I remember the first time I met him as if it were yesterday. Not because there was anything particular about the day – there were no rainbows, or sunsets, or scent of jasmine as the evening fell – but because I knew within seconds of us seeing each other, that we would soon be having sex.

He greeted me with a wide smile and I returned it, aware that both our eyes immediately fell over the other’s body: a mutual recognition of attraction. He teased me when I clumsily tripped up on the door step, and straight away the ice was broken. We walked from room to room, making small talk, chatting about the long hours from filming and the resulting lack of a social life. I recall him stealing glances at my cleavage as I pretended to take in the surroundings; I remember being aware that I could see his nipples through his shirt.

He didn’t then make it any easier on me by removing his top; his excuse being that it was hot, (which it was) and because we were sitting in the garden, he wanted to tan. I felt so self-conscious with him half dressed, as if my desire to touch his unclothed body was written all over my face. Nervously I cracked a self-deprecating joke and remember him grinning at me, laughing, his eyes falling to my breasts and back up again. I felt compelled to move over to him, draw his lips into my mouth and kiss him passionately, but I just sat there, shy, and tried not to look at his crotch. As the sun beat down, the heated pauses in our conversation were like a flag raising the sexual tension between us: the frisson in the air was incredible.

It was only supposed to be a brief meeting – ironically I was on my way to a lunch date with another man – but with neither of us wanting to end the unspoken attraction, an hour passed before we knew it, and I ended up running late. I didn’t care though, because I knew what would soon lie ahead and I wanted to absorb every moment of this mental foreplay for as long as I could. And 48 hours later, I was right: we were fucking with a fury and a passion that I hadn’t felt in years.

Even now, I look back and try to understand how I knew we would end up in bed together; how my instincts were so finely attuned. It’s not like I have a reliable gut-feeling about the mutuality of sexual attraction with every man I like – far from it (sadly). So I still haven’t been able to put my finger on why, in this particular case, it was so blatantly obvious that we would end up being intimate.

It’s not like we’re both stunningly gorgeous and found the other drop-dead sexy; nor was it a mental attraction: we barely knew each other, so how could it be that within seconds of meeting, we both wanted to shag? Whilst I dispute biological determinism can explain sexual expression, sometimes the evolutionary argument has some basis. Perhaps, in this case, the mutual awareness of our attraction was based on an instant physical connection – our pheromones – and not because of a shallow, surface-level appreciation of the other’s ‘beauty’. Whatever it was, it was simple: we were instantly and intensely attracted to each other and were unable to refrain from shagging passionately, and often.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen him and I’ve moved on in my life now, but some days I do wonder what it might be like to see him again; whether we would be able to resist that inexplicable instant attraction we had; if we would be able to talk without imagining the other naked; if we would be able to refrain from the urge to rip the other’s clothes off and fuck furiously. Somehow I doubt it – even with things between us ending the way they did, and my rational, logical brain knowing that I would not want to get involved with him again.

So I’ve come to a conclusion: sometimes sex is not about what you might desire intellectually. Sometimes sex is not about what you think you might crave on a physical basis. Sometimes sex is not about emotional intimacy or love. Sometimes sex is just about your body connecting with someone else’s and you being unable to resist the combined attraction. Perhaps this is explained away by genetics or biology; I’m more inclined to put it down to instinct: sometimes you just want to fuck someone, and by god, if you do, you sure as hell are going to enjoy it.