Here’s a way to put sensual teasing back into your foreplay. The butterfly tease makes your lover’s skin tingle and turns their whole body extra sensitive to your touch. It’s based on an ancient Chinese love game, described in Sexational Secrets by Susan Crain Bakos.
You’ll need a few soft sable, artist or calligraphy brushes, some massage oil, and a blindfold — the blindfold isn’t optional as far as I’m concerned. It’s what turns a nice massage into something they can’t predict.
The first time, keep your intentions secret. Don’t show the brushes. Hint at what you have in mind and let the anticipation build — the mental foreplay does half the work for you. I’ll describe it from a man pleasuring a woman, but it works just as well in every other direction.
Setting up
Candles, incense, soft music. Have her strip and lie on her back. Blindfold her, and ask her to stay as still as she can and trust you. Then stimulate her imagination before you touch her at all:
“Pretend you are a field of flowers. Imagine a butterfly fluttering from one flower to another. You don’t know where the butterfly will land, or how long it will stay. When it finds a delicious flower, its long sleek tongue swirls and probes as it savours the sweet nectar — before flitting to the next flower for more.”
Ask her to focus on feeling rather than working out what you’re doing. That instruction matters more than it sounds: the moment she starts predicting the brush, the effect collapses.
The tease
Start with a very light touch and vary the pressure later. Keep it apparently random — change the speed, the pressure, and how long you linger. Not knowing where the brush will land next is what makes her skin wait for it.
Begin at the arch of one foot, then move straight to the other. Tickle between her toes, tease the tips. Flutter up to her ankles, calves and knees, then dart back to her feet with a firmer touch. From the soles of her feet, dash to her armpits, and rest — delicately — on a nipple.
Land so softly she barely knows the butterfly is there until you move it again. Dance across breast, ear, face, neck, shoulder, arms, belly, thighs. Wake up every nerve you can find.
Then stop, without a sound, and dip the brush in warm massage oil.
The oiled brush feels like a different instrument entirely. Swirl it around her nipples. Slide it between and around her breasts. Then spread her legs and flit around her perineum and vulva, stroking up and down her lips until her clitoris aches for attention. Stroke it softly, then circle. Spiral in, and tease her right to the edge.
From there, keep teasing or finish her however you like. In the book, the oiled brush is followed by a peacock feather twisting slowly around her clitoris to trigger the orgasm — which is as good an argument for owning a peacock feather as I’ve ever heard.
Pleasure points
The ancient Chinese version targeted specific points said to cause immediate arousal:
- The midpoint of the perineum
- The Cinnabar field — a line of seven points from the navel to the pubic region
- Breasts and nipples
- The groin, in the crease between abdomen and thigh
Personally I prefer to ignore the map and just play, tickling erogenous zones wherever I find them. The sensations are remarkable either way.
Choosing brushes
Any arts and crafts shop has a good selection of soft sable brushes, and the round ones work best. Buy a variety of lengths and thicknesses so you can experiment with different sensations. A set of Chinese calligraphy brushes is a cheap way to get a range of sizes at once.
One practical warning: oil is very hard to wash out of a brush. Keep a separate set for the oiled half and save yourself the trouble.
A silk scarf, a feather, or a soft velvety rosebud all work too, if you want to vary the texture.
Put the tease back into your lovemaking and find out how much pleasure is available when nobody is rushing. Take your time over foreplay and everything after it improves.
If massage is your thing, you may like our massage love vouchers book — and if you do pick up one of ours, a rating genuinely helps other couples find it.