A man accused of rape says he tried to chat up his alleged victim but was rebuffed because she was working as a prostitute.

William Steward, 25, told detectives the woman then agreed to meet him at the Hilton Metropole Hotel, Brighton, because he did not have enough cash to pay for sex.

The defendant, of no fixed address, denies four charges of rape, saying the woman agreed to sex.

His alleged victim, a 25-year-old IT consultant from London, has told Lewes Crown Court the defendant forced his way into her sixth-floor room at the hotel on Brighton seafront at 4am on November 8 last year.

She said he threatened to kill her during a two-hour ordeal in the £75-a-night room.

She begged him not to rape her but he called her a prostitute and a "dirty bitch."

After the alleged rape, the woman, who suffered bruising, grazes and a bite mark, persuaded him to leave by promising she would not go to the police.

But Steward, the court heard, said he had met her outside a bar in West Street earlier that evening and arranged to go to her hotel room later that night.

He said he tried to talk to her but she knocked him back and said she was a prostitute.

In a recorded police interview, which was read out to the jury, he said: "I tried to chat her up and she said she was not interested because she was a prostitute.

"I cannot remember the chat-up line, 'You alright love,' or something.

"She was dressed up like a prostitute, she was wearing a short skirt and tight top.

"I said can I see you tonight and she said yes and gave me a piece of paper with her door number on."

Steward, who said he was staying with a friend in Lewes at the time, later went to her room at the hotel in Kings Road.

He said: "I knocked on the door. She said she recognised me from earlier. We talked for a long time. She said she did computers as well as working as a prostitute."

Steward said after they had sex, she went with him to the reception of the hotel where she paid for him to get some cigarettes from a machine before he left.

He was arrested by police minutes later in Air Street.

Steward said the woman had been alone when he met her standing outside the bar but she has told the court she was at a show at the Brighton Centre with work colleagues, who were also staying at the hotel.

The trial continues.