulb, plunging the room into total darkness.

I manage to lift both of us back onto our feet in the pitch black.

Feeling around in the dark to find something to hold onto, I feel the back of the chair. It’s facing the opposite direction and it’s too hard to turn it around from the position I’m in, so I try to inch him ahead to drop him onto the mattress instead.

When I let him go, he holds onto me, which pulls me off balance, causing us both to careen forward. He falls onto the bed, bouncing against the springs as I land on top of him.

Pressing against him, I try to get off, but he squeezes me in his arms, not letting me go.

Unable to see, I can feel our hearts beating together now.

His warmth.

I can also feel my leg rub up against the semi-hard outline of his bulge.

“I think you’re really hot,” I hear him say.

I’m stunned.

“I DVR every episode of the show,” he says. “Hoping you’ll be in it.”

Could that be true? Or is he just schmoozing me? No one ever recognizes me from the show.

I’m not sure what to say.

He pulls me tighter and presses his perfect lips to mine, parting them softly as he eases his tongue in. His mouth tastes sweet and minty, with a faint trace of the mojitos he’s been drinking.

I pull back at first, but his hands grab the back of my head and his kiss becomes deeper, more insistent.

This time, I accept it, caressing his tongue with my own.

I feel crazy and out of control all at once, and I can’t stop myself.

Trying to settle into a better angle, I move my hand on the bed to pivot my weight, but I feel something hard and cold.

Too late. My laptop keyboard lights up the room with a blue glow and a voice erupts from the speakers. “Brayzen Mapleridge showed off more than his dance moves at a concert in Portland, Oregon last night…”

He sits up on his elbows and we both look at the screen.

The TMZ video is playing. ‘Brayzen Mapleridge dick video’ is sitting in my search bar. I reach over and slam it shut.

BUY LINKS:

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Kirby Quinlan was raised by a single mom who sold vacuum cleaners and abandoned by a father who was both a former U.S. Marine and Baptist preacher. After a challenging upbringing, he came out to family and friends at the age of sixteen.

With hopes of making movies, he learned the craft of screenwriting, honing his love of storytelling. He quit writing in 2002, however, frustrated he couldn’t promote the diversity-rich stories he was passionate about. But now, in the world of digital self-publishing, he has found an avenue to finally tell the stories he’s always wanted to tell; the types of stories he wishes had been mainstream when he was growing up.

His first published work was the short story “New World” in the Queer Science Fiction anthology “Discovery”. He has plans for several standalone novels, as well as serial works in his favorite genres, including sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, pulp detective and even western. They are hopeful, action-packed tales of strong, positive LGBTQ characters finding love, fighting oppression and overcoming extraordinary challenges in a real-to-life way.

Ironically, Kirby’s own true love came to him in the form he least expected, when he met his female roommate and best friend, Karla. Their marriage in 2013, proved to them both that love is love. It has no boundaries, knows no gender and can’t always be defined by labels. Karla is an author as well and they live a happy life together in Portland, OR.

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