Biting During Sex Guide: Tips & Techniques

Learn how to safely bite your partner during sex to increase pleasure, eroticism, and primal energy.

I really enjoy biting… a lot. Four of my teeth are quite pointy and my bottom front teeth are slightly taller than the rest. In other words, I feel like I was built to take chomp of beautiful, soft, supple skin. 

I do it so often now that I’ve learned I need to make sure to explicitly ask every person I play with if they like being bitten, if I can leave marks, and exactly where I can leave marks. If you tell me I can, I will. In fact, I’ve been known to leave little trails of bruises behind that I often get pictures of afterwards. Because many people have to keep up professional appearances, the neck is most often off limits, but if she tells me its game, I instantly feel my arousal level rise slightly just from knowing I’ll be latched on her neck while inside her…

Biting can be an erotic action taken during rough sex or as part of play, particularly if you enjoy creating a rollercoaster of pleasure and pain, engaging in primal play, or a bit sadistic and like seeing your submissive squirm.

Why do people enjoy biting during sex?

I know I’m not alone in wanting to nibble on a sexy partner. Here’s some reasons why someone might enjoy biting or being bitten

Some common reasons include:

• Pain and Pleasure: One of the cornerstone principles of BDSM, mixing pain and pleasure together in order to create a symphony of sensations. Biting can be one of those painful sensations that can actually feel really good for some people. Some might enjoy a little nibble, while others enjoy a hard chomp.
• Primal: Biting and being bitten can feel incredibly animalistic. It’s most often when I’m in the heat of passion that I have the greatest desire to bite my partner. It’s as if an intense feeling of desire and completely “consuming” that person takes over. For the person being bitten, they can feel a sense of helplessness, like that of prey being killed.
• Ownership: Biting your partner, and particularly leaving a mark, can induce feelings of ownership over them, like marking your territory. I’m quite satisfied when receiving pictures of the marks I’ve left, knowing that they came from my mouth, and that person will be reminded of me every time they see them that week.
• Expression of Dominance and submission: Because biting can be quite a sharp and intense pain if done harshly, it can immediately put the person being bitten into submission through force. 

There is a unique phenomenon specific to biting that doesn’t occur in as many other kinks, which is that of dimorphous expression - when you feel a strong emotion, but express the opposite of that emotion. Dimorphous expression is your body’s way of regulating very intense emotions to bring you back to equilibrium. Common examples of this are laughing out of anger or crying tears of joy.

The dimorphous expression specific to biting though is that of “cute aggression”. This is when you feel so much love, joy, and passion for something that you just want to squeeze, pinch, crush or… bite them. We desire our partner so much that if we don’t bite them, we just might explode from passion. 

How to Bite During Sex

Risks

Biting is relatively simple, and while the risks are low in incorporating it into your play, it’s not to say there are none. Here are some risks you should be aware of:

• Breaking skin: The largest risk you will have in biting is breaking the skin and drawing blood. The human mouth is generally a very dirty place, with all sorts of bacteria, and a human bite can be more easily infected than a dog bite. If you do break skin, you should attend to it quickly by washing out the affected area.
• Leaving marks: Biting can and will leave marks if done hard enough. For some that are anemic, it won’t take much to leave a mark. If marks are something you need to be concerned about for appearances, you’ll need to take extra precautions to the intensity of the bites.
• Bodily damage: Depending on where and how hard the bite is, you may be biting into organs or tendons that could be severely damaged. The average human bite can be 100lbs or more of pressure, and that kind of force can crush fragile parts of the body.

Where to Bite

‍The general guideline for biting: the places on the body with big muscles and lots of flesh are best to bite, the places with less flesh and more bone or less padding on the organs are not good to bite. So some safe areas for biting:

• Butt cheeks
• Stomach
• Biceps
• Thighs
• Breasts
• Chest
• Shoulders
• Upper back

There are other areas that are less common, and should be taken with caution, but can be very erotic to bite including:

• Back and sides of the neck
• Genitals and nipples
• Lips, tongues
• Earlobes

‍Finding pleasurable bite zones: Every person is different in where they like to be bitten. Of course, you can and should ask your partner where they do and don’t like to be bitten. But you can also do a little exploration in finding the spots that are most pleasurable to them. As you move your mouth around, start with nibbles, and as they start giving you a very noticeable response (moaning, sounds of joy and pleasure, leaning into your mouth) when you hit certain spots, rather than moving on, bite deeper right there.

Techniques

The following techniques will range from lowest intensity to highest. 

Level 1: Resting Teeth

In this “bite,” you’re just opening your mouth and gently resting your teeth on their skin, applying the smallest amount of pressure possible, if at all. This technique is to build up the anticipation and leave your submissive wondering when you are finally going to bite down, inducing just a bit of fear. 

I particularly like using this technique on an area that should never actually be bitten. My favorite is the front of the neck, which makes the submissive feel incredibly vulnerable and think that at any moment I could completely rip her neck to shreds. With that said, you never ever bite the front of the neck as you would damage the trachea. 

Level 2: Toothless Bite

This bite is when you use the top set of teeth, and rather than pressing the skin against your bottom set of teeth, you use your bottom lip instead. This allows you to give more sensation with the teeth, but without the pressure of a full bite which could leave a mark. 

This technique is particularly good for sensitive areas, such as the nipples, to warm them up to more intense levels of biting. 

Level 3: Nibbling

Nibbles are light and quick bites. They require very little pressure to create a very pleasurable sensation. Nibbles are great for warming your partner up to more intense levels of biting and mapping their body to find areas they may wish to be really bitten. I like to alternate between nibbles and kisses when exploring my partner's body with my mouth.

Level 4: Grinding teeth

Rather than biting downward, run your teeth parallel to one another with your partner’s skin in your mouth. This can be particularly for sensitive areas like the inner thighs and nipples.

Level 5: Chomp

For a more intense bite, get a fold of your lover’s skin between your teeth and chomp down on it. You can do so quickly for a sharp stab of a bite, or more slowly if they enjoy a prolonged crushing sensation. Biting like this will almost always leave marks.

Level 6: Blood Bite

The sharper your teeth and the harder you bite, the higher the likelihood you will break skin. If you wish to play at this level, be sure to know your risks of infection and blood pathogens, as well as how to treat the wounds properly afterwards.

Putting it into practice

Remember your goal

Before you start engaging in biting, remember what your goal is for the scene and what intention you have behind biting. Using the appropriate level of intensity can change how a scene feels. For example, a sadist may use a more intense level of biting quickly in order to cause more pain, while a Pleasure Dom may use more nibbles over an extended period of time for greater pleasure.

Start slow and low

As with most actions in BDSM, it’s best to start slow and with low intensity in order to warm your partner up to more intense actions that are to follow. As the biter, this can actually be a little difficult because of that overwhelming “cute aggression” feeling. To be honest, there have been times I have gone too hard, too fast because of how intensely I desired that person. So if you enjoy biting, you’ll need to learn to control yourself until they are ready for you to be a wild animal.

One way to do this is to use the bites on the lower end of the intensity scale I presented earlier. The other is to gradually increase even a single bite. You can put your partner’s skin into your mouth and then sink your teeth slowly. If they start pulling away rather than leaning into your bite, that’s your cue for you to not bite down any further. As your interaction continues, you can use this kind of bite to test how warmed up your partner is to more intense bites. 

Timing

For most of my interaction, I’m biting during three main times during sex: foreplay, climax, and cuddling.

During foreplay, I will use bites in levels 1-4, with an occasional 5 (like biting the inner thigh after I’ve been giving cunnilingus for a while). These bites are usually mixed with kisses and licks as you map your partner's body. 

During the climax of sex, or reaching close to it, you can use a more intense bite because of the amount of hormones and endorphins pulsing through your partner’s body. Biting the shoulder, chest, and the side of the neck are some of my favorites during this period.

During cuddles and coming down, I will give very soft, slow, and gentle nibbles or rest my teeth on them, as I kiss on my partner's body. 

Hickeys

Hickeys, which really are just bruises, are not actually caused by the bite itself, but rather the sucking pressure that often accompanies a bite. When you suck on a person’s skin, tiny blood vessels become damaged and flood that area with blood. So if you want to minimize bruises from biting, then don’t suck when biting. If you want to maximize marks, then suck away.

Tips for the submissive being bitten

Being a good submissive takes skills too and there are things she can do to make the experience more enjoyable.

Tips for the submissive:

• Don’t fight it: If you pull away in the opposite direction of your partner, especially if they are biting hard, it’s going to be more painful and increase the likelihood of them breaking your skin. 
• Be honest: You can help the person biting you by being honest about your reactions, not enduring things you don’t like, and giving lots of feedback, either verbally or with your body language.

Let the beast out

Biting is an excellent addition to a rough sex tool kit alongside hair pulling, choking, spanking, and manhandling. The more you engage in it, the more you might come to find it makes you feel incredibly animalistic and can intensify your passion and aggression during sex. As always though, be safe and have fun.