A man has denied raping a woman in an Auckland motel room, which prosecutors say happened after she had earlier cried about wanting to go home.

The man - who has name suppression - is on trial before Justice Geoffrey Venning in the High Court at Auckland.

The defendant faces, and denies, one charge of sexual violation by rape.

In opening the case, Crown prosecutor Claire Paterson said the defendant and the complainant had met up for a date, drinking at bars in Auckland in April 2018.

Paterson said the accused had talked about the future and marriage, topics she found "odd".

The pair ended up at a motel and he became aggressive when she rebuffed his sexual advances and later the same night raped her, the prosecutor said.

"She froze. She tried to block out what was happening."

She did not know how to get home, Paterson said, so she stayed in the room until the morning when he drove her to a supermarket carpark.

The prosecutor said the complainant did not want him to know exactly where she lived.

Defence lawyer Tiffany Cooper said it was consensual sexual activity or at least he had reasonable grounds to believe it was.